We live alone in our cluttered psyches, possessed by our entrenched beliefs, our fatuous desires, our endless contradictions - and like it or not we have to put up with this in one another.
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling. And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.
[I]t is rather the case that we desire something because we believe it to be good than that we believe a thing to be good because we desire it. It is the thought that starts things off.