Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling. And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.
The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.
Practice restraint over the following: appetite, first, as well as sleep, lust, and anger.
To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.
You can learn not to want what you want, to recognize desires but not be controlled by them.
The practice of inhibiting impulses, which is to a great extent necessary to civilized life, makes mistakes easier, by preventing experience of the actions to which a desire would otherwise lead, and by often causing the inhibited impulses themselves to be unnoticed or quickly forgotten.
You want to eliminate your evil desires in order to reveal your Buddha nature, but where will you throw them away?
O never give me over to my own heart's desires, nor let me follow my own imaginations!
Your mind will really talk to you when you begin to deny fulfillment to your desires, and you will find how subtle and shameless it is.
Sometimes I feel that old desire. Then my body tells me it is 50 years old. I take the easy way instead.
Transcendence of sex is a totally different phenomenon from the suppression of it. But suppression can give you the feeling that you have transcended.
Christianity was simple: fight your desires in order to please God.
it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance
Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.
It is hard to fight desire; but to control it is the sign of a reasonable man.
By annihilating desires, you annihilate the mind.
the way to wean any one from a desire is not by condemnation of it.
Seeing so much of the same thing suppresses the desire to buy.
Who has courage to say no again and again to desires, to despise the objects of ambition, who is a whole in himself, smoothed and rounded.
Why is erasing desire seen as so important? If the subjugation of the self is the point of the self what's the point in having a self? It's like someone handing you a leaflet which says throw this leaflet away.
A lot of the music comes out of that conflict of wanting this other thing and feeling guilty about wanting it, and then it guiding me somewhere despite my kicking and screaming.
Some form of self-discipline is necessary to transmute material desires into spiritual aspirations.
Cleanse your body and soul, removing malice, selfishness and desire.
If somebody says to me, 'Oh, you're gonna get married and you'll never be attracted to anybody else again,' I'm like, right, sure. It's just not practical to me on an emotional level. Just because I'm married, I'm not dead.
It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow.
