Aphorisms - Wanting/Desire

Things must happen and what you desire will happen if you practice the art of not wanting it.

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Where there is wanting there is no freedom.

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Nothing desires to die before it desires to live.


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You, life, the being behind the womb, conceive your own body and your own existence.

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The desire to live is the desire to know and that is our most insatiable and powerful longing – stronger even than the body's desire for survival.

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Desire arises from the need to survive and is fundamental to life.

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To not desire a thing is as much a reaction as to desire it.

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Without wanting there is no thought. The more wants we have the more we think.

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Whatever wants can't be free.

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Longing is not wanting. Everybody wants to be free, but few long for it.

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Get your priorities right: don't want more than you can have now.

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Money is universally faceless. It represents in one idea everything a man can desire or want – a very dangerous commodity.

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Despite our exertions after bigger houses, new cars, love, art, drugs, transcendental experiences, sons or daughters, lovely women, good men, fame, power, reputations – these things never are enough when we get them.

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The common aim is for more, more of everything – freedom, leisure, government, peace, hardware, drugs, computers, power, information, military, flush toilets, travel and unlimited credit.

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Wanting is violence. All men want. So all men are violent.

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What is the first thing that disturbs your peace? Thought. Thought is violence, because it always disturbs the peace.

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Shame arises when some men want what most other men do not choose to want or are seen to want.

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A man who knows a lot but wants nothing is the most powerful man.

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The spiritual life is to live with your longing without wanting.

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You can only want the past – what you already know.

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Desire is natural, wanting is not. To desire woman is natural. But you must not want her.

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It's no good keeping a dog that sometimes bites you.

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You can't try to be anything. Trying means making an effort. And if you make an effort, you're tense, strained, and you'll be frustrated.

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Certainly prayer works here, and then doesn't work there. Otherwise the Germans would have won the war.

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Man's most civilising drive is the need of pleasure.

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Man, in spite of his nuclear might, still does not possess the power to wipe out the human race.

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It is the memory of things lost that pains us so much. Memory extends down into the cells of our bodies. Addiction is a cellular craving for repetition or continuity of the familiar, the known, the past.

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