“I wish she was dead,' he says. 'I wish they were all dead and we were, too. It would be best.”
Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist
“We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.”
— Aesop, book The Old Man and Death
The Old Man and Death.
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Aesop36
ancient Greek storyteller -620–-564 BCRelated quotes
“We tell our children things which we know are not so, but which we wish were so.”
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
Jacques Bainville (1879–1936) French historian and journalist
Action Française (1–11 December 1918), quoted in William R. Keylor, Jacques Bainville and the Renaissance of Royalist History in Twentieth-Century France (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), p. 131.
Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist
2000s, Virginia Tech Massacre: God's Wrath (2007)
Context: The Lord sent a world-class whopper of a massacre to Virginia Tech, killing thirty-three, drawing headlines like 'Shocked!', 'Horrified!', 'The worst massacre in US history!'. Well, we wish you were thirty-three thousand killed, but we are thankful to our Father for thirty-three.
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
Joanne Harris (1964) British author
Source: The Girl with No Shadow
“If wishes were wings, pigs would fly.”
Robert Jordan book The Eye of the World
Old saying in Randland
(15 October 1994)
Source: The Eye of the World
“If wishes were stories, beggars would read…”
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
“Stories”, p. 141
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html <br class="br">1960s <br class="br">Context: I met Malcolm X once in Washington, but circumstances didn't enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. He is very articulate … but I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views — at least insofar as I understand where he now stands. I don't want to seem to sound self-righteous, or absolutist, or that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. I don't know how he feels now, but I know that I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve our problem. And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.
“Things we hope not for oftener come to pass than things we wish for. (translated by Thornton)”
Insperata accidunt magis saepe quam que speres.
Act I, scene 3, line 42.
Variant translation: Things which you do not hope happen more frequently than things which you do hope. (translator unknown)
Mostellaria (The Haunted House)