It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite. {##}
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
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The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
So long as there is desire or want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. A perfect, free being cannot have any desire.
Swami Vivekananda
“Desire can attain the darkest human terror and give an actual ideal of hell and its horror.”
Octave Mirbeau
It was the verdict of ancient writers that men afflict themselves in evil and weary themselves in the good, and that the same effects result from both of these passions. For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it. From this arises the changes in their fortunes; for as men desire, some to have more, some in fear of losing their acquisition, there ensues enmity and war, from which results the ruin of that province and the elevation of another.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain? The ability to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak women and even slaves often attain masterliness. But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of it — that is great, that belongs to greatness.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Kierkegaard, Soren Aabye
Kiernan, Caitlin R.
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