Quotes about Desire

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This

What will you have? quoth God; pay for it, and take it.

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). We may imagine we want a thousand different things, but God is the one we really long for. His presence brings satisfaction; his absence brings thirst and longing.

Most of us find it very difficult to want "Heaven" at all—except in so far as "Heaven" means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. C. S. Lewis

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis put it this way: We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.5 Even many Christians have settled for a life of unsatisfying material acquisitions, like making mud pies in a slum.

Many come short, being satisfied with the works of God rather than hungering for and reaching on to God Himself." —A. W. Tozer

All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.

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." —C. S. Lewis

Augustine was right: "It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains that all men desire to be happy. . . . The happy life which all men desire cannot be reached by any who does not cleave with a pure and holy love to that one supreme good, the unchangeable God.

Everyone deserves Hell. No one deserves Heaven. Jesus went to the cross to offer salvation to all (1 John 2:2). God is absolutely sovereign and doesn't desire any to die without Christ (1 Timothy 2:3-4; 2 Peter 3:9). Yet many will perish in their unbelief (Matthew 7:13).