Nikolai Gogol Quotes

We are never like angels till our passion dies.

In sex, man is driven into the very abyss which he flees. He makes a voyage to non-being and back.

Your mind is like, oh my God, I know this is wrong, but your body just gives in.

Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.

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.

What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants.

I tried to keep myself away from him by using con words like "fidelity" and "adultery", by telling myself that he would interfere with my work, that I had him I'd be too happy to write. I tried to tell myself I was hurting Bennett, hurting myself, making a spectacle of myself. I was. But nothing helped. I was possessed. The minute he walked into a room and smiled at me, I was a goner.

Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making.

God is in my head, but the devil is in my pants.

We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have.

No one is immune to temptation. Not even a hero. Not even a nobody. Not even people like you and me. Lust is never very far away. And just when you least expect it, there it is again.

We have pain and hate and love and joy and war in the world because we want them.

There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.

Maybe we all have a dark place inside of us, a place where dark thoughts and darker dreams live, but it doesn't have to become who we are.

You perhaps now know that desire reduces us to pulp.

St. Augustine teaches us that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is the Eve; and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents.

She knew she shouldn't feel that way about a monster, but right then, she wanted nothing more than a monster of her very own.

I try to tighten my heart into a knot, a snarl, I try to learn to live dead, just numb, but then I see someone I want, and it's like a nail, like a hot spike right through my chest, and I know I'm losing.

As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do.

I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.

Which is scarier-- lust or temptation?

While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.

What can the will do when the heart commands?

My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears, Two traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores Of will and judgment.