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“everything is dear if you don't want it.” James Joyce, Ulysses
“How I feel is that if I wanted anything I'd take it. That's what I've always thought all my life. But it happens that I want you, and so I just haven't room for any other desires.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
“If you want anything just ask for it” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“I wanted the whole world or nothing.” Charles Bukowski, Post Office
“You are one of those things that are ever found when least wanted, and when you are wanted, never!” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“our labour preserves us from three great evils—weariness, vice, and want.” Voltaire, Candide
“In truth, it is not want, but rather abundance, that creates avarice.” Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
“When you get used to that kind of life—of never having anything you want—then you stop knowing what it is you want.” Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
“Even if you don’t have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don’t have that you don’t want.” Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One
“We were closely pinched to bring our wants within our means; but the jail stood over the way, and I had a wholesome dread of the consequences of running in debt.” Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom
“One of the most important questions a woman can ask herself: What do I really want—and what is my spirit telling me is the best way to proceed?” Oprah Winfrey, What I Know For Sure
“Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.” Jack Kerouac, On the Road
“Love Jo all your days, if you choose, but don't let it spoil you, for it's wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can't have the one you want.” Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
“We are often unable to tell people what they NEED to know, because they WANT to know something else, and would therefore only misunderstand what we said.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
“Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.” Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
“The dominant myth of the day seemed to be that anybody could do anything, even go to the moon. You could do whatever you wanted — in the ads and in the articles, ignore your limitations, defy them.” Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One
“people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“Anything we want, we're trained to want.” Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
“Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now? Am I just under a spell that says nothing is ever good enough?” Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby
“You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.” John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
“She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted.” Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
“After the primary necessities of food and raiment, freedom is the first and strongest want of human nature.” John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women
“There's a capacity for appetite . . . that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
“I want to see life. I want to hold it in my hands. I want to leave a footprint on the sand of a desert island. I want to play football with people. I want . . . I want everything.” Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
“What others? I don't profess to be different from my kind. I'm consumed by the same wants and the same longings.” Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell.” Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“We knew exactly what we wanted in each other. And even so, it ended. One day it stopped, as if the film simply slipped off the reel.” Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
“In making even horizontal and clear inspections we colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.” Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

Related topics

need misunderstanding life desire consumerism things love ambition satisfaction knowledge happiness fear freedom woman work evil longing society achievement value

Related authors

Bob Dylan (2)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2)
Chuck Palahniuk (2)
Haruki Murakami (2)
John Steinbeck (2)
Edith Wharton (2)
Michel de Montaigne (1)
Paulo Coelho (1)
Neil Gaiman (1)
Charles Bukowski (1)
Bertrand Russell (1)
Frederick Douglass (1)
James Joyce (1)
Louisa May Alcott (1)
Milan Kundera (1)
Oprah Winfrey (1)
Thomas Hardy (1)
Voltaire (1)
Sylvia Plath (1)
George MacDonald (1)

Related sources

The Age of Innocence (2)
Chronicles, Volume One (2)
Lullaby (1)
The Alchemist (1)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1)
My Bondage and My Freedom (1)
The Great Gatsby (1)
Post Office (1)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1)
East of Eden (1)
The Conquest of Happiness (1)
The Subjection of Women (1)
Little Women (1)
The Winter of Our Discontent (1)
The Beautiful and Damned (1)
Wuthering Heights (1)
Ulysses (1)
Invisible Monsters (1)
What I Know For Sure (1)
Candide (1)