“If anything ever happened to any one who eagerly longed and never hoped, that is a true pleasure to the mind.”

— Gaio Valerio Catullo , list of poems by Catullus

CVII, lines 1–2
Carmina

Original

Si quicquam cupido optantique optigit umquam insperanti, hoc est gratum animo proprie.

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Gaio Valerio Catullo 25

Latin poet -84–-54 BC

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Seven, Part VII
Context: He had decided long ago that no Situation had any objective reality: it only existed in the minds of those who happened to be in on it at any specific moment. Since these several minds tended to form a sum total or complex more mongrel than homogeneous, The Situation must necessarily appear to a single observer much like a diagram in four dimensions to an eye conditioned to seeing the world in only three. Hence the success or failure of any diplomatic issue must vary directly with the degree of rapport achieved by the team confronting it. This had led to the near obsession with teamwork which had inspired his colleagues to dub him Soft-show Sydney, on the assumption that he was at his best working in front of a chorus line.
But it was a neat theory, and he was in love with it. The only consolation he drew from the present chaos was that his theory managed to explain it.

“I don't believe we shall ever again have any form of society in which men will be free. One should not hope for it. One should not hope for anything. Hope is invented by politicians to keep the electorate happy.”

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) Italian film director, poet, writer and intellectual

“Trust your happiness and the richness of your life at this moment. It is as true and as much yours as anything else that ever happened to you.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

Source: Letters of Katherine Anne Porter

“The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person's face. When you forgive, it's like it never happened. True forgiveness is complete and total.”

Louis Zamperini (1917–2014) Italian-American middle distance runner

Source: Devil at My Heels

“There's nothing that's ever happened in the world that didn't start in one human mind.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, In Depth with Tom Clancy (2002)

“All who delight in the pleasures of the belly, exceeding all measure in eating and drinking and love, find that the pleasures are brief and last but a short while—only so long as they are eating and drinking—but the pains that come after are many and endure. The longing for the same things keeps ever returning, and whenever the objects of one's desire are realized forthwith the pleasure vanishes, and one has no further use for them. The pleasure is brief, and once more the need for the same things returns.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

“Of course I constantly despair at my own incapacity, at the impossibility of ever accomplishing anything, of painting a valid, true picture or even knowing what such a thing ought to look like. But then I always have the hope that, if I persevere, it might one day happen. And this hope is nurtured every time something appears, a scattered, partial, initial hint of something which reminds me of what I long for, or which conveys a hint of it – although often enough I have been fooled by a momentary glimpse that then vanishes, leaving behind only the usual thing.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Notes, 1985; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6
1980's