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Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
I would hate to think I'm promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something you're taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness.
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.
Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own.
It began to really eat away with me that in the '60s the federal government, desiring to help poor moms who were dealing with deadbeat dads, decided, 'We'll help: we'll give a check for every child you can have out of wedlock.'
So many of our young women today, they're growing up without a father, but they're still thirsty for that and desiring positive male love.
Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.
Hence, in desiring, the more the enjoyment is delayed, the more fancy begins to weave about the object images of future fruition, and to clothe the desired object with properties calculated to inflame the impulse.
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.
This is what sexism does best: it makes you feel crazy for desiring parity and hopeless about ever achieving it.