Quotes about wish
page 11

“A charm invests a face
Imperfectly beheld,—
The lady dare not lift her veil
For fear it be dispelled.

But peers beyond her mesh,
And wishes, and denies,—
Lest interview annul a want
That image satisfies.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Fear

“Not for the first time, I wished both of us could just say what we meant. But that, like so much else, was impossible”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Time

“The doctor says there are such boys springing up amongst us—boys of a sort unknown in the last generation—the outcome of new views of life. They seem to see all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying power to resist them. He says it is the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Jude the Obscure

Life, Spring, Boy, Universe

“Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

Love, Beauty, Success, Happiness

“No, scratch the word "career." Careers are for people who wish to advance. I only want to survive, draw a paycheck.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

People, Drawing

“I love being with you. When we're not together, i wish we were”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Love

“Then why can’t I bully you into procreating? (Wulf)
See! I’m the only human in history to have Viking yenta of his very own. God, how I wish my father had been a fertile man. (Chris)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

God, History

“The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Change, Past

“The first day of the rest of my life, and I’m not sure I want to
be here. I know I should be thanking somebody for this, but I really
don’t feel like it. Instead, I wish they hadn’t bothered.”

Cecelia Ahern book Thanks for the Memories

Source: Thanks for the Memories

Life, Feeling

“Although I have been through all that I have, I do not regret the many hardships I met, because it was they who brought me to the place I wished to reach.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“A friend of mine once sent me a post card with a picture of the entire planet Earth taken from space. On the back it said, 'Wish you were here.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“He fought as he wished he had all those years ago, for the chance he had missed. In that moment between storms--when the rain stilled and the winds drew in their breaths to blow--he danced with the slayer of kings, and somehow held his own.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

Chance, Dance

“Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

“I wish I had the courage not to fight and doubt everything… I wish, just once, I could say, 'This. This is good enough. Just because I choose it.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Courage, Fight

“I said: "He cannot be so bad if he loves roses so much."
"But he is a Beast," said Father helplessly.
I saw that he was weakening, and wishing only to comfort him I said, "Cannot a Beast be tamed?”

Robin McKinley book Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

Source: Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

Love

“Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Nature

“I wish I had cancer. I will burn in hell for that, but it's true.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Hell

“Don't wish me happiness — I don't expect to be happy; it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor — I will need them all.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Letter to Corliss Lamont on her engagement (1928)
Bring Me a Unicorn (1971)
Source: Gift from the Sea

Courage, Sense, Happiness

“Closing the gate on her oldest fears as she had closed the gate of her own fenced yard, she discovered the wings she'd always wished she had.”

Natalie Babbitt book Tuck Everlasting

Source: Tuck Everlasting

Fear

“I wish- I wish I could dry these tears, I wish I could make this better for you. But I don't know how.”

Juliet Marillier book Son of the Shadows

Source: Son of the Shadows

Tear

“Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Labyrinth

Source: Labyrinth

“The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

World, History, Strong

“After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?”

Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Source: The Remains of the Day

“All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don't. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

World, Time

“I remember you saying that growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change. I guess that means I've grown up now…”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Variant: I've screwed everything up royally. I remember you saying that growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change.
Source: City of Ashes

Change

“This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Variant: And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.
Source: East of Eden (1952)
Context: And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
Context: Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

World, Freedom, Fight

“And now I wish I hadn’t been civil, because he says he shall not despair! He is as stupid as Endymion!”
“No, no!” said Alverstoke soothingly. “Nobody could be as stupid as Endymion!”

Georgette Heyer book Frederica

Source: Frederica

Stupidity, Despair

“Dad," I said hesitantly, "I wish you could be there for me even when I'm doing the wrong thing. I wish you could love me even when I'm screwing up.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

Love

“I suppose like others
I have come through fire and sword,
love gone wrong,
head-on crashes, drunk at sea,
and I have listened to the simple sound of water running
in tubs
and wished to drown”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Love, Water, Sea

“To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

God, Dreams, Sleep

“It was like having a genie. I'd only get so many wishes.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.”

Anne Brontë (1820–1849) British novelist and poet

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Volume I

Truth

“Great minds have purpose, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Philip of Pokanoket : An Indian Memoir".
A more extensive statement not found as such in this work is attributed to Irving in Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book (1923) edited by Roycroft Shop:
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)
Variant: Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it.

“I wish the rent Was heaven sent.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Source: The Collected Poems

“Living creatively is really important to maintain throughout your life. And living creatively doesn't mean only artistic creativity, although that's part of it. It means being yourself, not just complying with the wishes of other people.”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

Life, People, Parting

“Forever [is] so many different things. It is always changing… it is twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wish would last and last”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Change

“Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

God, Religion, Feeling, Idea

“I wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks. If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you're doing good. If you can find even one person you really like, you're lucky. And if that person can also stand you, you're really lucky.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

People, Jerk, Personality

“It’s my birthday, Horus insisted. Wish me happy birthday!
“Happy birthday!” I yelled. “Now shut up!”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Birthday, Happiness

“The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Books, World, Exercises, Reality

“We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.”

Michael Ondaatje The Cat's Table

Source: The Cat's Table

Heart

“How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

God

“I really
wish I had enjoyed it more.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

“One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man's judgments of value follow directly his wishes for happiness-that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments. [p.111]”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Support, Happiness

“I really wish you hadn't worn that sweater,'he muttered into her ear.
'It's good practice for you,' she replied, her lips moving against his skin.
'Tomorrow, fishnets.'
Against her side, warm and familiar, she felt him laugh.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“Opportunities and choices. When a person makes a heart wish, that wish resonates through the currents and things will happen to give the person an opportunity to make the wish come true. Like a hand offered and accepted.”

Anne Bishop book Sebastian

Source: Sebastian

Heart, Personality

“No wise man ever wished to be younger.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

Birthday

“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Feeling, Silence

“Don't get lost. Give it a try. Go find the place that you're wishing for.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

“Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Bird, Flying

“It kind of makes me wish that the worst thing that will ever happen to me would just hurry up and happen already. That way I could live the rest of my life in bliss, if only because I know how much worse things could be.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Sloppy Firsts

Life, Way

“In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Swan Thieves

Source: The Swan Thieves

Heart

“And he wishes, in the cold quiet of his archer's heart, that he himself could feel the intensity of their reconciliations as strongly as he feels that of their battles.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: Girl With Curious Hair

Feeling, Heart

“well i think its quite obvious that if you're going to rely on something to carry your wishes, you might as well know where exactly it has come from and where it intends on going”

Cecelia Ahern book If You Could See Me Now

Source: If You Could See Me Now

Thinking

“Yet she likes complications. She wishes she could turn and say: I like people who unbalance me.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

People

“Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

For Him, For Boyfriend, Love, Memory

“I wish I had an answer to that because I'm tired of answering that question.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

Question

“Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.”

Ray Bradbury book The Illustrated Man

Source: The Illustrated Man

Death

“My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Art

“When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's [children's] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Men, Children, Learning

“I think… the secret is to just settle for the shape of your life takes… Instead of you know, always waiting and wishing for whatmake you happy.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

Life, Secret, Thinking, Waiting

“Knowing that wishes don’t always come about in the way that we think, but if you believe and keep your mind open, there’s a really good chance they will manifest in some way.”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Source: Night Star

Way, Thinking, Chance

“And I do wish she wouldn't sing about poisoning just after we have eaten.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Singing

“I am anything I wish to be. The world cannot choose for me. No, it is for me to choose what the world shall be.”

Frances Hardinge (1973) British children's writer

Source: The Lost Conspiracy

World

“I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)
Source: What Then Must We Do?

“I'm not saying she was lying to me, but she just acted so different before I got to know her, and if she really isn't like what she was at the beginning, I wish she could have just said so.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Lying

“I have heard men talk about the blessings of freedom," he said to himself, "but I wish any wise man would teach me what use to make of it now that I have it.”

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Source: Ivanhoe

Men, Freedom

“I am always glad when any of my books can be put into an inexpensive edition, because I like to think that any people who might wish to read them can do so. Surely books ought to be within reach of everybody.”

Pearl S. Buck book The Good Earth

Source: The Good Earth

People, Books, Thinking, Reading

“Tell my father I wish to be his son.”

Mario Puzo (1920–1999) American Novelist

“If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't?”

Jodi Picoult Plain Truth

Source: Plain Truth

“Right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien… What is driving religious feeling today is a wish for contact with this other universe.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Feeling, Intelligence, Universe, Rage

“There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free if you truly wish to be.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

Life, Imagination

“A human’s love. I couldn’t wish anything better for him. Animals protect what they know. They protect what they are bound to, but humans…humans have a greater capacity for sacrifice for those who live in their hearts. (Aristotle)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

Love, Heart, Animals

“You & I are here but the wind is everywhere. Cast no words upon it you don’t wish followed back to you.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

“You will not find love where you wish or where you hope.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Love, Hope

“Death and what came after death was no great mystery to Sabriel. She just wished it was.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Sabriel

Death

“It's easy to become anything you wish… so long as you're willing to forfeit your soul.”

Gene Luen Yang American Born Chinese

Source: American Born Chinese

Soul

“199. For to wish to forget how much you loved someone—and then, to actually forget—can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.”

Maggie Nelson (1973) American writer

Source: Bluets

Love, Beauty, Feeling, Bird

“If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Personality

“Sometimes I wish I had a terrible childhood, so that at least I'd have an excuse.”

Jimmy Fallon (1974) American TV Personality

Childhood

“I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

Silence

“Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

Pleasure

“[He] saw that a peculiar expression had come into his nephew's face; an expression a little like that of a young hindu fakir who having settled himself on his first bed of spikes is beginning to wish that he had chosen one of the easier religions.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Religion

“She pulled the bedclothes up as far as they would go and suppressed a perverse wish to have her old nurse come to chase away the darkness, perverse because she didn't know if she wanted the shadows to be empty or not.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia

Source: The Queen of Attolia

“I swear that woman had a previous career as a death-hunter selling tragic ballads down around the Seven Dials," said Will. "And I do wish she wouldn't sing about poisoning just after we've eaten.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Death, Singing

“Fly me up to where you are beyond the distant star. I wish upon tonight to see you smile, if only for a while to know you're there. A breath away's not far to where you are.”

Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor

Smile, Star, Distant, Flying

“People long to go backward in their imagination as well as forward. We don't wish simply to exist forever in some future; we wish to have existed in some distant past.”

Gloria Whelan (1923) British children's writer

Source: Parade of Shadows

People, Imagination, Distant, Past

“Personally, I wish D. would come after me, I need a good dance partner. My Daimons have lame legs. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Night Pleasures

Source: Night Pleasures

Dance, Personality

“I would have offered you a forest of truth, but you wish to speak of a single leaf”

David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy

Source: Fall of Kings

Truth

“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 <br class="br">1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Of course I loved you, you saved my life. I wish you hadn’t I wish you hadn’t I wish you’d left me alone.”

Sarah Kane book 4.48 Psychosis

Source: 4.48 Psychosis

Love, Life