“To lose the thing we love is greater pain
Than to desire and never to obtain.”
Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet
Che lasciar quel che s'ama, e peggio assai
Che disiarlo, e non averlo mai.
XVII, 6
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato
“Were not this desire of fame very strong, the difficulty of obtaining it, and the danger of losing it when obtained, would be sufficient to deter a man from so vain a pursuit.”
No. 255 (22 December 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
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Joseph Addison226
politician, writer and playwright 1672–1719Related quotes
“How am I to obtain a very superior son who shall achieve world-wide fame?”
Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata
Pandu
After this, the Kuru king Pandu, taking counsel with the great Rishis commanded Kunti to observe an auspicious vow for one full year.
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIII
“To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve.”
James Allen book As a Man Thinketh
As A Man Thinketh (1902), Visions and Ideals
Source: As a Man Thinketh
Context: To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve. Shall man's basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can never obtain: "ask and receive."
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
"The Great Good Man" (1802).
Context: How seldom, friend! a good great man inherits
Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.
.........
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? Three treasures,—love and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,—
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality
Essay 2, Section 15
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author
The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Death
“Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Stephen Mitchell (1946–2000) American psychologist
Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 114