“The gratification of one desire only makes way for another still more exacting.”
Advice to Young Men on Their Duties and Conduct in Life (1848), p. 31
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Timothy Shay Arthur3
Novelist, short story writer, publisher 1809–1885Related quotes
Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan
The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 47.
Leviathan (1651)
Context: Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter. The cause whereof is that the object of man's desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire. And therefore the voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life, and differ only in the way, which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions in diverse men, and partly from the difference of the knowledge or opinion each one has of the causes which produce the effect desired.
“The chicken is only an egg’s way for making another egg.”
Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
“A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.”
Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist
Life and Habit http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/lfhb10h.htm, ch. 8 (1877)
John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 580.
“There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States
Anaïs Nin book Incest: From a Journal of Love
July 7, 1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Variant: Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.
Source: Incest: From a Journal of Love
Context: I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger than reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 102
Context: Christianity has had to give up one piece after another of what it still imagined it possessed in the way of explanations of the universe. In this development it grows more and more into an expression of what constitutes its real nature. In a remarkable process of spiritualization it advances further and further from naive naiveté into the region of profound naiveté. The greater the number of explanations that slip from its hands, the more is the first of the Beatitudes, which may indeed be regarded as prophetic word concerning Christianity, fulfilled: "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."
Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna
[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 292]