Quotes about wish page 12
“Do unto others as they wish, but with imagination.”
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor
“It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying.”
Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects
Source: Sharp Objects
“Wish it, believe it, and it will be so.”
Deborah Smith (1955) writer of romance and women's fiction
Source: Alice at Heart
“I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist
“Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how.”
Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly
“It’s a lost art,” Hank said. “Maybe there’s an instruction manual on it.”
Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 4 (p. 56)
“Resolved, always to do that, which I shall wish I had done when I see others do it.”
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian
No. 69.
Seventy Resolutions (1722-1723)
“Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.”
Amy Tan book The Bonesetter's Daughter
Source: The Bonesetter's Daughter
“What about you?"
"Not a clue. I keep wishing I could bake a cake or something.”
Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire
Source: Catching Fire
“The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.”
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet
My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold, (1802)
The last three lines of this form the introductory lines of the long Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood begun the next day.
Context: My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
“It is easier to make our wishes conform to our means than to make our means conform to our wishes.”
Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War
Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy
Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter III, Consolation For Frustration, p. 80.
Context: Though the terrain of frustration may be vast — from a stubbed toe to an untimely death — at the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
“None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher
“I wish I knew. It might make me miss him more clearly. It might have made sad sense.”
Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“It shocks me how I wish for… what is lost and cannot come back.”
Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist
Source: Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story
“I put my hand on her knee. I just wish you'd say you love me.”
Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her
Source: This Is How You Lose Her
“Weetzie wished she could shake blue glitter around all of them - keeping them sparkling and safe.”
Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer
“I realize im black, but id like to be viewed as a person, and that is everybodys wish.”
Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman
Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist
1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918
Context: Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up until now... Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create: Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our valets: Dada; every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight: Dada; abolition of memory: Dada; abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets: Dada; abolition of the future: Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity:* Dada; elegant and unprejudiced leap from a harmony to the other sphere... Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.
“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
“Achilles’ eyes lift. They are bloodshot and dead. “I wish he had let you all die.”
Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles
Source: The Song of Achilles
Grant Morrison (1960) writer
Source: Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human
“My plans are still in embryo, a town on the edge of wishful thinking.”
Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian
Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer
Source: Smooth Talking Stranger
“Remember that yours is not the only heart that may be wishing for love.”
Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer
Source: Before Midnight: A Retelling of Cinderella
“And if wishes were horses, I’d have been run over in childhood.”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist
Source: Acheron
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica
Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
“Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.”
Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Ch. 1, p. 9.
“To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago.”
Roger Zelazny book Sign of the Unicorn
Source: Sign of the Unicorn
“That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer
“Pull the string and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)
“You know what I wish? I wish all the scum of the Earth had one throat and I had my hands about it.”
Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books
Source: Absolute Watchmen
“I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me.”
Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) Italian scholar and poet
Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer
Source: Again the Magic
Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer
Included as a quotation in The Great Quotations (1977) by George Seldes, p. 35, this appears to be a paraphrase of a summation of arguments of Bruno's speech in a debate at the College of Cambray (25 May 1588) which are not clearly presented as a direct translation of his statements:
: In an inspired speech Bruno, through the interpreter, Jean Hennequin, of Paris, declared the discovery of numberless worlds in the One Infinite Universe. Nothing was more deplorable, declared he, than the habit of blind belief, for of all other things it hinders the mind from recognizing such matters as are in themselves clear and open. It was proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people. However, he cautioned that they should not be influenced by the fervor of speech, but by the weight of his argument and the majesty of truth.
:* Coulson Turnbull in Life and Teachings of Giordano Bruno : Philosopher, Martyr, Mystic 1548 — 1600 (1913), p. 41
Disputed
“Moreover, I wish to assure you both that I did not make any amorous advances on female monkeys.”
Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles
Giulana and Magnus Bane in 1791, p. 13.
Source: The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013)
Context: "But of course you should have retreated at once from the dominant male. Are you an idiot? You are extremely lucky he was distracted from ripping out your throat by the fruit. He thought you were trying to steal his females."
"Pardon me, but we did not have the time to exchange that kind of personal information. I could not have known! Moreover, I wish to assure both of you that I did not make any amorous advances on female monkeys. [... ] I didn't actually see any, so I didn't get the chance."
“But it was too late now. A lifetime too late. A million wishes too late.”
Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer
Source: Blue-Eyed Devil
