Isobelle Carmody Quotes

Where desire ends up causing suffering is when it fixates.

When one is overcome by this wretched, clinging desire in the world, one's sorrows increase like grass growing up after a lot of rain.

[S]he believed that the Buddhists were right–that if you want, you will suffer; if you love, you will grieve. (68)

Desire is a pain which seeks easement through possession.

Desire is poison at lunch and wormwood at dinner; your bed is a stone, friendship is hateful and your fancy is always fixed on one thing.

Suffering comes from desire, not from pain.

Whatsoever misfortunes there are Here in this world or in the next, They all have their root in Ignorance And in the accumulation of Longing and Desire.

Longing is all that lasts.

I never liked the men I loved and never loved the men I liked.

Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

Only I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.

She had never experienced the pain of unsatisfied desire before. It hurt. It hurt like nothing she'd ever felt, and there seemed to be no remedy

Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent...this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering.

Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.

O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.

Better to wait and yearn, and still to wait, And die at last with unappeased desire, Than live to be the jest of such a fate, For that is my conception of hell-fire.

Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain.

The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.

Passion is always suffering, even when gratified.

If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever.

And I mean to hear ye groan like that again. And to moan and sob, even though you dinna wish to, for ye canna help it. I mean to make you sigh as though your heart would break, and scream with the wanting, and at last to cry out in my arms, and I shall know that I've served ye well.

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

People in hell want snowcones.

Craving brings pain; craving brings fear. If you do not yield to craving, you will be free from pain and fear

I'm sorry for the anguished hearts that break with passion's strain, But I'm sorrier for the poor starved souls that never knew love's pain, Who hunger on through barren years not tasting joys they crave, For sadder far is such a lot than weeping o'er a grave.