I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall do till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.

Charles Dickens

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.

Mark Twain

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Thomas Hobbes

If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.

George Washington

Our destiny changes with our thought we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.

Orison Swett Marden

A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.

Tacitus

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

Francis Bacon

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Samuel Johnson

By far the greatest part of those goods which are the objects of desire, are procured by labour; and they may be multiplied, not in one country alone, but in many, almost without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to bestow the labour necessary to obtain them.

David Ricardo