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• Desire: A strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.  Oxford Dictionary
• Desire: To want something, especially strongly.  Cambridge Dictionary
• Desire: To wish or long for; crave; want. Merriam Webster
• Cravings,  Lust,  Needs,  Addiction,  Greed,  Ambition,  Lust,  Temptation,  Self-control

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Your deepest desires are whispers of who you are

• You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny. Brihadaranyaka
• Your soul’s desire are with you at birth like a hidden treasure chest of possibilities for you to discover as you grow and evolve into the person you were meant to be. Give voice to what you long for in the deepest place in your heart. Debbie Ford
• Our deepest wishes are whispers of our authentic selves. We must learn to respect them. We must learn to listen. Sarah Ban
• Tell me what you yearn for and I shall tell you who you are. We are what we reach for, the idealized image that drives our wandering. James Hillman
• I’ve come to know that what we want in life is the greatest indication of who we really are. Richard Paul Evans
• The thing we long for, that we are. James Russell Lowell
• It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dream of meeting your heart’s longing. Oriah Mountain Dreamer
• Your desires reflect what’s truest about you. Danielle LaPorte

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Your desires are the very essence of your soul

• Desires are central to the soul’s unfolding and should not be dismissed before giving them careful attention. Thomas Moore
• It would be helpful if the universe would give us one big clue, or a giant compass, if you will, pointing to the direction we should be taking. In fact, the compass is there. To find it, you need only look inside yourself to discover your soul’s purest desire, its dream for your life. Deepak Chopra
• We are desire. It is the essence of the human Soul, the secret of our existence. John Elderidge
• Desire is the very essence of man. Benedict de Spinoza
• A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death. Saul Bellow
• The soul

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Your desires are what make you come fully alive

• It seems to me that we can never give up longing and wishing, while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. George Eliot
• Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again. “Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing,” he agrees. Karen Marie Moning
• There is no fulfilment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire. Jacqueline Carey
• Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death. Kahlil Gibran
• I am dead because I lack desire… In desiring to become, you begin to live.  Rene Daumal
• Desire is a teacher: When we immerse ourselves in it without guilt, shame, or clinging, it can show us something special about our own minds that allows us to embrace life fully. Mark Epstein
• The central fire is desire, and all the powers of our being are given us to see, to fight for, and to win the object of our desire. Quench that fire and man turns to ashes. Basil W. Maturin
• Desire, both the whispers and the shouts, is the map we have been given to find the only life worth living. John Eldredge
• It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened? George Eliot
• One must desire something to be alive. Margaret Deland
• One must not lose desires. They are mighty stimulants to creativeness, to love, and to long life. Alexander A. Bogomoletz
• Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy. Samuel Johnson
• Being fully alive,  Vitality

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Desire is the first principle of success …

• The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire, not things we fear. Brian Tracy
• Success is focusing the full power of all you are on what you have a burning desire to achieve. Wilferd Peterson
• The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way. Robert Kiyosaki
• A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means. Henry Hazlitt
• To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve. James Alle
• One essential to success is that your desire be an all-obsessing one, your thoughts and aim be coordinated, and your energy be concentrated and applied without letup. Claude M. Bristol
• Success,  Achievement

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… and the forerunner of all great accomplishments

• The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. If you find yourself lacking in persistence, this weakness may be removed by building a stronger fire under your desires. Napoleon Hill
• Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything. Napoleon Hill
• Desire: the starting point of all achievement. Napoleon Hill
• Desire is the presentiment of our inner abilities, and the forerunner of our ultimate accomplishmentsJohann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• We are desire. It is the essence of the human Soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it. Not a symphony has been written, a mountain climbed, an injustice fought, or a love sustained apart from desire. Desire fuels our search for the life we prize. John Elderidge
• Achievement,  Progress

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Weak desire will get weak results. Intense desire will get intense results.

• The first and most practical step in getting what one wants in this world is wanting it. One would think that the next step would be expressing what one wants. But it almost never is. It generally consists in wanting it still harder. Gerald Stanley Lee
• Weak desire will get weak results. Intense desire will get intense results. Brian Johnson
• Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. Napoleaon Hill
• You can become a great creator or a little one as the intensity of your desire is little or great. Walter Russell
• There are no limitations set by this electric universe upon any man’s multiplication power. Each man sets his own limitations in accordance with his desires. He be a thin wire which gathers little energy and carries a weak current, or he may be a heavy one. That is true of all energy borrowed from the universe by all of us. It is there in unlimited quantities, but the gauge of the kind of wire each of us is set by ourselves. Walter Russell

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Desire provides great energy and passion

• Burning desire to be or do something gives us staying power – a reason to get up every morning or to pick ourselves up and start in again after a disappointment. Marsha Sinetar
• If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. Antoine de Saint- Exupery
• Immerse yourself in the energy of what you desire. Hiro Boga
• The strongest of all psychic forces in the world is unsatisfied desire. John Cowper Powys
• What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire. Stanley Kunitz
• The electric energy which motivates us is not within our bodies at all. It is a part of the universal supply which flows through us from the Universal Source with an intensity set by our desires and our will. Walter Russell
• Passion,  Energy management

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Desire generates focus and enormous creative power

• Truly, ‘thoughts are things,’ and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire for their translation into riches, or other material objects. Napoleon Hill
• Desire creates the power. Raymond Holliwell
• You can become a great creator or a little one as the intensity of your desire is little or great. Walter Russell
• When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve. Napoleon Hill
• Where there is no power, there is never any desire to do a thing; and where there is strong desire to do a thing, the power to do it is strong. Wallace D. Wattles
• Desire, like the atom, is explosive with creative force. Paul Vernon Buser
• Look to see what you most desire in your life, then ride that feeling all the way to creation. Neale Donald Walsch
• Every human mind is a great slumbering power until awakened by a keen desire and by definite resolution to do. Edgar F. Roberts
• Power,  Creative expression

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Desire inspires motivated, committed action

• Your brain can tell you what to do, but your heart will give you the desire to DO IT. It is this heart power that will make the difference between being just another “wannabe’ or becoming a true champion. Dan Brent Burt
• A wish will remain just that, a wish, until it is accompanied by a strong and persistent desire that leads to constant, habitual action. Rahul Singh
• Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal – a commitment to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success you seek. Mario Andretti
• When natural inclination develops into a passionate desire, one advances towards his goal in seven- league boots. Nikola Tesla
• All movement, of every creature, comes from the desire after something better. Charles Buxton
• All human activity is prompted by desire. Bertrand Russell
• Action,  Motivation

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Desire creates determination and persistence

• The ease with which lack of persistence may be conquered will depend entirely upon the intensity of one’s desire. Napoleon Hill
• Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way. Les Brown
• It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire. Denis Diderot
• A desire can overcome all objections and obstacles. Gunderson
• Burning desire to be or do something gives us staying power – a reason to get up every morning or to pick ourselves up and start in again after a disappointment. Marsha Sinetar
• Determination,  Perseverance

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You pay a price by neglecting, suppressing or abandoning your desires

• A desire scorned and neglected is an enemy lying in wait with bared dagger. Abraham Miller
• When the desire is too much to bear, we often bury it beneath frenzied thoughts and activities or escape it by dulling our immediate consciousness of living. It is possible to run away from the desire for years, even decades, at a time, but we cannot eradicate it entirely. It keeps touching us in little glimpses and hints in our dreams, our hopes, our unguarded moments. Gerald G. May
• We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. We leave our hearts by the side of the road and head off in the direction of fitting in, getting by, being productive, what have you. Whatever we might gain– money, position, the approval of others, or just absence of the discontent itself–it’s not worth it. John Eldredge
• How long can you suppress your own desires? Until you understand that in doing so will destroy yourself. Ivan Klima
• By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act. Claude Adrien Helvetius

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Become clear on what exactly it is that you desire

• The problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire. Slavoj Žižek
• There are few things we should keenly desire if we really knew what we wanted. François de La Rochefoucauld
• It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement. Abraham Harold Maslow
• Vague desires and goals produce vague results. Be as clear and detailed as possible. Once you are clear about what you want, keep your mind focused on it. The how will show up. Vic Johnson
• Become clear what you want,  Clarity

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Delve into the reason why you desire it

• When you start adding the `whys’ to what you want, then you really begin to vibrate in concert with that which you are, and when you begin to vibrate in concert with that which you are, oceans part and mountains move, and people come out the woodwork to accommodate you. Abraham-Hicks

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Know what desired feeling is driving your desire

• The essence of your desire is a desired feeling. Danielle LaPorte
• Your heart’s longing is your core desired feelings. Danielle LaPorte
• Knowing how you actually want to feel is the most potent form of clarity that you can have. Danielle LaPorte
• You’re not chasing the goal itself, you’re actually chasing a feeling. Danielle LaPorte
• You’re not chasing the goal itself. You’re chasing the feelings that you hope attaining the goal will give you.  Danielle LaPorte
• And not only do we have to put our feelings at the heart of our ambitions, we have to pursue our desires in a way that is life- affirming, rather than soul-depleting. Rigid goal-chasing is burning us out. Soul- anchored intentions are the way to get home.  Danielle LaPorte
• Know what you want to feel

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Ask yourself if what you desire is conducive with your long term well- being

• There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it. George Bernard Shaw
• I got my heart’s desire, and there my troubles began. Lev Grossman
• Be suspicious of what you want. Rumi
• We are ruined, not by what we really want, but by what we think we do. Charles Caleb Colton
• Let your desires be ruled by reason. Cicero
• While we don’t have much say over the desires that we have, we certainly can decide which we prefer- and then search for ways to act on that basis. Daniel Akst
• We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have. Publilius Syrus
• Be careful what you set your heart upon — for it will surely be yours. James Baldwin
• Don’t allow your animal nature to rule your reason. Rumi
• What man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants. Joseph Wood Krutch
• I desire the things which will destroy me in the end. Sylvia Plath
• What are your desires? Trace where they came from.  Ask yourself why you have them and what is in them for you.  Are these desires built on your needs or someone else’s?     People rarely question their expectations.  Instead, they question their personal adequacy.  Evaluate what truly brings you satisfaction and peace and let the rest go.  Jennifer James
• Well-being,  Health

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Set your desires on what is true, beautiful and good

• Not only should you unfetter your desire: you should unleash it in the service of good and grand projects… Want everything; but be more specific about it, want everything true, beautiful and good. Eric Maisel
• Beauty,  Goodness

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Plant the seed of desire in your mind

• Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself everything needed for its fulfilment. Robert Collier
• The first principle of success is desire – knowing what you want. Desire is the planting of your seed. Robert Collier

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Believe you can fulfil your desire

• Desire and belief, those are the components that are necessary for anything that you want to achieve. Abraham-Hicks
• So it seems obvious that the perfect creative situation is to really, really want something that you truly believe is possible. And when that combination of desire and belief is present within you, things will quickly and easily unfold in your experience. Abraham-Hicks
• When you believe, or are led to believe, you are unable to act upon the greatest desires of the soul, the result is mental and spiritual enslavement. Iyanla Vanzant
• A composer can have all the talent of Mozart and a passionate desire to succeed, but if he believes he cannot compose music, he will come to nothing. He will not try hard enough. He will give up too soon when the elusive right melody takes too long to materialize. Martin Seligman
• Belief,  Self-belief

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Share your desires with others

• To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves. Federico García Lorca
• When we try to conceal our innermost drives, our entire being screams betrayal. Brian Herber

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Create a vision of yourself fulfilling your desire

• Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The way you create any outcome in your life is to hold the vision of your deepest desires. At the same time, though, you must honestly and accurately assess your current situation and how it relates to your greater vision. By doing this, you engage tension between what is and what can be. This tension is the primary creative force behind the manifestation of any outcome. It’s as natural and powerful as the force of gravity. David Emerald
• If you desire a thing, picture it clearly and hold the picture steadily in mid until it becomes a definite thought- form. Wallace D. Wattles
• Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. George Bernard Shaw
• The secret of making something work in your lives is, first of all, the deep desire to make it work; then the faith and belief that it can work; then to hold that clear definite vision in your consciousness and see it working out step by step, without one doubt or disbelief. Eileen Caddy
• Combine your mental images with the emotion of desire to accelerate their realization. Brian Tracy
• When constructing your visualizations, you should only use positive thoughts and intent, and you should see what you desire as already being yours. Jeffery A. Martin
• Vision,  Visualisation

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Act from your desire

• A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal that is worth achieving. Ayn Rand
• There’s a wall between you and what you want and you got to leap it. Bob Dylan
• He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. William Blake
• You had better return home and make a net, than go down to the river and desire to get the fishes. Chinese Proverb
• Everything that is, desires to be. As we act, we unfold our being. Enjoyment naturally follows, for a thing desired always brings delight. Dante Alighieri
• Action

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In acting, be prepared to stretch your comfort zone

• Everything you want is just outside your comfort zone. Robert Allen
• Stretch your comfort zone

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Burn your ships and cut all sources of retreat

• Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win, essential to success. Napoleon Hill
• If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it. Brendan Francis

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Act as if what you desire is already present …

• You have that spirit of God flowing within you at all times, and you will discover a simple secret: Anything you desire to do you can do. Anything! The key is desire, which is an invisible, dimensionless concept that resides within you. If you truly desire it, and can picture it for yourself, you can manifest it. The way to this truth for me has been to act as if that which I desired within myself were already here in the material world. Wayne Dyer

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… trusting that fulfilment will come

• To sit patiently with a yearning that has not yet been fulfilled, and to trust that, that fulfilment will come, is quite possibly one of the most powerful “magic skills”” that human beings are capable of. It has been noted by almost every ancient wisdom tradition. Elizabeth Gilbert
• You can trust the promise of this opening; unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning that is at one with your life’s desire. John O’Donohue
• Fulfilment

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Be what it is you desire

• You must be what it is that you’re seeking. This is a universe of attraction and energy. You can’t have a desire to attract a mate who’s confident, generous, non-judgmental, and gentle, and expect that desire to be manifested if you’re thinking and acting in non-confident, selfish, judgmental, or arrogant ways… Wayne Dyer

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Know there is nothing that you can desire that cannot be fulfilled

• Remember, if the life you are living has the resources to produce within you any specific desire, then the resources also exist for your full receiving, or manifestation, of that desire. Esther and Jerry Hicks
• There’s nothing capricious in nature, and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• There is absolutely nothing that you desire that you cannot achieve. Abraham-Hicks
• What you intuitively desire, that is possible to you. D. H. Lawrence
• Desire is the absurdity that holds open the infinity of possibility. Wendy Farley
• All through nature, you will find the same law. First the need, then the means. Robert Collier

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Know if you want it badly enough, you can always find a way

• When you know what you want, and you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way to get it. Jim Rohn
• If you want it badly enough, there are no limits on what you can achieve. Brian Tracy
• You can have anything you want — if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, have anything you desire, accomplish anything you set out to accomplish — if you will hold to that desire with singleness of purpose. Robert Collier
• A man can do anything he wants to do in this world, at least if he wants to do it badly enough. Edward Wyllis Scripps
• The thing that contributes to anyone’s reaching the goal he wants is simple wanting that goal badly enough. Charles E. Wilson
• You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world. Sheila Graham
• If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. Malcolm Gladwell
• If you really want something you can figure out how to make it happen. Cher
• A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means. Henry Hazlitt

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Always focus on your desires rather than your fears

• Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire. Dan Brown
• Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known. Mark Epstein
• We fear what we most desire. Harley King
• Sometimes I think the difference between what we want and what we’re afraid of is about the width of an eyelash. Jay McInerney
• It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear. Francis Bacon
• The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire, not things we fear. Brian Tracy
• Fear

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Rather focus your desires on what is available to you

• He is fortunate who wants the things he knows he can have. Lewis F. Korns
• Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing? Ursula K. Le Guin
• That’s the funny thing about knowing you can’t have something. It makes you desperate. Stephenie Meyer
• Sometimes you don’t even know what you want until you find out you can’t have it. Meghan O’Rourke
• We should not desire the impossible. Leonardo da Vinci

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All your deepest desires originate in the soul of the Universe

• The same Source that gave you the idea, will give you the means to see it through. Alan Cohen
• God’s will is your deepest desires. Dan Brown
• To walk after the spirit means to listen and to believe that God does not mock when he sends us the heart’s true desire. To walk after the spirit means to accept the desire as the promise of God, to believe that that which sends the desire will also send the fulfilment. Ervin Seale
• What you are longing for is longing for you. Ralph Marston
• There is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth. Paulo Coelho
• Look into the nature of desire, and there is boundless light. Padmasambhava
• What you seek is seeking you. Rumi
• Desire is the engine of creation. Desire is our divine impulse to evolve. Through our wanting, we come to know more of ourselves, each other and life. Desire leads the way home. Danielle LaPorte
• The entire Universe is set up to produce wanting within you. You cannot squelch wanting. You are born wanters. Wanting is a good thing. Abraham-Hicks
• A desire is anything but frivolous. It is the interface between you and that which is greater than you. No desire is meaningless or inconsequential. If it pulls you, even a little bit, it will take everyone higher. Desire is where the Divine lives, inside the inspiration of your desire. Every desire is of profound importance with huge consequences, and deserves your attention.   Mama Gena
• God plants no yearning in the human soul that he does not intend to satisfy. Henry Ward Beecher
• The electric energy which motivates us is not within our bodies at all. It is a part of the universal supply which flows through us from the Universal Source with an intensity set by our desires and our will. Walter Russell
• The reason for desires, goals, for finding those decisions or points of focus, is because they are the life- giving things of the Universe. Without objects of attention, or objects of desire, Life-Force does not come through any of us.  Abraham-Hicks
• The universe

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Use your desire to plug into the creative force of the universe

• Down deep in his heart he knew that we all have the same promise of the unlimited help of the Universal Intelligence that guides all things. If we want it, we only have to plug into it with the master keys of desire and trust. Walter Russell
• Say to yourself, ‘I’m here on purpose, I can accomplish anything I desire, and I do it by being in harmony with the all- pervading creative force in the universe.’ Wayne Dyer
• The universe gives to those who ask without favor. The electric plug which connects you is desire. Walter Russell

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Allow the universe to conspire to help you get what you desire

• There is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth… And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. Paulo Coelho
• The Universe expands in direct proportion to your desires. Abraham-Hicks
• When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. Paulo Coelho
• We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents. Eric Hoffer
• Just as a small matchstick can set a huge forest on fire, so does a desire light up the fires of manifestation. Deepak Chopra

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Harness the Law of Attraction to attract what you desire

• Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself everything needed for its fulfilment. Robert J. Collier
• Get so fixated on what you want, that you drown out any vibration or reverberation that has anything to do with what you do not want. Abraham-Hicks
• If your desire is strong enough, it doesn’t matter what your beliefs are. If you have a desire that is strong enough, that desire will be the dominant vibration, and it will over-ride any other vibration that you have. Abraham-Hicks
• Never mind what is. Imagine it the way you want it to be, so that your vibration is a match to your desire. When your vibration is a match to your desire, all things in your experience will gravitate to meet that match…every time. Abraham-Hicks
• Desire, for many people, often feels like yearning, for while they are focused upon something that they want to experience or have, they are equally aware of its absence. But there is no feeling of lack in pure desire. If you will keep in mind that whenever you ask, it is always given, then each of your desires will now be pure, unresisted desire. Abraham-Hicks
• The soul attracts that which it secretly harbours; that which it loves, and also that which it fears. It reaches the height of its cherished aspirations. It falls to the level of its unchastened desires – and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own. James Allen
• The Law of Attraction

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Some spiritual disciplines negate desire as a negative force that leads to suffering and enslavement

• The root of all suffering is desire. Buddha
• Most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities. The Dalai Lama
• She believed that the Buddhists were right–that if you want, you will suffer; if you love, you will grieve. Anne Lamott
• The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man’s slavery. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Angst is not the human condition, it’s the purgatory between what we have and what we want but can’t get. Miguel Syjuco
• We fear what we most desire. Harley King
• After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. James 1:15
• Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making. Quentin Crisp
• Man’s many desires are like the small metal coins he carries about in his pocket. The more he has the more they weight him down. Satya Sai Baba
• Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you. Frank Herbert
• It is not poverty which produces sorrow, but desire. Epictetus
• How helpless we are, like netted birds, when we are caught by desire! Belva Plain
• He who desires is always poor. Claudianus
• Desires are only the lack of something: and those who have the greatest desires are in a worse condition than those who have none, or very slight ones. Plato
• Suffering,  Slavery

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They talk about renunciating and transcending desire in order to achieve peace, freedom and self control

• Everything on earth gives cause for fear, and the only freedom from fear is to be found in the renunciation of all desire. Bharti- hari
• Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature. Charles Dickens
• When there is no desire, all things are at peace. Lao Tzu
• He who reins within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king. John Milton
• Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire. Epictetus
• Free from desire, you realize the mystery caught in the desire, you see only the manifestations. Lao Tzu
• It is only by frequent deaths of ourselves and our self-centred desires that we can come to live more fully. Mother Teresa
• So long as there is desire or want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. A perfect, free being cannot have any desire. Vivekananda
• I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies. Aristotle
• When one withdraws all desires as a tortoise withdraws its limbs, the the natural splendor of the world soon manifests itself. from the Mahabharata
• Desire at the level of the body, and seeking at the level of the mind, are in most cases forms of agitation. They are modulations of a sense of lack, a sense that something is not right, that something needs to be secured or known.  Rupert Spira
• We presume that it was the fulfilment of the desire that produced the Happiness.  However, it is the end of the desire, not its fulfilment, which reveals the underlying, ever-present Happiness.  Rupert Spira
• Transcendence,  Self-control,  Transcendence

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It is true that desire can be the source of both your noblest aspiration and your deepest sorrows

• Desire is the source of our most noble aspirations and our deepest sorrows. The pleasure and the pain go together; indeed, they emanate from the same region in our hearts. We cannot live without the yearning, and yet the yearning sets us up for disappointment–sometimes deep and devastating disappointment. John Eldredge
• Desire is the creator; desire is the destroyer. Hari Das Baba

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The deeper truth is that desire itself is not the root of suffering; craving is

• Crave: to long for; want greatly; desire eagerly. Oxford Dictionary
• Intentions are a form of desire. Desire per se is not the root of suffering; craving is. The key is to have wholesome intentions without being attached to their results. Rick Hanson
• Bear in mind, having cravings or a desire for anything that belongs in the physical world is not a source of happiness; instead these cravings are a source of unhappiness. It is not the lack of something that is behind your unhappiness; instead your craving is the root cause behind your unhappiness. Sampo Kaasila
• Cravings – powerful desires – are part of the human condition. Our brains are “hard-wired” to appreciate and to pursue natural rewards such as food and sex because of their critical survival value. Drugs used by addicted people activate the same circuits that motivate food and sexual behaviour. Signals, called cues, can be sights, sounds, smell or thoughts. Cues activate the brain’s powerful “go!” circuit creating cravings. The cravings for alcohol and other drugs can be even stronger than those for food or sex.  Anna Rose Childress, Ph.D.
• It is when our desire becomes an unquenchable craving or obsession, or causes us to do harm to ourselves or others, that it creates suffering and unhappiness. Donald Altman
• Cravings,  Addiction

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The secret is not to block your desire, but to let go of your attachment to it being fulfilled

• The Law of Detachment says that in order to acquire anything in the physical universe, you have to relinquish your attachment to it. This doesn’t mean that you give up the intention to create your desire. You don’t give up the intention, and you don’t give up the desire. You give up your attachment to the result. Deepak Chopra
• I embrace desires but I am not bound by them, I’m not attached to them. I can have a desire, and drop the desire if it’s not fulfilled… I don’t get stuck anywhere. Zen Master Genpo Roshi
• Intentions are a form of desire. Desire per se is not the root of suffering; craving is. The key is to have wholesome intentions without being attached to their results. Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
• Desire is a powerful force that can be used to make things happen. Yet do not confuse desire with expectation, or with need. Desire has an entirely different quality to it. You can desire something without needing or requiring it. That little difference makes everything work. That little difference is the whole trick. Desire, do not Require. To desire propels. To require compels. Life will not be compelled, but it can be coaxed. Neale Donald Walsch
• I see nothing wrong with the human trait to desire. In fact, I consider it integral to our success mechanism. Becoming attached to what we desire is what causes the trouble. If you must have it in order to be happy, then you are denying the happiness of the here and now. Peter McWilliams
• Let go of attachment to result

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The paradox is that if you give up your attachment to the result, you are more likely to fulfil your desire

• The paradox is that if you let go of your attachment to results, you’re actually more likely to get what you desire…
• The moment you relinquish your attachment to the result, combining one-pointed intention with detachment at the same time, you will have that which you desire. Deepak Chopra
• Paradox

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Contemplate this if you don’t get what you want

• If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain. André Maurois
• If you don’t get everything you want, think of the things you don’t get that you don’t want. Oscar Wilde

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Attaining a desire doesn’t lead to lasting satisfaction as new desires always take the place of ones fulfilled

• Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. Henry George
• The world is always greater than your desires; plenty is never enough. Aleksandar Hemon
• Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing. Eric Hoffer
• Desire grows by what it feeds on. M. Montgomery
• Why… is human desire so unsatisfying? Ai Yazawa
• It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it. Aristotle
• Human nature, at its best, had always been based on a deep heroic restlessness, on wanting something– something else, something more, whether it be true love or a glimpse just beyond the horizon. It was the promise of happiness, not the attainment of it, that had driven the entire engine, the folly and glory of who we are. Will Freguson
• Always there is desire, only the shape of what is desired shifts, each love giving way to another. Jane Hirshfield
• Desires satisfied are but as seeds sown a second time. Edward Counsel
• There is a strange feeling of longing that I have always had, always a desire to be someplace better than where I am. But the world I want to enter is always disappearing before I get there. Linday Ahl
• …there’s nothing inherently wrong with the desires of the Wanting Mind—it’s just that we are doomed to disappointment when we think they’ll bring any kind of lasting fulfilment. Brent Kessel

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This is particularly true of the desire for more wealth and physical possessions

• Desire is insatiable not because the goods of the world are too few, too uniform, or too bland. Desire burns through the goods of the world, even though these goods are not false or intrinsically unsatisfactory…. Desire shatters the economy of things; it disputes the tyranny of objects. IT longs for the great emptiness, which is beauty and love without limitation. Wendy Farley
• Wealth,  Materialism

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The joy of attaining a desire rarely lives up to the anticipation

• A state of constant fruition would be, according to our present notions, a state truly lamentable, since it would preclude, in a great degree, the pleasing emotions that spring from hope and expectation, and thus extinguish the lights that principally serve to cheer our path through life. Were all our desires satiated at their birth, or were we always satisfied with our present condition, in either case, as there would be nothing to draw forth our active energies, life would stagnate. William Matthews
• There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it. George Bernard Shaw
• Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade. Marcel Proust
• It’s so much better to desire than to have. . . . The moment of desire, when you know something is going to happen — that’s the most exalting. Anouk Aimee
• Anticipation

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There are those who advocate reducing your desires in order to become richer and more free

• Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit. Aristotle
• By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich. Democritus
• Contentment is a pearl of great price, and whoever procures it at the expense of ten thousand desires makes a wise and a happy purchase. Balguy
• Give up on the idea that more is better. The desire to have more and more and more is insatiable. As long as you think more is better, you’ll never be satisfied. As soon as we get something, or achieve something, most of us simply go onto the next thing. Immediately. You can learn to be happy with what you have by becoming more present moment oriented, by not focusing so much on what you want. You can spend your life time wanting more, always chasing happiness – or you can simply decide to consciously want less. The latter strategy is infinitely easier and more fulfilling. Richard Carlson
• I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them. John Stuart Mill
• If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires. Epicurus
• It is not the greatness of a man’s means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants. William Cobbett
• Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires. Lao Tzu
• The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires. Seneca
• The true way to gain much, is never to desire to gain too much. He is not rich that possesses much, but he that covets no more; and he is not poor that enjoys little, but he that wants too much. Francis Beaumont
• There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontentment. And there is no greater disaster than greed.  Lao Tzu
• This seems to be the central dilemma of human life – that it is easier to desire what is over there than to appreciate what is right here. Byron Brown
• Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. Epictetus
• We don’t need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants. Not wanting something is as good as possessing it.  Donald Horban
• It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. Seneca’
• Freedom

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You can reduce your desires for what you don’t have by appreciating what you do have

• Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for. Epicurus
• Long only for what you have. Andre Gide
• Things desired are oftentimes of less value than our present possessions. Edward Counsel
• Contentment is a state of grace, a state of peace and happiness, appreciation and enjoyment for what is, right now. Desires, in contrast, can never be satisfied. Once we get what we crave, we soon find it less satisfying than we expected, so we strive for something else. The only escape from this perpetual wheel of want is to discover the contentment and perfection we already have. Gillian Stokes
• Appreciation,  Gratitude

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You can reduce your desires by realising you already have in you everything you need

• The word desire suggests that there is something we do not have. If we have everything already, then there can be no desire, for there is nothing left to want. I think that what the Buddha may have been trying to tell us is that we have it all, each of us, all the time; therefore, desire is simply unnecessary. Tom Robbins
• If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire. Simone Weil
• Look inside yourself: everything that you want, you are already that. Rumi
• Everything I need now is here. Wayne Dyer
• We’ve got everything we need right here, and everything we need is enough. Jack Johnson
• All I have is all I need and all I need is all I have in this moment. Byron Katie
• You have everything you need for complete peace and total happiness right now. Wayne Dyer
• When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. Lao Tzu
• Contentment,  Fulfilment

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You can reduce your desires by understanding their nature

• We cannot be free of nagging desires through suppression. This is like trying to keep a rubber boat beneath the water. But we remove compulsive desires altogether by understanding their nature. Vernon Howard
• Understanding

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Desire is of the ego and letting go of the ego releases you from it

• Ego is then defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of “I” and “mine,” self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activity that will sustain that false construction. Sogyal Rinpoche
• Most people’s lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less. These two movements obscure the fact that Being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already within you, Now. Eckhart Tolle
• The ego exists because we go on pedalling desire, because we go on striving to get something, because we go on jumping ahead of ourselves. Osho
• The more successful you become, the more the demands of your ego will increase. In the beginning, you simply want to succeed, but your ego will not be satisfied. When you become a little more successful your ego wants to kill your competition. And when you become even more successful, it wants to make you the universal king. There’s no telling what ego wants because our desire doesn’t have any limit; therefore, its demands continually increase. Gehlek Rinpoche
• As long as the ego runs your life, most of your thoughts, emotions, and actions arise from desire and fear. In relationships, you then either want or fear something from the other person. What you want from them may be pleasure or material gain, recognition, praise or attention, or a strengthening of your sense of self through comparison and through establishing that you are, have, or know more than they. What you fear is that the opposite may be the case, and they may diminish your sense of self in some way.  Eckhart Tolle
• Transcending the ego,  Letting go

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If a desire becomes a heavy craving, practice equanimity and mindfulness to allow it to flow through

• Your Spiritual Flame must be strong and not wobble, even when a hurricane of desire whooshes by. Simhananda
• Let the wave of memory, the storm of desire, the fire of emotion pass through without affecting your equanimity. Sri Sathya Sai Baba
• Desires are just waves in the mind. A desire is just a thing among many. I feel no urge to satisfy it, no action needs be taken on it. Freedom from desire means this: the compulsion to satisfy is absent. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• Wants, like birds, flutter till they have found a place of rest. Edward Counsel
• Mindfulness,  Equanimity

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Through the joy of being, desires and cravings fall away

• All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfilment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being. Eckhart Tolle
• Nothing is more human than for man to desire naturally things impossible to his nature. It is, indeed, the property of a nature which is not closed up in matter like the nature of physical things, but which is intellectual or infinitized by the spirit. It is the property of a metaphysical nature. Such desires reach for the infinite, because the intellect thirsts for being and being is infinite. Jacues Maritain
• All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name. Hunter S. Thompson
• As you grow older you will find that your desires are never really fulfilled. In fulfilment, there is always the shadow of frustration, and in your heart, there is not a song but a cry. The desire to become–to become a great man or woman, a great saint, a great this or that–has no end and therefore no fulfilment; its demand is ever for the “more,” and such desire always breeds agony, misery, wars.  But when one is free of all desire to become, there is a state of being whose action is totally different.  It is.  That which is has no time.  It does not think in terms of fulfilment.  Its very being is in its fulfilment.   Jiddu Krishnamurti

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The path to spiritual enlightenment often starts after you fulfil the desires of your ego and realise that is not enough

• Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So fulfil your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender. Vivekananda
• Enlightenment

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Realise your desires will change as you evolve through life

• Desire is what leads you through life until the time comes when you desire a higher life. So do not be ashamed that you want so much, yet at the same time do not fool yourself into thinking that what you want today will be enough tomorrow. Deepak Chopra
• I recognize thart even you, yourself, will change. Your ideals will change, your tastes will change, your desires will change. Your whole understandings of who you are had better change, because if it doesn’t change, you’ve become a very static personality over a great many years, and nothing would displease me more. And so I recognize that the process of evolution will produce changes in you. Neale Donald Walsch
• We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. Marcel Proust
• Change,  Evolution

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Realise it is often easy to be deceived by your desires and they will tend to influence your beliefs

• Human psychology has a near universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire. Richard Dawkins
• Men quickly find a theory that adapts itself to their desires. Lewis F. Korns
• People who constantly find new disguises for their desires can easily lie to themselves. Hans-Ulrich Rieker
• Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true; everything that is not puts us in a rage. Andre Maurois
• Belief

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When you contradict your desire with other beliefs and thoughts, negative emotions tend to arise

• Your emotion, your indicator of vibration, is indicating the ratio between your currently focused desire and any other belief or thought that you hold about same. When you feel negative emotion, anger about something, or fear… the name of the emotion does not matter, it always means that there is a desire within you that, in this moment, you are contradicting with some other thought. Your emotions are always about your relationship with your own desire, and nothing else.  Abraham-Hicks
• Emotions

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Many of our desires are shared by many

• Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone. Paulo Coelho
• In the end, there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship. Graham Greene
• A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man. John Adams
• We have an innate desire to endlessly learn, grow and develop. We want to become more than what we already are. Once we yield to this inclination for continuous and never-ending improvement, we lead a life of endless accomplishments and satisfaction. Chuck Gallozi
• We always long for the forbidden things, and desire what is denied us. Francois Rabelais

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We desire to be desired

• To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal. John Berger
• It’s hard to feel desire when you don’t feel desirable. Christine Feehan
• It’s always nice being wanted. Even if it’s by the wrong person. Tabitha Suzuma
• Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. Robert Frost

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• The best joke of all is to give someone just what they’ve wanted. Tony Ballantyne
• Human longings are perversely obstinate; and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow. George Eliot
• All I want is a little more than I’ll ever get. Ashleigh Brilliant
• All I want is a warm bed and a kind world and unlimited power.
• All I want is more and more and more. Is that asking too much?  Ashleigh Brilliant
• When you don’t have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it’s sex. When you have both, it’s health. If everything is simply jake, then you’re frightened of death. Marilyn Monroe
• A woman in love will do almost anything for a man, except give up the desire to improve him. Nathaniel Branden
• All progress is based on a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. Butler’s Law of Progress
• An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead. Ambrose Bierce
• Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire. George Bernard Shaw
• Every day, I am torn between the desire to save the world and the desire to savour the world. This makes it very hard to plan the day. E.B. White
• Her kisses left something to be desired – the rest of her.
• It’s not that I’m a Type B personality; it’s that I’m driven by a passionate all-consuming desire to take it easy. Robert Brault
• Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. Robert Frost
• The more you want it the quicker the letdown after you get it. Priester’s Law of Desire
• There are two tragedies in life; one is not to get your heart’s desire the other is to get it. George Bernard Shaw
• You know you are getting old when your idea of hot, flaming desire is a barbecued steak. Victoria Fabiano

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