As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
~ George Bernard Shaw
Josemaría Escrivá on Enough
“Don’t forget it: he has most who needs least. Don’t create needs for yourself.”
~ Josemaría Escrivá / Quoted in The Atlantic
Andy Warhol on Wanting Things
As soon as you stop wanting something you get it.
~ Andy Warhol
Epicurus on Enough
He who has learned the limits of life knows that it is easy to provide that which removes the feeling of pain owing to want and makes one’s whole life perfect. So there is no need for things which involve struggle.
~ Epicurus
Wilson, Catherine. The Pleasure Principle: Epicureanism: A Philosophy for Modern Living (p. 243). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Plato on Desire
I feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master. Unquestionably old age brings us profound repose and freedom from this and other passions.
~ Plato
William Blake on Desire
Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
~ William Blake
Seneca on Desire
“Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.”
~ Seneca
Christopher P. Jones on Success
“…always balanced against what I perceive as a perennial threat to well-being: that of wanting success too desperately.”
~ Christopher P. Jones / Medium
Aristotle on Desires
“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.”
~ Aristotle
Diogenes on Want
“He has the most who is most content with the least.”
~ Diogenes
Cormac McCarthy on Getting What You Want
“My daddy once told me that some of the most miserable people he ever knew were the ones that finally got what they’d always wanted.”
~ Cormac McCarthy / Cities of the Plain
Marcel Proust on Desire
“If happiness, or at least the absence of suffering, can be found, it is not the satisfaction, but the gradual reduction and the eventual extinction of desire that one should seek.”
~ Marcel Proust
Epictetus on Temptation
“Counter temptation by remembering how much better will be the knowledge that you resisted.”
~ Epictetus
Epictetus on Desire
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”
~ Epictetus
Marcus Aurelius on Desire
“Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.”
~ Marcus Aurelius
Seneca on Contentment
“The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
~ Seneca
Seneca on Desire
“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”
~ Seneca
Epictetus on Desires
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
~ Epictetus
Epictetus on Desires
“To (children) who put their hand into a narrow necked earthen vessel and bring out figs and nuts, this happens; if they fill the hand, they cannot take it out, and then they cry. Drop a few of them and you will draw things out. And do you part with your desires: do not desire many things and you will have what you want. ”
Epictetus, Discourses