Quotes about wish

A collection of quotes on the topic of wish, doing, people, use.

Oscar Wilde quote: “When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”

Marilyn Manson quote: “When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.”

Aristotle quote: “Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.”

Quotes about wish

“No, they never expected or sensed the wishes of that omniscient narrator who, at times, wondered, accompanied by a glass of cabernet, about how his story should be constructed, how this story should develop.”

José Baroja book El curioso caso de la sombra que murió como un recuerdo y otros cuentos

Time, Sense

“In democracy, wishing bad for an incoming government is like buying a gun, buying the bullets, loading it and wishing to be killed with it: sovereign dogmatic stupidity.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: 1480 AM Rock&Pop.

Democracy, Stupidity

“I been by myself for a long time I just wish that I could know if I was on your mind Runnin' out of time I just wish that I could know if you were by my side On the day I die, would you even cry?”

Lil Peep (1996–2017) American rapper

Song About U

Time, Cry

“I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness.”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

As quoted in Chopin.
Variant translation: I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness. And yet I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.
Variant: I wish I could throw off the thoughts that poison my happiness, and yet I love to indulge in them;
Source: Chopin's Letters

Happiness

“I am not gay, although I wish I were, just to piss off homophobes.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

“Following the enormous conjecture in the press over the last two weeks, I wish to confirm that I have been tested HIV positive and have AIDS. I felt it correct to keep this information private to date to protect the privacy of those around me. However, the time has come now for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth and I hope that everyone will join with my doctors and all those worldwide in the fight against this terrible disease. My privacy has always been very special to me and I am famous for my lack of interviews. Please understand this policy will continue.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

Statement to the press (23 November 1991), the day before his death, as quoted at The Biography Channel http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_story/338:294/1/Freddie_Mercury.htm.

Truth, World, Disease, Hope

“I wish they would take me as I am.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

“Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in… A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Source: Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals

Justice, Sense

“I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics ever since.”

Robert Downey Jr. (1965) American actor

Quoted in David Carr, "Been Up, Been Down. Now? Super." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/movies/20carr.html?_r=4&pagewanted=2&8dpc&oref=slogin&, New York Times (2008-04-20)

Education, Understanding, Night

“Satanism condones any type of sexual activity which properly satisfies your individual desires – be it heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or even asexual, if you choose. Satanism also sanctions any fetish or deviation which will enhance your sex-life, so long as it involves no one who does not wish to be involved.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Life, Sex

“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Variant: Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, and others make it happen.

Motivational, For Team, Attitude, Success

“I wish we were all hippies and did yoga, lived in cottages, smoked weed, accepted everyone for who they are, and listened to wonderful music. I wish money didn't make us who we are. I just wish we could redo society.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Money, Music

“Do not be afraid of your difficulties. Do not wish you could be in other circumstances than you are. For when you have made the best of an adversity, it becomes the stepping stone to a splendid opportunity.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer

“The killing was a means to an end. That was the least satisfactory part. I didn't enjoy doing that. That's why I tried to create living zombies with uric acid in the drill [to the head], but it never worked. No, the killing was not the objective. I just wanted to have the person under my complete control, not having to consider their wishes, being able to keep them there as long as I wanted.”

Jeffrey Dahmer (1960–1994) American serial killer, cannibal and necrophile

In an interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC (29 November 1994)

Parting, Personality

“It is, therefore, upon you as the programmer of your life, to pay more attention if you truly wish to succeed at the end of your journey.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life

“Life is suffering, and suffering can make you resentful, murderous, and then genocidal, if you take it far enough. So you need an antidote to suffering. And maybe you think that you can build walls of luxury around yourself, and that that will protect you from the suffering. Good luck with that. That isn't going to work. Maybe you think that you could build a delusion and live inside that. Well, that's going to fall apart. What is there, then, that's going to help you fight against suffering? That's easy: It's the Truth. The Truth is the antidote to suffering. The reason for that is because the Truth puts reality behind you, so that you can face the reality that's coming straight at you without becoming weak and degenerating and becoming resentful and wishing for the destruction of Being, because that's the final Hell. The final Hell is your soul wishing for the destruction of everything, because it's too painful, and you're too bitter. And that happens to people all the time.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Life, Pain, People, Truth

“It would be impossible for any individual to accept the feelings, or emotions of temptation without wishing to gain something great in return.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Feeling

“I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.”

Jerome David Salinger book Franny and Zooey

Source: Franny and Zooey

People, God

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Selfishness

“Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for, but never seen.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Soul

“I wish I had no heart, it aches so…”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Heart

“Should you seek might, power, false honor, excess — seek that we would work for you to provide your temporal advantages — we will bring you as close to the throne as you wish, and then turn you over to the consequences of your folly, but our inner sanctuary remains closed to such. But should you want to learn wisdom — want to learn to make mankind more clever, better, free and happy — then be thrice welcomed by us.”

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati

Die neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten-Orden (1794) pp. 9-10.

Wisdom, Learning, Falseness, Happiness

“Crazy. Karma is a bitch. Gets you every time. It's not good to wish bad on anybody. God sees everything!”

LeBron James (1984) American basketball player

LeBron James sees 'karma' in Cavs rout, Steve Ginsburg, ESPN, January 12, 2011 http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/truehoop/miamiheat/news/story?id=6014004, <br class="br">James on Twitter after the Cleveland Cavaliers lost 112–57 to the Los Angeles Lakers.

God, Time, Bitch

“Truly, I wish I were dead.
She was weeping when she left me,
and said many things to me, and said this:
"How much we have suffered, Sappho.
Truly, I don't want to leave you."”

Sappho (-630–-570 BC) ancient Greek lyric poet

Stanley Lombardo translations, Frag. 11

Suffering, Dead

“People are strange, they neither wish to live nor die.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

“Everyone want to define love, but no one wish to practice it.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love

“Therefore, you must accept a gift only from those whom you wish to make as your masters.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The planet is ruled under different calendars, according to the country and religion in which you wish to practice.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Religion, Country

“Where ever I am I always find myself looking out the window wishing I was somewhere else.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

“There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Life

“My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed. I wish to God that I were more intelligent and everything would finally become clear to me - or else that I needn’t live much longer.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore

God, Intelligence

“Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

People, Books

“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Faith, Relationship, Love, Faith

“I am I, and I wish I weren't.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

“I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don't think there is anything such as complete happiness. It pains me that there is still a lot of Klan activity and racism. I think when you say you're happy, you have everything that you need and everything that you want, and nothing more to wish for. I haven't reached that stage yet.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Quoted in "Standing Up for Freedom," Academy of Achievement.org (2005-10-31)

Life, Pain, Hope, Optimism

“Sriman Narayana is the Lord of the universe, and the creation, destruction, sustainanance, control, etc., are according to his wish. He is the one called Brahma in the vedas and HE is full of knowledge, bliss, and power”

Madhvacharya (1199–1278) Hindu philosopher who founded Dvaita Vedanta school

strength
Ya, Hindu Online

Knowledge, Universe

“Do you think I wish to hang Taher? Well, I don’t. But the Law of the Land should carry its Course. And he (Colonel Abu Taher) did not send any Mercy Petition and so what is there for me to do?”

Ziaur Rahman (1936–1981) President of Bangladesh

During a conversation with Mir Shawkat Ali Khan on the night of Colonel Abu Taher's execution.

Law, Thinking

“The more a believer wishes to live the absolute call of God, the more essential it is to do so in the heart of human distress.”

Brother Roger (1915–2005) Swiss monk

The Sources of Taizé (2000), p. 79

God, Heart

“So far as I can see, all political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"London Letter" (December 1944), in Partisan Review (Winter 1945)

People, Way, Thinking, Past

“I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1st. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear, remain on your throne and govern, and you, Russian Tsar, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no noblers in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigory has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death then no one of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people…I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family.”

Grigori Rasputin (1869–1916) Russian mystic

Grigory Rasputin in a letter to the Tsarina Alexandra, 7 Dec 1916

Life, Death, Hate, Children

“I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith, I long not to live.”

Thomas More (1478–1535) English Renaissance humanist

Thomas More's Account, in a letter to his daughter Margaret Roper, of his Second Interrogation

Faith, Thinking

“Hello everybody! Hey hey hey! Okay! Do you know it's not... it's not very often that we do shows in daylight. And I fucking wish we'd done before, I can see you all now. And there's some beauties here tonight, I can tell you!”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

Live at Milton Keynes Bowl (5 June 1982) http://www.ultimatequeen.co.uk/Songs/queenonfire.htm.

Beauty

“Since no one wishes to become a weakling in the first place, it would make sense to turn to self-defence.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Sense

“Anyone who wishes to be proud must be proud only in your gender that you were born with without transgressing the gender of others.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“It is almost impossible to command without being an exemplar and to lead without helping those whom you wish to take into your laps.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Help

“Whether you are in a toxic relationship, or you wish to make that ‘final decision’ which will change your life, you must not, at any cost, allow the time to pass while sitting idle.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Time, Decision, Life, Change

“I wish it were as easy to buy time as it is to buy good books.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Time, Books

“In India, people burn themselves when the soul leaves the body, at the same time they wish to reincarnate into something else while destroying the body part.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Soul, Time, People, Parting

“Self-interest must be sacrificed if you wish to keep your marriage alive, or to keep your significant one attracted to your attributes.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Marriage

“When I'm away from you
I'm happier than ever
Wish I could explain it better
I wish it wasn't true.
Give me a day or two
To think of something clever
To write myself a letter
To tell me what to do.”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

Source: "Happier Than Ever" · Official video at YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GJWxDKyk3A · Performance on Saturday Night Live (12 December 2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPfW6mGx1SA

Thinking

“Call on Me…
Call on Me..
Call on Me.

I am the Lover you dreamt about in your Angel filled Dreams.

I have sat awaiting your love for an eternity.

Please do not shun Me for I shall die.

My entire existance is the pure essence of You, My dear.

How you have entrapped Me like a Siren.

If I had known what I know now..

If only I had known what I know now.

I do not wish to exhibit My Undying Love for You, My dear.

However it is completely Transparent.

Awaken

and see me.

I am your Destiny.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Lovers, Dreams, Angels, Love

“Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled and observe the route that your attention follows.”

Neville Goddard (1905–1972) American author and lecturer

Source: The Power of Awareness

Feeling

“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

People, Fear, Hope, Thinking

“When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

God

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?'

'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.'

'The dog did nothing in the night-time.'

'That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventure of Silver Blaze

Source: Silver Blaze

Dogs, Time, Drawing, Night

“Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Love, Hate, Dreams

“You can't make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they will make you wish you hadn't made them wish they had.”

Marshall B. Rosenberg (1934–2015) American psychologist

“I am not what I ought to be — ah, how imperfect and deficient! I am not what I wish to be — I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good! I am not what I hope to be — soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, "By the grace of God I am what I am."”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

As quoted in The Christian Pioneer (1856) edited by Joseph Foulkes Winks, p. 84. Also in The Christian Spectator, vol. 3 (1821), p. 186 http://books.google.com/books?id=mv4oAAAAYAAJ&dq=ah%2C%20how%20imperfect%20and%20deficient!%20I%20am%20not%20what%20I%20wish%20to%20be&pg=PA186#v=onepage&q=ah,%20how%20imperfect%20and%20deficient!%20I%20am%20not%20what%20I%20wish%20to%20be&f=false <br class="br">Often paraphrased as I am not the man I ought to be, I am not the man I wish to be, and I am not the man I hope to be, but by the grace of God, I am not the man I used to be."'

God, Hope, Evil

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d”

Alexander Pope Eloisa to Abelard

Source: Eloisa to Abelard

World, Forgetting, Happiness

“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”

Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ

Book I, ch. 16.
Source: The Imitation of Christ (c. 1418)

“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Death

“I wish to go on living even after my death.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Death

“When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Dreams

“Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Reality

“And you wish to be a poet; and you wish to be a lover.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Lovers

“I'm nothing,
I'll always be nothing.
I can't even wish to be something.
Aside from that, I've got all the world's dreams inside me.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Não sou nada.
Nunca serei nada.
Não posso querer ser nada.
À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.
Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), Tabacaria ["The Tobacconist's" or "The Tobacco Shop"] (15 January 1928)
Variant translations:
I am nothing.
Never shall be anything.
Cannot will to be anything.
This apart, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
trans. Jonathan Griffin, in Selected Poems (Penguin Books, 1974), p. 111
I am not nothing.
I will never be nothing.
I cannot ever want to be nothing.
Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
In Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005), p. 649
I am nothing.
I shall never be anything.
I cannot even wish to be anything.
Apart from this, I have within me all the dreams of the world.
Variant: I am nothing.
I will never be anything.
I cannot wish to be anything.
Bar that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.

World, Dreams

“I wish more of us could understand that our increasing isolation, no matter how much it seems to express pride and self-affirmation, is not the answer to our problems. Rather, the answer is a revival of our ancient commitment to God, who rules over all the peoples of the world and exalts no one over any other, and to the moral and spiritual values which were once legendary in America. We must reach out our hand in friendship both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy. We must believe in the power of education. We must respect just laws. We must love ourselves, our old and our young, our women as well as our men.
I see nothing inconsistent between being proud of oneself and one's ancestors and, at the same time, seeing oneself first and foremost a member of the commonwealth of all races and creeds.”

Arthur Ashe (1943–1993) American tennis player

Source: Days of Grace: A Memoir (1994), p. 186

Love, Women, Men, God

“If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors, Both Ancient and Modern (1891) edited by Tryon Edwards.

People, Happiness

“Sometimes I wish I wasn't as conscious as I am. It would be so much easier.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Premier (1988)

“I wish to establish some sort of system not guided by chance but by some sort of definite and exact principle.”

Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907) Russian chemist and inventor

An Outline of the System of the Elements

Chance

“I wish sometimes that I had twenty bodies, that at twenty places at once I might publish the saving name of Jesus.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Two: Over the Treaty Wall. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1982, 362).

“Because I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other and different desires. Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary, that eagles should be crows.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

Quoted in Vine Deloria, God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden, Colo: Fulcrum Pub, 2003, cited to Virginia Armstrong, I have spoken; American history through the voices of the Indians. Chicago, Sage Books, 1971.

Heart

“Where the heart is full of kindness which seeks no injury to another, either in act or thought or wish, this full love creates an atmosphere of harmony, whose benign power touches with healing all who come within its influence. Peace in the heart radiates peace to other hearts, even more surely than contention breeds contention.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

Translation by: Charles Johnston
Yoga Sutras of Patañjali

Love, Peace, Heart

“Anyone who wishes to stay in Bangladesh will have to talk to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.”

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975) Bengali revolutionary, founder ("father") of Bangladesh

Shouting out aloud during proceedings of the Agartala conspiracy trial. It was in response to a journalist, to whom he was whispering, who told him that it was inappropriate to talk under the watch of undercover officers. http://www.thedailystar.net/magazine/2008/08/04/chintito.htm <br class="br">Quote, Other

“I hope life treats you kind
And I hope you have all you've dreamed of.
And I wish to you, joy and happiness.
But above all this, I wish you love.”

Dolly Parton (1946) American singer-songwriter and actress

I Will Always Love You from the album Jolene
Song lyrics

Love, Life, Dreams, Hope

“The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact. Wish is a force as applied to thinking beings, to realize something. A fulfilled wish is a union of wish and fact. The meaning of the whole world is the separation and the union of fact and wish.”

Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) logician, mathematician, and philosopher of mathematics

As quoted in The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us (MIT Press) 2013 by Yanofsky, Noson S

World, Thinking

“I wish them all an atrocious life and then the fires and ice of hell and in the execrable generations to come an honoured name.”

Samuel Beckett book Malone Dies

Malone Dies (1951)
Context: Let me say before I go any further that I forgive nobody. I wish them all an atrocious life and then the fires and ice of hell and in the execrable generations to come an honoured name.

Life, Hell