Word Finder - desires

definition

Someone or something wished for.

example

It is my desire to speak with you.

definition

Strong attraction, particularly romantic or sexual.

example

His desire for her kept him awake at night.

definition

The feeling of desiring; an eager longing for something.

example

Too much desire can seriously affect one’s judgment.

definition

Motivation.

definition

To want; to wish for earnestly.

example

I desire to speak with you.

definition

To put a request to (someone); to entreat.

definition

To want emotionally or sexually.

example

She has desired him since they first met.

definition

To express a wish for; to entreat; to request.

definition

To require; to demand; to claim.

definition

To miss; to regret.

Once again she had let her desires drive them from her mind.

Women have desires too – probably every bit as strong as a man's.

Only Betsy was raised outside of New England and she easily bowed to our collective desires to remain within its six state bounds.

She could live a lifetime and never find someone so perfectly fit to her wants and desires.

She feels that both stars have clear goals, desires, and interests.

The threatened dualism of ideal and material becomes for Aristotle mainly a contrast of matter and form; the lower stage in development desires or aims at the higher, matter more and more tending to pass into form, till God is form without any matter.

He desires to end your misfortunes and restore you to your homes and families.

It was an interesting mental exercise and said much about the desires of the participants.

I have the least rewarding job of any of us so my desires are directed to family and this mind boggling venture Howie is taking us on.

The political conditions of Europe favored the realization of Italian desires.

The service lasted just under an hour and consisted mostly of Reverend Humphries preaching against giving in to the devil's temptation for wicked bodily desires.

In these circumstances, when, as frequently will be the case, the person calling desires to be put in communication with a subscriber who belongs to another section, connexions must be established in the office between the two sections; this necessitates additional switchboard arrangements, and also increases the time required to put subscribers in communication with one another.

Thus there is a differentiation between the long-distance traveller who desires to be carried from one extreme of the city to the other and the short-distance traveller who is going between points at a much less distance.

Sadler further learnt that she was "singularly well affected to Henry's desires."

This fell far short of his desires, and he now dexterously referred the whole question to the nation at large.

He defends them against Zeus, who, in accordance with a widely diffused mythical theory, desires to destroy the human race and supplant them by a new and better species, or who simply revenges a trick in which men get the better of him.

Wissowa, Religion and Kultus der Romer (1902), according to whom Spes was originally not a garden goddess, but simply the divinity to whom one prayed for the fulfilment of one's desires.

Alexander of Russia directed his own diplomacy, and round him he had gathered a brilliant body of men who could express but not control their master's desires.

The spiritual experience of the individual utters itself in words, and desires association with others who know the same grace.

Sickness is suffering, so is death, so is union with the unloved, and separation from the loved; not to obtain what one desires is suffering; the entire fivefold clinging to the earthly is suffering.

The writer desires to express his indebtedness to Mr Israel Abrahams for bibliographical and other suggestions.

In the gospel he found a God revealed who is goodness and love, and who desires faith and love from men.

Butler never attempts to prove that a future life regulated according to the requirements of ethical law is a reality; he only desires to show that the conception of such a life is not irreconcilable with what we know of the course of nature, and that consequently it is not unreasonable to suppose that there is such a life.

Moreover, among the particular passions, appetites and desires there are some whose tendency is as clearly towards the general good as that of others is towards the satisfaction of the self.

That God desires that all should be saved, and that the salvation of each depends on his own choice - these are the general convictions of modern theology.

It is this latter fact which has led many students of human character to state that men do in fact aim at the gratification of their personal desires and impulses.

In 1675 Spener published his Pia desideria, or Earnest Desires for a Reform of the True Evangelical Church.

Things indifferent might be trusted to him, but the main lines of English diplomacy and foreign policy show rather the influence of the kings personal desires of the moment than that of a statesman seeking national ends.

As it was their doubtful reputation and financial embarrassments enabled Henry to offer them as a gigantic bribe to the upper classes of the laity, and the Reformation parliament met for its last session early in 1536 to give effect to the reports of the visitors and to the kings and their own desires.

It can easily be shown that men do attach moral adjectives to environment, temperamental tendencies, natural endowments, instinctive desires, in a word to all or most of those forces moulding character.

For the very argument from the undeveloped possibilities of each man's character by which the determinist proves the compatibility of his theory with the phenomenon of sudden conversion and the like is sufficient also to prove that the state can never be sure that the punishments which it inflicts upon the individual will have the effect upon his character and conduct which it desires.

There is, however, in the Cynic notion of wisdom, no positive criterion beyond the mere negation of irrational desires and prejudices.

But it remains true that the contrast with the " righteousness of the scribes and pharisees " has always served to mark the requirement of " inwardness " as a distinctive feature of the Christian code - an inwardness not merely negative, tending to the repression of vicious desires as well as vicious acts, but also involving a positive rectitude of the inner state of the soul.

Rightness of purpose, preference of virtue for its own sake, suppression of vicious desires, were made essential points by the - Aristotelians, who attached the most importance to outward circumstances in their view of virtue, no less than by the Stoics, to whom all outward things were indifferent.

Then, when Christianity threw off the Mosaic ritual, this religious sense of purity was left with no other sphere besides morality; while, from its highly idealized character, it was peculiarly well adapted for that repression of vicious desires which Christianity claimed as its special function.

This, at any rate, is Hobbes's cardinal doctrine in moral psychology, that each man's appetites or desires are naturally directed either to the preservation of his life, or to that heightening of it which he feels as pleasure.2 Hobbes does not distinguish instinctive from deliberate pleasureseeking; and he confidently resolves the most apparently unselfish emotions into phases of self-regard.

The question, however, still remains, what motive any individual has to conform to these social principles when they conflict with his natural desires.

He first follows Shaftesbury in exhibiting the social affections as no less natural than the appetites and desires which tend directly to self-preservation; then reviving the Stoic view of the prima naturae, the first objects of natural appetites, he argues that pleasure is not the primary aim even of the impulses which Shaftesbury allowed to be " self-affections "; but rather a result which follows upon their attaining their natural ends.

The latter are " necessarily presupposed " as distinct impulses in " the very idea of an interested pursuit "; since, if there were no such pre-existing desires, there would be no pleasure for self-love to aim at.

Further, so far from bodily appetites (or other particular desires) being forms of self-love, there is no one of them which under certain circumstances may not come into conflict with it.

He urges that the notion of " good 1 on the whole " is one which only a reasoning being can form, involving as it does abstraction from the objects of all particular desires, and comparison of past and future with present feelings; and maintains that it is a contradiction to suppose a rational being to have the notion of its Good on the Whole without a desire for it, and that such a desire must naturally regulate all particular appetites and passions.

With a little straining these are made to correspond to five chief divisions of Jus, - personal security (benevolence being opposed to the ill-will that commonly causes personal injuries), property, contract, marriage and government; while the first, second and fourth, again, regulate respectively the three chief classes of human motives, - affections, mental desires and appetites.

Some years earlier, Gay,' admitting Hutcheson's proof of the actual disinterestedness of moral and benevolent impulses, had maintained that these (like the desires of knowledge or fame, the delight of reading, hunting and planting, &c.) were derived from self-love by " the power of association."

Neither the doctrine of Hobbes, that deliberation is a mere alternation of competing desires, voluntary action immediately following the " last appetite," nor the hardly less decided Determinism of Locke, who held that the will is always moved by the greatest present uneasiness, appeared to either author to require any reconciliation with the belief in human responsibility.

Thus, in his view, not merely natural inclinations towards pleasures, or the desires for selfish happiness, require to be morally resisted; but even the prompting of the individual's conscience, the impulse to do what seems to him right, if it comes into conflict with the common sense of his community.

Any national bank may secure its depositors in this manner if it so desires.

Louis Philippe's government was far from satisfying his desires for reform, and he persistently urged the "broadening of the bases of the monarchy," while he protested his loyalty to the dynasty.

At the popes appeal Charles crossed the Alps, took Verona and Pavia after a long siege, assumed the iron crown of the Lombard kings (June 774), and made a triumphal entry into Rome, which had not formed part of the popes desires.

His first act was to release French policy from the Austrian alliance of 1756; in this he was aided both by public opinion and by the confidence of the kingthe latter managing to set aside the desires of the queen, whom the ambition of Maria Theresa and Joseph II.

By the former Turgot hampered the great interests; by the second he thwarted the desires of courtiers not only of the second rank but of the first.