Last words (June 1809), as quoted in Thomas Paine's Rights of Man https://books.google.com/books?id=0SKFXdyu8NoC&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=%22POPISH+STUFF%22+PAINE&source=bl&ots=zo5gRksBtU&sig=RY-gWE_UoreJyKW2iUdTSkuDVQg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHi9W1mcrLAhWFnYMKHYMsCfQQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22POPISH%20STUFF%22%20PAINE&f=false, by Christopher Hitchens, p. 140
1800s
“I wish to believe in immortality-I wish to live with you forever.”
“I wish to weep
but sorrow is
stupid.
I wish to believe
but belief is a
graveyard.”
Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. X).
Wuthering Heights (1847)
“I believe my subject is bewilderment. But I could be wrong.”
Statement at his official website http://www.donaldwestlake.com/autobiography/, also quoted in his obituary in The Washington Post (3 January 2009) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202282_pf.html
Bk. 1, ch. 1
The End of the Affair (1951)
Cagliostro: the Splendour And Misery of a Master of Magic by W.R.H. Trowbridge, (William Rutherford Hayes), (August 1910) https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Trowbridge%2c%20W%2e%20R%2e%20H%2e%20%28William%20Rutherford%20Hayes%29%2c%201866%2d1938
Marcelo H. del Pilar to José Rizal (20 July 1892)
“Wish it, believe it, and it will be so.”
Source: Alice at Heart
A Christmas Sermon (1890)
Context: Christian chronology gives the age of the first man, and then gives the line from father to son down to the flood, and from the flood down to the coming of Christ, showing that men have been upon the earth only about six thousand years. This chronology is infinitely absurd, and I do not believe that there is an intelligent, well-educated Christian in the world, having examined the subject, who will say that the Christian chronology is correct.
