Desire Control Quotes

Those desires that do not bring pain if they are not satisfied are not necessary; and they are easily thrust aside whenever to satisfy them appears difficult or likely to cause injury.

I will have a care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a shameful, and the heaviest of all servitudes; and this may be done by moderate desires.

Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

If what the heart approves conforms to proper patterns, then even if one's desires are many, what harm would they be to good order?

Neither do thou lust after that tawny weed tobacco.

Having grown up Catholic, my prayers were scripted - memorized and deployed in church and before bed. As a young adult, I veered off script and talked to God more plainly. And by 'talked to,' I mean that I basically asked for things to turn out the way I wanted them to.

Freedom means the power to act by soul guidance, not by the compulsions of desires and habits. Obeying the ego leads to bondage; obeying the soul brings liberation.

We must set limits to our wishes, curb our desires, moderate our anger, always remembering that an individual can attain only an infinitesimal share in anything that is worth having; and that on the other hand, everyone must incur many of the ills of life

If you close your mind in judgements and traffic with desires, your heart will be troubled. If you keep your mind from judging and aren't led by the senses, your heart will find peace.

Tis this desire of bending all things to our own purposes which turns them into confusion and is the chief source of every error in our lives.

You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.

When the will is enslaved to a desire, it will in turn enslave the mind.

Surely one will not expect men to be less moral than women, nor less capable of disciplining their desires

Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, in order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the child completely dead, abort at the same time their own human feelings.

The remedy against want is to moderate your desires.

When did reason ever direct our desires or our fears?

The real purpose of the martial arts must be to purge oneself of petty ambitions and desire, to obtain control of one’s own character.

Resign every forbidden joy; restrain every wish that is not referred to God's will; banish all eager desires, all anxiety; desire only the will of God; seek him alone and supremely, and you will find peace.

It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it — in other words, by becoming civilized — that men become fully human.

In the history of a soul’s evolution there is a critical point of the human incarnation that decides for us whether we stay there, go down or progress upwards. There is a knot of worldly desires impeding us; cut the knot by mastering desires and go forward. This done, progress is assured.

...it's my hypothesis that the individual is not a pre-given entity which is seized on by the exercise of power. The individual, with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces.

Body. Soul. Mind. Sensations: the body. Desires: the soul. Reasoning: the mind.

The Buddha also counseled the monks and nuns to avoid wasting any precious time by engaging in idle conversation, oversleeping, pursuing fame and recognition, chasing after desires, spending time with people of poor character, and being satisfied with only a shallow understanding of the teaching.