“I was humiliated for them, for their apparent insensibility. But I was mistaken in my anxiety — their wish to help, to show her their concern, was real, their feelings were true and lasting, no matter how awkwardly expressed; their love and tenderness and wish to help were from the heart.”

— Katherine Anne Porter

The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
Context: I remember small, slender Mrs. Sacco with her fine copper-colored hair and dark brown, soft, dazed eyes moving from face to face but still smiling uncertainly, surrounded in our offices by women pitying and cuddling her, sympathetic with her as if she were a pretty little girl; they spoke to her as if she were five years old or did not understand — this Italian peasant wife who, for seven long years, had shown moral stamina and emotional stability enough to furnish half a dozen women amply. I was humiliated for them, for their apparent insensibility. But I was mistaken in my anxiety — their wish to help, to show her their concern, was real, their feelings were true and lasting, no matter how awkwardly expressed; their love and tenderness and wish to help were from the heart. All through those last days in Boston, those strangely innocent women enlisted their altar societies, their card clubs their literary round tables, their music circles and their various charities in the campaign to save Sacco and Vanzetti. On their rounds, they came now and then to the office of my outfit in their smart thin frocks, stylish hats, and their indefinable air of eager sweetness and light, bringing money they had collected in the endless, wittily devious ways of women's organizations. They would talk among themselves and to her about how they felt, with tears in their eyes, promising to come again soon with more help. They were known as "sob sisters" by the cynics and the hangers-on of the committee I belonged to who took their money and described their activities as "sentimental orgies," of course with sexual overtones, and they jeered at "bourgeois morality." "Morality" was a word along with "charitable" and "humanitarian" and "liberal," all, at one time, in the odor of sanctity but now despoiled and rotting in the gutter where suddenly it seemed they belonged. I found myself on the side of the women; I resented the nasty things said about them by these self-appointed world reformers and I thought again, as I had more than once in Mexico, that yes, the world was a frightening enough place as it was, but think what a hell it would be if such people really got the power to do the things they planned.

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Katherine Anne Porter 43

American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist… 1890–1980

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

“I wished, by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science (1892)
1920s, Collected Essays and Reviews (1920)

“My Cherie Amour, pretty little one that I adore
You're the only girl my heart beats for
How I wish that you were mine.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

My Cherie Amour
Song lyrics

“"True love gives true love of the best:
Then take," I cried, "my heart to thee!"
The very heart from out my breast
I plucked, I gave it willingly;
Her very heart she gave to me —
Then died the glory from the west.In the gray light I saw her face,
And it was withered, old, and gray;
The flowers were fading in their place,
Were fading with the fading day.”

Lewis Carroll Three Sunsets and Other Poems

Stolen Waters (1862)
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)

“No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"Masculum et Feminam Creavit Eos," http://books.google.com/books?id=4cl5c4T9LWkC&q=%22No+matter+how+happily+a+woman+may+be+married+it+always+pleases+her+to+discover+that+there+is+a+nice+man+who+wishes+that+she+were+not%22&pg=PA337#v=onepage Ch. 30: Sententiæ http://books.google.com/books?id=VK0vR4fsaigC&q=%22No+matter+how+happily+a+woman+may+be+married+it+always+pleases+her+to+discover+that+there+is+a+nice+man+who+wishes+that+she+were+not%22&pg=PT1176#v=onepage
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Our minds sometimes see what our hearts wish were true.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

“How could I help if tears were starting?
Goodbye to tender nights beside the silv'ry sea.
I longed to hold you near and kiss you just once more,
But you were on the ship and I was on the shore.”

Jimmy Kennedy (1902–1984) Irish songwriter

Song Harbour Lights
Song lyrics

“Human beings do not wish to be modest; they want to be as expressive — that is, as immodest — as fear allows; fashion helps them solve that paradoxical problem.”

Edward Sapir (1884–1939) American linguist and anthropologist

Source: Fashion (1931), p. 140

“I wish you were here
I wish you were here
To see what I could see
To hear
And I wish you were here”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

"Stranger in a Strange Land"
Lyrics, October (1981)

“How I wish I had not expressed my theory of evolution as I have done.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Claimed http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=A668&viewtype=text&pageseq=1 by the evangelist Lady Hope; Reported in [They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions, 1989, Paul F., Jr., Boller, John, George, Oxford University Press, New York; Oxford, isbn - 978-0195064698, 88022115, [PN6081.B635 1989], 19] Darwin's daughter Henrietta refuted the claim, stating "I was present at his deathbed. Lady Hope was not present during his last illness, or any illness. I believe he never even saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier. We think the story of his conversion was fabricated in the U.S.A. The whole story has no foundation whatever."
Misattributed

“I was humiliated for them, for their apparent insensibility. But I was mistaken in my anxiety — their wish to help, to show her their concern, was real, their feelings were true and lasting, no matter how awkwardly expressed; their love and tenderness and wish to help were from the heart.”

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Katherine Anne Porter 43

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