Sexual Desire Quotes

If we understand many more things than other people, we owe it to our nervous system which is far more disturbed. One says 'I'm sad' but no one realizes what is the cause of his/her sadness; it may come from the stomach; or from a tune we have just listened to and which failed to impress us on the spot; or it may come from frustrated sexual desire ... It is not easy to see beyond symbolic forms of expression. People don't realize that you can negate the progress of humanity because your feet hurt. It is important to see beyond that which is given; and yet, once you see it, nothing matters. ~ Emil Cioran

And yet I needed to know the meaning of my own existence. Only those who, at some time in their lives, have been possessed by such a need can guess at its intensity, comparable to that of physical hunger or sexual desire. I did not see how I could put one foot in front of the other unless I understood where I was going and why. I could do nothing unless I understood what part my action played in the scheme of things. All I knew was that I knew nothing - nothing, that is to say, of the slightest importance - and I was paralyzed by my ignorance as though immobilized in a dense fog. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton

Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, can persist even after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared. ~ Mortimer Adler

Like not a few of those seduced by the wild, McCandless seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire. His yearning, in a sense, was too pow¬erful to be quenched by human contact. McCandless may have been tempted by the succor offered by women, but it paled beside the prospect of rough congress with nature, with the cosmos it¬self ~ Jon Krakauer

The exotic and the erotic ideals go hand in hand, and this fact also contributes another proof of a more or less obvious truth - that is, that a love of the exotic is usually an imaginative projection of a sexual desire. ~ Mario Praz

Its avowed purpose is to excite sexual desire, which, I should have thought, is unnecessary in the case of the young, inconvenient in the case of the middle aged, and unseemly in the old. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

hysteria," a term used for women who exhibited sexual desire and strong emotions. ~ Mia Sheridan

While for most Christians, humans were expelled from paradise because they literally ate from the tree of life, due to the influence of a serpent, the Gnostics know that the tree of life is the human body, the serpent is the kundalini energy, which tempted humans through sexual desire, and sex was the prohibited fruit. ~ Daniel Marques

For Hitschmann and Bergler, 'frigidity' had a single criterion: 'absence of the vaginal orgasm.' The standard was unqualified and absolute. A woman who did not enjoy intercourse: frigid. Women who derived sexual pleasure from acts other than intecourse were frigid too. Nothing else mattered, only whether a woman had an orgasm because a man's penis was inside her vagina. Sexually agressive women were labeled 'frigid' because of the association between masculinity and aggressiveness. Womanhood that was not passive was not properly womanly. "Frigidity," as Jane Gerhardt points out, "thus became a label and a diagnosis that defined how much sexual desire a woman must have and in what kinds of sexual behavior she must engage to be 'healthy'. ~ Hanne Blank

Just the minute another person is drawn into some one's life, there begin to arise undreamed-of complexities, and from such a simple beginning as sexual desire we find built up such alarming yet familiar phenomena as fetes, divertissements, telephone conversations, arrangements, plans, sacrifices, train arrivals, meetings, appointments, tardiness, delays, marriages, dinners, small pets and animals, calumny, children, music lessons, yellow shades for the windows, evasions, lethargy, cigarettes, candies, repetition of stories and anecdotes, infidelity, ineptitude, incompatibility, bronchial trouble, and many others, all of which are entirely foreign to the original urge and way off the subject. ~ E.B. White

They talked about what they'd felt as they rained blows on the fallen body. A combination of sleepiness and sexual desire. Desire to fuck the poor bastard? Not at all! More as if they were fucking themselves. As if they were digging into themselves. With long nails and empty hands. Though if your fingernails are long enough your hands are never really empty. But in this dreamlike state, they dug and dug, rending fabric and ripping veins and puncturing vital organs. What were they looking for? They didn't know. Nor, at that stage, did they care. ~ Roberto Bolano

They say that life is an accident, driven by sexual desire, that the universe has no moral order, no truth, no God.

Driven by insatiable lusts, drunk on the arrogance of power, hypocritical, deluded, their actions foul with self-seeking, tormented by a vast anxiety that continues until their death, convinced that the gratification of desire is life's sole aim, bound by a hundred shackles of hope, enslaved by their greed, they squander their time dishonestly piling up mountains of wealth.

"Today I got this desire, and tomorrow I will get that one; all these riches are mine, and soon I will have even more. Already I have killed these enemies, and soon I will kill the rest. I am the lord, the enjoyer, successful, happy, and strong, noble, and rich, and famous. Who on earth is my equal? ~ Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

How to appreciate the beauty of a woman: First, close your eyes without any lust or sexual desire, then feel the softness of her body, her delicate hands, her eyes, her lips, her breasts, her thighs. Second, soak your soul in her mind, feel the vortex of her inner needs and desires, listen to the rhythmic sound of her joys and sorrows, and tiptoe on the matrix of her dreams and longings. As soon as you imagine and understand these nuances in a woman, you'll immediately feel a strange sensation of warmth and nurturing presence, almost maternal, like a gentle breeze in the sea or the fragrance of flowers in the forest. You see, her beauty does not reside in her physical appearance - whoever she is and no matter how she looks - because she, the woman herself, is the definition, the embodiment, and the birthplace of beauty. (Danny Castillones Sillada, The Phenomenology of Beauty in a Woman) ~ Danny Castillones Sillada

Philanderers and swingers can see nothing beyond the needs of their genitals. Sexual craving is a part of our biology, but it is not who we are. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Our culture teaches that sex is for the sexy, and the only way to be sexy is to be pretty.
No wait
that's still too weak. Sex should properly arise from sexiness. For unsexy people
fat people, old people, funny-looking people, disabled people
to even feel sexual desire is inappropriate, perverse, disgusting. For them to engage in sexual display is offensive. For them to have sex ... well, there oughta be a law. ~ Vinnie Tesla

I am done living in a world where women are lied to about their bodies; where women are objects of sexual desire but not subjects of sexual pleasure; where sex is used as a weapon against women; and where women believe their bodies are broken, simply because those bodies are not male. And I am done living in a world where women are trained from birth to treat their bodies as the enemy. ~ Emily Nagoski

The pineal gland is activated by light and controls the body's bio- rhythms in concert with the hypothalamus gland which regulates hunger, thirst, sexual desire and the biological clock that dictates how fast we age. Look at the potential for mass control if you can externally suppress and manipulate the pineal and hypothalamus glands alone. You can make it much harder to perceive beyond the five senses, decide how quickly people age, how much they want sex, when they are hungry and thirsty and for how long. This is the key reason for putting sodium fluoride into water supplies and toothpaste. The pineal gland absorbs more fluoride than any other part of the body and becomes calcified by this highly-damaging toxin. Sodium fluoride is an appalling waste product of the aluminum industry and has been used in rat poison. It causes cancer, genetic damage, Alzheimer's disease, disrupts the endocrine system and dumbs down the brain. It was added to drinking water in the Nazi concentration camps to make the inmates more acquiescent and docile. ~ David Icke

The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same. ~ C.S. Lewis

She flew in, all fiery flashing eyes and flushed cheeks, her bosom heaving beneath black wool.
She was magnificent.
"Tell them to let her go!" Séraphine ordered him imperiously. "Tell them to let her go right now."
She stood over him, her lips wet, her body shaking with her rage, and he wanted to take her and roll her beneath him and fuck her into the mattress. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

We constantly encounter themes that arouse sexual desire, often coupled with themes of violence. If our collective consciousness is filled with violent sexual seeds, why should we be surprised when there is sexual abuse of children, rape, and other violent acts? ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

INTENSE SEXUAL DESIRE IS THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD
Janey dreams of cocks. Janey sees cocks instead of objects. Janey has to fuck.
This is the way Sex drives Janey crazy: Before Janey fucks, she keeps her wants in cells. As soon as Janey's fucking she wants to be adored as much as possible at the same time as, its other extreme, ignored as much as possible. More than this: Janey can no longer perceive herself wanting. Janey is Want.
It's worse than this: If Janey gets sexually rejected her body becomes sick. If she doesn't get who she wants she naturally revolts. ~ Kathy Acker

The Song of Songs, the book of Ruth, and the cycle of stories associated with King David demonstrate that biblical perspectives on sexual desire and family ties remain much more complicated than is often thought. The appropriate expression of desire is not limited to marriage between a man and a woman, but can include the love of a son of a king for his charismatic ally, the love of rabbis and theologians for God, their "husband," and the love of a faithful Moabite for her Israelite mother-in-law. The nuclear family is also not idealized: Naomi, Ruth, and Obed are a family, bound together by their common love for one another, and, in the Song of Songs, the woman's mother supports her daughter's premarital encounters over the objections of her sons, who seek to control their sister's sexuality and are overruled. King David never even bothers to pursue marriage as commonly envisioned today. His ~ Jennifer Wright Knust

This seemed to be happening more and more lately out in Greater Los Angeles, among gatherings of carefree youth and happy dopers, where Doc had begun to notice older men, there and not there, rigid, unsmiling, that he knew he'd seen before, not the faces necessarily but a defiant posture, an unwillingness to blur out, like everyone else at the psychedelic events of those days, beyond official envelopes of skin. Like the operatives who'd dragged away Coy Harlingen the other night at that rally at the Century Plaza. Doc Knew these people, he'd seen enough of them in the course of business. They went out to collect cash debts, they broke rib cages, they got people fired, they kept an unforgiving eye on anything that might become a threat. If everything in this dream of prerevolution was in fact doomed to end and the faithless money-driven world to reassert its control over all the lives it felt entitled to touch, fondle, and molest, it would be agents like these, dutiful and silent, out doing the shitwork, who'd make it happen.
Was it possible, that at every gathering--concert, peace rally, love-in, be-in, and freak-in, here, up north, back east, wherever--those dark crews had been busy all along, reclaiming the music, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday, all they could sweep up, for the ancient forces of greed and fear?
'Gee,' he said to himself out loud, 'I dunno... ~ Thomas Pynchon

Pornography is supposed to arouse sexual desires. If pornography is a crime, when will they arrest makers of perfume? ~ Richard Fleischer

The ego defense of conversion transforms developmental needs into the need for something else. This could be food, money or excessive attention. In Max's case it was sex. Over the course of his childhood, his developmental needs became associated with his sex drive. This eventually resulted in the conversion of emotional needing into sexuality. Whenever Max felt insecure, anxious or needy, the inner event registered as sexual desire. Max turned continually to sex for the self-nurturing he was starving for but that addictive sex cannot provide. ~ John Bradshaw

Before the war on drugs, the war on terror, or the war on cancer, there was the war on female sexual desire. It's a war that has been raging far longer than any other, and its victims number well into the billions by now. Like the others, it's a war that can never be won, as the declared enemy is a force of nature. We may as well declare war on the cycles of the moon. ~ Christopher Ryan

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same. ~ C.S. Lewis

Sexual desire may burn like fire, but when you give a thought to when you are ill, then your excitement dies down. Fame and fortune may be sweet as candy, but when you give a thought to when you die, then their flavor is like chewing wax. Therefore, if people are usually concerned about death and illness, this can also dissolve unreal activities and develop longing for the way. ~ Zicheng Hong

But, of course, in real life, in the outside world, women do not have equality. They have been judged inferior to men -Adam's rib, his helpmate- with no soul of their own. This has been so since the beginning of Western civilization. Women may have been potent characters in plays by Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, but in classical Greek life, women were not allowed to leave their houses (except to go to the well or on certain feast days). Their names on all legal documents appear as "the daughter of so and so" or "the wife of so and so", They had almost no rights -"She is my goods, my chattels", as Petruchio says of Kate two thousand years later (Taming of the Shrew,3.2,220). And with the advent of Christianity we began the debate as to whether women had souls in their own right or whether they were an "add-on" to their husbands and fathers. What is clear is that the mother of Jesus had to be both a virgin and totally lacking in sexual desire. And she is the model for all women.
By the time we get to Shakespeare's era, a widow would automatically inherit a third of her husband's possessions if he died (but those possessions became her new husband's if she remarried). Women probably had souls (but it was still being debated), and a woman was a monarch. But in neither classical Greece nor Elizabethan England could a woman portray a woman onstage [...] ~ Tina Packer

Carezza, like Tantra, considers the sex act to be a true feast of love, and ejaculation is seen as a clumsy, crude incident-something quite banal which kills sexual desire. The man who, a few minutes before was seized by a frantic sexual desire, changes as soon as he has ejaculated and turns away from his wife, damaging her in her self-respect and her love as well. ~ Andre Van Lysebeth

Psychic change, as Todorov has recognized, subverted the genre in another way, by revoking the cultural taboos, the social censorship, that had prohibited the overt treatment of psychosexual themes, which then found covert expression in the supernatural tale. 'There is no need today to resort to the devil [or to posthumous reverie] in order to speak of excessive sexual desire, and none to resort to vampires in order to designate the attraction exerted by corpses: psychoanalysis, and the literature which is directly or indirectly inspired by it, deal with these matters in undisguised terms. The themes of fantastic literature have become, literally, the very themes of the psychological investigations of the last fifty years. ~ Howard Kerr

Another limit on intimate marriage in the nineteenth century was that many people still held the Enlightenment view that love developed slowly out of admiration, respect, and appreciation of someone's good character. Coupled with the taboos on expressions of sexual desire, these values meant that the love one felt for a sweetheart often was not seen as qualitatively different from the feeling one might have for a sister, a friend, or even an idea. ~ Stephanie Coontz

But Dracula, the book, the myth, goes beyond metaphor in its intuitive rendering of an oncoming century filled with sexual horror: the throat as a female genital; sex and death as synonyms; killing as a sex act; slow dying as sensuality; men watching the slow dying, and the watching is sexual; mutilation of the female body as male heroism and adventure; callous, ruthless, predatory lust as the one-note meaning of sexual desire; intercourse itself needing blood, someone's, somewhere, to count as a sex act in a world excited by sado-masochism, bored by the dull thud-thud of the literal fuck. The new virginity is emerging, a twentieth century nightmare: no matter how much we have fucked, now matter with how many, now matter with what intensity or obsession or commitment or conviction (believing that sex is freedom) or passion or promiscuous abandon, no matter how often or where or when or how, we are virgins, innocents, knowing nothing, untouched, unless blood has been spilled – ours: not the blood of the first time; the blood of every time; this elegant blood-letting of sex a so-called freedom exercised in alienation, cruelty, and despair. Trivial and decadent; proud; foolish; liars; we are free. ~ Andrea Dworkin

Sexual desire is only the frustrated desire to eat human flesh. ~ Christopher Frayling

For all of the advice in the magazines on "How to Keep your Love Alive," the salvation of love is not the prolongation of sexual desire but the shared lifelong cultivation of a romantic lightheartedness that softens conflicts and anxieties and focuses serious attention even as it undermines seriousness as such. It's hard to fall out of love so long as you're laughing together. ~ Robert C. Solomon

Mr. Mancini had a singular talent for making me uncomfortable. He forced me to consider things I'd rather not think about – the sex of my guitar, for instance. If I honestly wanted to put my hands on a woman, would that automatically mean I could play? Gretchen's teacher never told her to think of her piano as a boy. Neither did Lisa's flute teacher, though in that case the analogy was obvious. On the off chance that sexual desire was all it took, I steered clear of Lisa's instrument, fearing that I might be labeled a prodigy. ~ David Sedaris

Nothing, I suppose, exasperates a woman more than the sexual desire for her of a man who is physically repellent to her, and when, to put it bluntly, he will not take no for an answer, she may very well come to hate him. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

When a marriage culture fails, sexual desire no longer unites; instead it fragments. ~ Maggie Gallagher

I don't think that loneliness is necessarily a bad or unconstructive condition. My own skill at jamming time may actually be dependent on some fluid mixture of emotions, among them curiosity, sexual desire, and love, all suspended in a solvent medium of loneliness. I like the heroes or heroines of books I read to be living alone, and feeling lonely, because reading is itself a state of artificially enhanced loneliness. Loneliness makes you consider other people's lives, makes you more polite to those you deal with in passing, dampens irony and cynicism. The interior of the Fold is, of course, the place of ultimate loneliness, and I like it there. But there are times when the wish for others' voices, for friendliness returned, reaches unpleasant levels, and becomes a kind of immobilizing pain. That was how it felt as I finished packing up the box of sex machines. ~ Nicholson Baker

Sexual expression is so powerful a way of bonding with others and so devastating a way of hurting others that it can never be reduced to a mere matter of personal preferences. Sexual desires have immense capacities to order or disorder the social world. Because of this, the social meanings and expressions of sexual desire, connections, and taboos are an organizing component of human societies: Who wants whom? Who belongs with whom? Who is forbidden to whom? What do infractions mean, and what are their consequences? ~ Rachel Adler

Friendship is no ideal state of mind; it is a law, and a strict one, on which the entire legal systems of great cultures were built. It reaches beyond personal desires and self-regard in men's hearts, its grip is greater than that of sexual desire, and it is proof against disappointment because it asks for nothing. ~ Sandor Marai

Sex as desired by the class that dominates women is held by that class to be elemental, urgent, necessary, even if or even though it appears to require the repudiation of any claim women might have to full human standing. In the subordination of women, inequality itself is sexualized, made into the experience of sexual pleasure, essential to sexual desire. ~ Andrea Dworkin

Guys constantly talk about pornography in two ways: as revenge and as reassurance. When you live in a world in which beautiful, sexy women are all around you, in the same classes, on the same athletic field, competing for the same jobs, then the pornographic world - the world in which women thrill to male sexual desire - reassures men that although they may feel "one down," they're still entitled to women's bodies. ~ Michael Kimmel

There's nothing wrong with Xander. He doesn't need fixing. In any way."
"Exactly. Don't fuck with who he is, if he isn't broken. He's cranky, but he's a good person, and he makes great art. You're a good person too, and you're more than functional. Don't fuck with who you are. You have low sexual desire. Almost none, from the sounds of things. You've discovered a slightly different kink that aligns with Xander, and that's great. Chase that happiness. This world is a nightmare full of pain. You found someone you can make beauty with. Don't question how it happens or worry you aren't doing it the right way. Call yourself demi or an ace or gray, or refuse to take a name. It's all up to you. Call yourself the man who loves Xander Fairchild, the grumpiest, most antisocial asshole who ever lived. The one who made Xander love someone back ~ Heidi Cullinan

She blew out a sigh and focused her attention on the students in her class taking a test. There was nothing like a teenage boy cleaning his ears with the eraser of his pencil to squelch sexual desire. ~ Robin Alexander

A strange jet-lag numbness filled my head. I couldn't separate the boundary between what was real and what only seemed real. Here I was, on a small Greek island, sharing a meal with a beautiful older woman I'd met only the day before. This woman loved Sumire. But couldn't feel any sexual desire for her. Sumire loved this woman and desired her. I loved Sumire and felt sexual desire for her. Sumire liked me but didn't love me, and didn't feel any desire for me. I felt sexual desire for a woman who will remain anonymous. But I didn't love her. It was all so complicated, like something out of an existential play. ~ Haruki Murakami

The Third Precept, to refrain from sexual misconduct, reminds us not to act out of sexual desire in such a way as to cause harm to another ... The spirit of this precept asks us to look at the motivation behind our actions. To pay attention in this way allows us, as laypeople, to discover how sexuality can be connected to the heart and how it can be an expression of love, caring, and genuine intimacy. We have almost all been fools at some time in our sexual lives, and we have also used sex to try to touch what is beautiful, to touch another person deeply. Conscious sexuality is an essential part of living a mindful life (86). ~ Jack Kornfield

Normal people redirect their sexual energy all the time, but religion takes that skill and hijacks it. Religion says, "No, you cannot do that, that is sinful. Direct energy toward god."
Sexual desire does not disappear with increased religiosity and activity. Instead, it gets redirected but the thoughts and incoming stimulation continue. ~ Darrel Ray

It's so hard to believe that someone might want me - all of me - fucked-up sexual desire, tangled family history, book-hoarding tendencies, everything. ~ Lilah Pace

In Lucretius, sexual desire is considered real and genuine, whereas love is illusory. Venus, the goddess who represents the power of sexual desire, is the font of love. She merely mocks lovers with mental images. Try as they might, lovers cannot satisfy themselves by gazing nor by rubbing against one another because the madness of love will always return; hence Lucretius' prescription to flee the mental images, that is, to ward off what feeds love, turning the mind elsewhere. ~ Paul-Ludwig Landsberg

I wonder if those experts who tell us that our sexual appetite is the strongest know what real thirst feels like; I can imagine the desire for water driving someone to commit a crime to which sexual desire could never drive them. ~ Dervla Murphy

As fire is engulfed by smoke; mirror obscured by dust; fetus covered by amnion, so is the knowledge buried by insatiable sexual desire. The sexual desire is the biggest enemy of the wise. This insatiable burning desire will obstruct and destroy knowledge. From Bhagavad Gita ~ Varma

When certain parts of our bodies are touched, certain enzymes and chemicals that trigger sexual desire are released into our system. The more our bodies are stimulated, the more chemicals are released and the greater our sexual desire grows until it becomes a virtually unstoppable flood. ~ Myles Munroe

Bodies like this give sexual desire its meaning! It's for this that penises rise like drawbridges and vaginas become engorged with blood! It's for this that people throw snot-nosed kids into ravines, cross raging rivers, or ice-pick up the wrong side of frozen waterfalls! It's for this that politicians undo their flies in election season, porn magazines with their pages stuck together are found stacked in church basements, people chop off body parts and mail them to ex-lovers, risk hair on palms, stolen wallets, planes flying into buildings, and lice that hop like chess figurines on a board whose players are ever changing. ~ Barry Webster

Sexual desire is a state not unlike hunger. ~ Mary Roach

Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved. ~ C.S. Lewis

If she did experience sex
or something close to it
in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity. ~ Haruki Murakami

The unstated premise that nature is nice lies behind many of the objections to the Darwinian theory of human sexuality. Carefree sex is natural and good, it is assumed, so if someone claims that men want it more than women do, it would imply that men are mentally healthy and women neurotic and repressed. That conclusion is unacceptable, so the claim that men want carefree sex more than women do cannot be correct. Similarly, sexual desire is good, so if men rape for sex (rather than to express anger towards women), rape would not be as evil. Rape is evil; therefore the claim that men rape for sex cannot be correct. More generally, what people instinctively like is good, so if people like beauty, beauty would be a sign of worth. Beauty is not a sign of worth, so the claim that people like beauty cannot be correct.

These kinds of arguments combine bad biology (nature is nice), bad psychology (the mind is created by society), and bad ethics (what people like is good). Feminism would lose nothing by giving them up. ~ Steven Pinker

The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Britten's opera tends to see things in simpler terms. It portrays an Aschenbach who wants a richer form of sexual fulfillment, and who is hemmed in by the social conventions to which he subscribes. But Visconti's use of the Mahler Adagietto is perfect for what I take to be Aschenbach's sexual desire. ~ Philip Kitcher

What we had between us was nothing as simple as longing or sexual desire. It was a hunger for beauty and meaning, and a willingness to search in the world and in ourselves to find it. We had a sense of permanence and the fear of oblivion. We knew, of course, that everything was transient and nothing could last- and yet it didn't stop us from wishing for something eternally beautiful ~ Laurie Lico Albanese

There were no such stipulations made when we discussed the agreement."
"Nor were they expressly not made. I am making them now. You received what you requested. Or, have you forgotten?" The words sent a shiver down her spine. He was standing behind her, and she could feel the warm kiss of his breath on her bare neck, sending a river of heat through her.
"I have not forgotten." The words came unbidden, and she closed her eyes.
He laid a hand on her arm and, with virtually no pressure, turned her face to him. When he met her eyes, the anger that had been there was gone, replaced by something much more complex. "Neither have I. And not for lack of trying."
Before she could begin to consider the meaning behind his words, he settled his mouth upon hers, robbing her of thought.
"I've tried to forget that kiss... and the carriage ride... and the fencing club... but you seem to have taken up residence... in my memory."
As he spoke between long, drugging kisses that consumed her senses, he guided Callie across the study and into a large chair near the fireplace. Kneeling in front of her, he cupped one cheek in a strong, warm hand, and met her gaze with a searing look. Shaking his head as though he couldn't quite understand what had come over him, he kissed her again, growling low in the back of his throat. Her hands found their way into his thick, dark hair as he caught her bottom lip in his teeth, nibbling and licking at it until she thought she might pe ~ Sarah MacLean

I get up every morning with a desire to do some creative work. This desire is made of the same stuff as the sexual desire, the desire to make money, or any other desire. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

That "ol' black magic" is a fickle force. The chemistry of romantic love can trigger the chemistry of sexual desire and the fuel of sexual desire can trigger the fuel of romance. This is why it is dangerous to copulate with someone with whom you don't wish to become involved. Although you intend to have casual sex, you might just fall in love. ~ Helen Fisher

A landmark 2007 report by the American Psychological Association (APA) found girls being sexualized--or treated as "objects of sexual desire... as things rather than as people with legitimate sexual feelings of their own"--in virtually every form of media, including movies, television, music videos and lyrics, video games and the Internet, advertising, cartoons, clothing, and toys. Even Dora the Explorer, once a cute, square-bodied child, got a makeover to make her look more svelte and "hot. ~ Nancy Jo Sales

To say 'I want to have sex with this person' is to express a desire which is not intellectually directed in the way that 'I want to eradicate poverty in the world' is an intellectually directed desire. Furthernore, the gratification of sexual desire can only ever give temporary satisfaction. Thus as Nagarjuna, the great Indian scholar said: 'When you have an itch, you scratch. But not to itch at all is better than any amount of scratching. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

She [Cressida] knows it is men's sexual desire that makes women "angels" before they have been able to possess them; once possessed, women are "things" [Troilus and Cressida I.2, 225-28, 233-34]. ~ Tina Packer

It's probably not easy for a woman to understand what it's like to be a man. Imagine you're starving, and someone puts a huge buffet in front of you. There's delicious, mouth-watering food all around you, and it's really really hard not to eat it all. That's what it's like to be a man around attractive women. The urge to want to hump everything that moves is part of a man's natural programming. It's a deep-seated hunger. To suppress that hunger takes civilization and a lot of willpower. ~ Oliver Markus

What I was being told in my 20s in the close-quartered, male-ego-infused work space, was that I had to stop reacting with my emotions to sexual desire towards me. The change, in other words, had to be made in me. ~ Cris Mazza

What science offers for explaining the feelings we experience when believing in God or falling in love is complementary, not conflicting; additive, not detractive. I find it deeply interesting to know that when I fall in love with someone my initial lustful feelings are enhanced by dopamine, a neurohormone produced by the hypothalamus that triggers the release of testosterone, the hormone that drives sexual desire, and that my deeper feelings of attachment are reinforced by oxytocin, a hormone synthesized in the hypothalamus and secreted into the blood by the pituitary. Further, it is instructive to know that such hormone-induced neural pathways are exclusive to monogamous pair-bonded species as an evolutionary adaptation for the long-term care of helpless infants. We fall in love because our children need us! Does this in any way lessen the qualitative experience of falling in love and doting on one's children? Of course not, any more than unweaving a rainbow into its constituent parts reduces the aesthetic appreciation of the rainbow. ~ Michael Shermer

When restless sexual desire arises, we pay attention to it with enough understanding and enough love that it dissipates and does not grow. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

But as we shall see, thanks to recent developments in evolutionary biology combined with the latest in technology, there is simply no question whether sexual desire for multiple partners is "natural". It is. Similarly, there is simply no question of monogamy being "natural". It isn't. ~ David Philip Barash

For most of Western civilization low sexual desire has been considered a goal rather than a problem. ~ David Schnarch

If something you desire is not happening, you are not emotionally or mentally ready for it yet. Make your mental adjustment in the now, and the reality will follow. ~ Russell Anthony Gibbs

She spoke and loosened from her bosom the embroidered girdle of many colors into which all her allurements were fashioned. In it was love and int desire which steals the mind even of the wise. ~ Homer

Because people's desire to be comfortable supersedes their desire for self knowledge and well being, they avoid any form of discomfort. This is the impulse that drives us to repress undesired emotions, thoughts, and past trauma. ~ Ben Stewart

Pornography also eroticizes male supremacy. It makes dominance and subordination feel like sex; it makes hierarchy feel like sex; it makes force and violence feel like sex; it makes hate and terrorism feel like sex; it makes inequality feel like sex. Pornography keeps sexism sexy. It keeps sexism necessary for some people to have sexual feelings. It makes reciprocity make you go limp. It makes mutuality leave you cold. It makes tenderness and intimacy and caring make you feel like you're going to disappear into a void. It makes justice the opposite of erotic; it makes injustice a sexual thrill. ~ John Stoltenberg

At any moment of the day, some desire is in the process of coming true. Old seeds we planted (and perhaps forgot about) are bringing results, mixed in with the beginnings of larger results to come. The point is to make your children aware that the universe (or spirit or God) is always listening; none of us is alone. We are constantly being heeded. ~ Deepak Chopra

If your flirting strategy is indistinguishable from harassment, it's not everyone else that's the problem. ~ John Scalzi

Barely able to breathe, Eva's tongue slipped across her lips.
He moved a bit closer. "Every time ye walk past, I want ye. Your scent sends my insides into a maelstrom of need."
She closed her eyes and drew out the moment, wishing he'd say that again. Oh, how delectable to listen to a medieval Scotsman declare his desire. ~ Amy Jarecki

There is some concern among the Brethren that some of you who are still single may not be moving in the direction of preparing yourselves to seek out and commit to an eternal companion. This applies both to young men and to young women. The greater burden, however, rests upon the young men because in our society it is a responsibility of young men to initiate activities that lead to courtship and to marriage.

The doctrine of the Church is very clear and it anticipates that individuals will be married in the temple and rear a righteous family as guided by the inspired document we call "The Proclamation on the Family." . . .

Speaking of the obligation of men to marry, President Joseph Fielding Smith taught as follows:

"Any young man who carelessly neglects this great commandment to marry, or who does not marry because of a selfish desire to avoid the responsibilities which married life will bring, is taking a course which is displeasing in the sight of God. Exaltation means responsibility. There can be no exaltation without it.

"If a man refuses to take upon himself the responsibilities of married life, because he desires to avoid the cares and troubles which naturally will follow, he is taking a course which may bar him forever from the responsibilities which are held in reserve for those who are willing to keep in full the commandments of the Lord. . . .

"According to modern custom, it is the place of the man to take the ~ Earl C. Tingey

The motives behind scientism are culturally significant. They have been mixed, as usual: genuine curiosity in search of truth; the rage for certainty and for unity; and the snobbish desire to earn the label scientist when that became a high social and intellectual rank. But these efforts, even though vain, have not been without harm, to the inventors and to the world at large. The "findings" have inspired policies affecting daily life that were enforced with the same absolute assurance as earlier ones based on religion. At the same time, the workers in the realm of intuition, the gifted finessers - artists, moralists, philosophers, historians, political theorists, and theologians - were either diverted from their proper task, while others were looking on them with disdain as dabblers in the suburbs of Truth. ~ Jacques Barzun

I think great artists and great engineers are similar, in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. ~ Steve Jobs

There were some children round him playing in the dust on the paths. They had long fair hair, and with very earnest faces and solemn attention were making little mountains of sand so as to stamp on them and squash them underfoot.
Pierre was going through one of those gloomy days when one looks into every corner of one's soul and shakes out every crease.
'Our occupations are like the work of those kids,' he thought. Then he wondered whether after all the wisest course in life was not to beget two or three of these little useless beings and watch them grow with complacent curiosity. And he was touched by the desire to marry. You aren't so lost when you're not alone any more. At any rate you can hear somebody moving near you in times of worry and uncertainty, and it is something anyway to be able to say words of love to a woman when you are feeling down.
He began thinking about women.
His knowledge of them was very limited, as all he had had in the Latin Quarter was affairs of a fortnight or so, dropped when the month's money ran out and picked up again or replaced the following month. Yet kind, gentle, consoling creatures must exist. Hadn't his own mother brought sweet reasonableness and charm to his father's home? How he would have loved to meet a woman, a real woman!
He leaped up, determined to go and pay a little visit to Mme Rosémilly.
But he quickly sat down again. No, he didn't like that one! ~ Guy De Maupassant

I always had that desire to become a great athlete. ~ Lauren Jackson

If you have good songs and a real desire to make music, the next thing to do, instead of approach record companies, is to get yourself a really good manager because then it allows you to focus on your profession of being a musician. Then they can focus on the darker art of the record label and the music industry. ~ James Blunt

You didn't have to attract desire. Either it was in the woman who aroused it or it didn't exist. Either it was there at first glance or else it had never been. ~ Marguerite Duras

Insights shift us toward a new story, a new set of beliefs that are more accurate, more comprehensive, and more useful.
Our insights transform us in several ways. They change how we understand, act, see, feel, and desire. They change how we understand.They transform our thinking; our new story gives us a different viewpoint.
They change how we act.In some cases insights transform our abilities as well as our understanding ~ Gary Klein

The gods did not desire flawless souls, but great ones. I think that very darkness is where the greatness grows from, as flowers from the soil. I am not sure, in fact, if greatness can bloom without it. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
~ Louis D. Brandeis

The marketplace is a wondrous institution. It harnesses the self-interest of each of us and puts it to work for the benefit of all. And it does so without intruding upon our desires, our privacy, or our freedom. It is regulation by reality, not by coercion. ~ Harry Browne

I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to get rich. ~ Gertrude Stein

I could have gone my entire life without the image of my mom and Dick engaged in a sexual role-playing game. Especially in my clothes. ~ Eileen Cook

Your desires will very often be contradictory and so will your strengths. All of our contradictions make us whole. ~ Danielle LaPorte

If you have the woman you love, what more do you need? Well, besides an alibi for the time of her husband's murder. ~ Dark Jar Tin Zoo

Anyone who is observant, who discovers the person they have always dreamed of, knows that sexual energy comes into play before sex even takes place. The greatest pleasure isn't sex, but the passion with which it is practiced. When the passion is intense, then sex joins in to complete the dance, but it is never the principal aim. ~ Paulo Coelho

The awe of a naked female body is different, I thought, completely different. Naked girls exist almost exclusively, and for the longest time, in pictures. Movies, ads, porn. Moving or still images revealing what can only be guessed, grazed, or mentally drawn. Sleeping with a girl is bringing the uncommon, the extraordinary, into the very common: your bed, your body, your hands. Sex with a man, I realized, is initially the opposite. The very common nakedness of guys, glanced at, studiously ignored, forced upon you in locker rooms, sleepovers and showers, is thrown at you in the most uncommon, the most extraordinary setting: a forbidden and overpowering sexual disorientation. When you first sleep with a girl, you get the affirming feeling you've arrived. When you first sleep with a guy, you are drunk with displacement. ~ Benjamin Ashton

In England, art was much less likely to be mentioned in polite society than sexual perversions or methods of torture. ~ Edward St. Aubyn

Through the substance of human flesh flows life. Life is more than matter. Religions that attempt to keep the body sacred while denying the Creator's hand are in the same boat as skeptics who try to protect life while saying it is nothing more than matter.

All the desacralizing that has engulfed our culture lies in this very struggle to understand the place and sacredness of the body. The right to every individual life, even the one still in the mother's womb; the pleasure and consummation of sexual delights, reserved for the sanctity of marriage; the injunction against suicide; the care and protection of one's health; the injunction against killing; and the command to love others more than we love ourselves and to work for their good-all of these flow from the fact that this body is a dwelling place for God. Our world would be a different place if we comprehended this sobering privilege.

Having lost this truth, what we are left with? Pornography and the cruel degradation of men, women, and children; death in the womb in the name of personal rights; the breakdown of the family for myriad reasons; the profanation of sex in our entertainment industry; violence in unprecedented proportions. One can only weep for the bleeding and loss. In losing the high value that God has placed on the body, we are in free fall, at the mercy of greed, cruelty, and lust. ~ Ravi Zacharias

No more fatuous chimera has ever infested the brain than that you can control opinions by law or direct belief by statute, and no more pernicious sentiment ever tormented the heart than the barbarous desire to do so. The field of inquiry should remain open, and the right of debate must be regarded as a sacred right. ~ William Borah