Quotes about wish (3789 quotes, page 25)

“On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of Mahomet's is a kind of Christianity; has a genuine element of what is spiritually highest looking through it, not to be hidden by all its imperfections. The Scandinavian God Wish, the god of all rude men, — this has been enlarged into a Heaven by Mahomet; but a Heaven symbolical of sacred Duty, and to be earned by faith and well-doing, by valiant action, and a divine patience which is still more valiant. It is Scandinavian Paganism, and a truly celestial element superadded to that. Call it not false; look not at the falsehood of it, look at the truth of it. For these twelve centuries, it has been the religion and life-guidance of the fifth part of the whole kindred of Mankind. Above all things, it has been a religion heartily believed. These Arabs believe their religion, and try to live by it! No Christians, since the early ages, or only perhaps the English Puritans in modern times, have ever stood by their Faith as the Moslem do by theirs, — believing it wholly, fronting Time with it, and Eternity with it.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Life , Men , God , Truth

“what can only be termed, a self-imposed European death wish.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Europa, Eurabia and the Last man

Death

“I've never been one for late nights, which is why I have always preferred making films to theatre. A play takes over your life: you start to feel sick at lunchtime and by mid-afternoon you're wishing for a bomb scare so the whole thing will be called off. Of course, if the evening goes well and you get the applause then it's wonderful. We're a strange bunch, we actors.”

Charles Dance

Charles Dance's diary http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/esmagazine/charles-dances-diary-6407964.html (June 3, 2011)

Life , Feeling , Night

“In order to try to remove what we are going to say from what risks happening, if we judge by the many signs, to Marx's work today, which is to say also to his injunction. What risks happening is that one will try to play Marx off against Marxism so as to neutralize, or at any rate muffle the political imperative in the untroubled exegesis of a classified work. One can sense a coming fashion or stylishness in this regard in the culture and more precisely in the university. And what is there to worry about here? Why fear what may also become a cushioning operation? This recent stereotype would be destined, whether one wishes it or not, to depoliticize profoundly the Marxist reference, to do its best, by putting on a tolerant face, to neutralize a potential force, first of all by enervating a corpus, by silencing in it the revolt [the return is acceptable provided that the revolt, which initially inspired uprising, indignation, insurrection, revolutionary momentum, does not come back]. People would be ready to accept the return of Marx or the return to Marx, on the condition that a silence is maintained about Marx's injunction not just to decipher but to act and to make the deciphering [the interpretation] into a transformation that "changes the world. In the name of an old concept of reading, such an ongoing neutralization would attempt to conjure away a danger: now that Marx is dead, and especially now that Marxism seems to be in rapid decomposition, some people seem to say, we are going to be able to concern ourselves with Marx without being bothered-by the Marxists and, why not, by Marx himself, that is, by a ghost that goes on speaking. We'll treat him calmly, objectively, without bias: according to the academic rules, in the University, in the library, in colloquia! We'll do it systematically, by respecting the norms of hermeneutical, philological, philosophical exegesis. If one listens closely, one already hears whispered: "Marx, you see, was despite everything a philosopher like any other; what is more [and one can say this now that so many Marxists have fallen silent], he was a great-philosopher who deserves to figure on the list of those works we assign for study and from which he has been banned for too long.29 He doesn't belong to the communists, to the Marxists, to the parties-, he ought to figure within our great canon of Western political philosophy. Return to Marx, let's finally read him as a great philosopher."”

Jacques Derrida book Specters of Marx

We have heard this and we will hear it again.
Injunctions of Marx
Specters of Marx (1993)

People , World , Fear , Fashion

“Although I wish the anarchists luck, since that’s the way we ought to be moving now. But I believe we need government to enforce the rules of the game. By prosecuting anti-trust violations, for instance. We need a government to maintain a system of courts that will uphold contracts and rule on compensation for damages. We need a government to ensure the safety of its citizens–to provide police protection. But government is failing at a lot of these things that it ought to be doing because it’s involved in so many things it shouldn’t be doing.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

A 1973 Interview with Milton Friedman – Playboy Magazine
“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)

Way , Game

“I definitely think this is the best time to be in the industry. Earlier, films were made on a set pattern- love story, family drama, one is rich and other is poor type formulas. But today there are different kinds of films being made and accepted by the audience. I wish I was there in the industry today…I wish I was born in today's time.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Waheeda Rehman not in favour of biopics and remakes

Love , Family , Thinking , Time

“Touching the secrets of the heart and the successions of time, doth make a just and sound difference between the manner of the exposition of the Scriptures and all other books. For it is an excellent observation which hath been made upon the answers of our Saviour Christ to many of the questions which were propounded to Him, how that they are impertinent to the state of the question demanded: the reason whereof is, because not being like man, which knows man’s thoughts by his words, but knowing man’s thoughts immediately, He never answered their words, but their thoughts. Much in the like manner it is with the Scriptures, which being written to the thoughts of men, and to the succession of all ages, with a foresight of all heresies, contradictions, differing estates of the Church, yea, and particularly of the elect, are not to be interpreted only according to the latitude of the proper sense of the place, and respectively towards that present occasion whereupon the words were uttered, or in precise congruity or contexture with the words before or after, or in contemplation of the principal scope of the place; but have in themselves, not only totally or collectively, but distributively in clauses and words, infinite springs and streams of doctrine to water the Church in every part. And therefore as the literal sense is, as it were, the main stream or river, so the moral sense chiefly, and sometimes the allegorical or typical, are they whereof the Church hath most use; not that I wish men to be bold in allegories, or indulgent or light in allusions: but that I do much condemn that interpretation of the Scripture which is only after the manner as men use to interpret a profane book.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

XXV. (17)
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Men , Secret , Books , Age

“Since God could have created a freedom in which there could be no evil (i. e., a state when men were happy and free and certain not to sin), it follows that He wished evil to exist. But evil offends Him. A commonplace case of masochism.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Men , God , Freedom , Evil

“I know when I was a kid, I used to look at these pictures and listen to the songs of the Gay Nineties, and I used to say to my mother, 'Oh, I wish I had lived then; it was so gay and so wonderful.' […] Now [the Jazz Age] seems very mysterious and wonderful to you, kids, and when you have kids, they'll say, 'Gee, Dad, those 50's, they were something.' […] I really think it goes in cycles. When your kids come in and say 'Gee, Dad, I wish we had done that,' and so on and so forth, it's the same thing. I don't think it's changed a great deal.”

Helen Kane (1904–1966) American actress

1959 interview. https://archive.org/details/HelenKaneInterview

Age , Thinking , Change

“I wish to also point out that Dr Ambedkar, the pioneering Dalit leader, had worked zealously to promote Sanskrit. A dispatch of the Press Trust of India dated 10 September 1949 states that he was among those who sponsored an amendment making Sanskrit, instead of Hindi, the official language of the Indian Union.”

Rajiv Malhotra book The Battle for Sanskrit

The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)

“Every pitifulest whipster that walks within a skin has had his head filled with the notion that he is, shall be, or by all human and divine laws ought to be, 'happy.' His wishes, the pitifulest whipster's, are to be fulfilled for him; his days, the pitifulest whipster's, are to flow on in an ever-gentle current of enjoyment, impossible even for the gods. The prophets preach to us, Thou shalt be happy; thou shalt love pleasant things, and find them. The people clamor, Why have we not found pleasant things?… God's Laws are become a Greatest Happiness Principle. There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Bk. III, ch. 4.
1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Love , God , People , Religion

“As we made the high point off San Diego, Point Loma, we were greeted by the cheering presence of a lighthouse. As we swept round it in the early morning, there, before us, lay the little harbor of San Diego, its low spit of sand, where the water runs so deep; the opposite flats, where the Alert grounded in starting for home; the low hills, without trees, and almost without brush; the quiet little beach; but the chief objects, the hide houses, my eye looked for in vain. They were gone, all, and left no mark behind. I wished to be alone, so I let the other passengers go up to the town, and was quietly pulled ashore in a boat, and left to myself. The recollections and the emotions were all sad… and only sad.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815–1882) United States author and lawyer

Twenty-Four Years After (1869)

Sadness , Home , Tree , Water

“I wish I had the answer to that, because if I knew how to create an instantly popular character like that, I would do more of them. It’s weird to me because, on one hand, she’s appealing, but you look at her and she’s not exactly a good role model for girls. And in the past, we have definitely explored some of the darker edges of her story. She was kind of in an on-going abusive relationship with the Joker. So it is weird but maybe a lot of her appeal, at least recently, is because they have separated her from the Joker in comics. She’s become her own standalone character and definitely not in an abusive relationship with the Joker anymore. I guess that is somewhat empowering and people can relate to it. But truthfully, she was a really, really popular character even before all this. I think part of it is probably, to pat my own back, design. She was a really simple basic character in red and black, cute face, cute figure, one and done. So that definitely has to be a part of it.”

Bruce Timm (1961) Animator

People , Girl , Thinking , Past

“We wish to recall here the spirit of tolerance shown by Our Lord Jesus Christ when He gave forgiveness to all including those that crucified Him.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Address to the World Evangelical Congress in Berlin (28 October 1966)

Forgiveness , Christ

“The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

See the Positive Atheism http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/jeffphony.htm site on the extreme unlikelihood of this quote being authentic. It actually contains some known phrases of Jefferson's, but they are compounded with almost certainly false statements into a highly misrepresentative whole. Jefferson's own opinions on Jesus, God, Christianity and general opinions about them were far more complex than is indicated in this statement.
Misattributed

God , People , Fools , Rage

“Peace is the wish of the French of Italy Spain Germany and all the world, and Great Britain alone the cause of preventing its accomplishment, and this not for any point of honour or even interest, but merely lest there should be an example in the modern world of a great powerful Republic.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Letter to Lord Holland (7 August 1795), quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (London: Penguin, 1997), pp. 161-162.
1790s

World , Peace

“I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.”

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

27 June 1839
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

Freedom

“The city was breaking state and national laws every day—it had to—and the governor was outraged. He wanted to bring the whole state back under his own authority. It wasn’t an unreasonable wish, but the times weren’t ripe; and when they eventually were, the old forms of government would be no more important than the difference between Homoousian and Homoiousian. But it was going to take a lot of argument to convince the Albany man of that.”

Poul Anderson book Brain Wave

Source: Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 9 (p. 76)

Law , Time

“My object in supporting this Motion is, that I may bring to bear upon the legislation of this House those virtues and that talent which have characterised the middle and industrious classes of this country. If you talk of your aristocracy and your traditions, and compel me to talk of the middle and industrious classes, I say it is to them that the glory of this country is owing. You have had your government of aristocracy and tradition; and the worst thing in this country has been its government for the last century and a half. All that has been done to elevate the country has been the work of the middle and industrious classes. Whether in literature, in arts, in science, in commerce, or in enterprise—all has been done by the middle and industrious classes; and it is because I wish to bring their virtue, intelligence, industry, and frugality, to bear upon the proceedings of this House, that I support the Motion of the hon. Member for Montrose.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/jul/06/national-representation-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (6 July 1848) in favour of a Reform Bill that would have extended the vote to middle class men.
1840s

Art , Intelligence , Literature , Support

“We tell our children things which we know are not so, but which we wish were so.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Children

“Anti-Islamist Muslims - who wish to live modern lives, unencumbered by burqas, fatwas and violent visions of jihad - are on the defensive and atomized. However eloquent, their individual voices cannot compete with the roar of militant Islam's determination, money (much of it from overseas) and violence. As a result, militant Islam, with its West-phobia and goal of world hegemony, dominates Islam in the West and appears to many to be the only kind of Islam.”

Daniel Pipes (1949) U.S. neoconservative columnist, author, counter-terrorism analyst, and scholar of Middle Eastern history

Voices of Islam, New York Post, September 23, 2003.

Money , World , Appearance

“I wish to hearby announce that Wikipedia represents the highest, greatest, achievements of human life to date. I shall henceforth replace the phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread" with the phrase "the greatest thing since Wikipedia." That is so long as what it posts about me is accurate or at least inaccurately extremely flattering.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

( June 16, 2005 http://web.archive.org/web/20050617/corner.nationalreview.com/05_06_12_corner-archive.asp#066356)
2000s, 2005

Life

“I wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to these Palestinian and Israeli leaders. In particular, we pay homage to the memory of Yitshak Rabin who paid the supreme sacrifice in pursuit of peace.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, The International Day Of Solidarity With The Palestinian People (1997)

Peace , Memory

“I venture on assuring you that I regard the design formed by you and your friends with sincere interest, and in particular wish well to all the efforts you may make on behalf of individual freedom and independence as opposed to what is termed Collectivism.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to F. W. Hirst on being unable to write a preface to Essays in Liberalism by "Six Oxford Men" (2 January 1897), as quoted In the Golden Days (1947) by F. W. Hirst, p. 158
1890s

Effort , Freedom , Sincerity

“Do you hate me so much?” “no, I can’t hate you. I wish I could, but I can’t””

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

Devoted

Hate

“And with respect to the mode in which these general principles affect the secure possession of property, so far am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension in its range; and whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.”

John Ruskin book Unto This Last

Essay III: "Qui Judicatis Terram," section 54.
Unto This Last (1860)

“Fitz-Roy's temper was a most unfortunate one. It was usually worst in the early morning, and with his eagle eye he could generally detect something amiss about the ship, and was then unsparing in his blame. He was very kind to me, but was a man very difficult to live with on the intimate terms which necessarily followed from our messing by ourselves in the same cabin. We had several quarrels; for instance, early in the voyage at Bahia, in Brazil, he defended and praised slavery, which I abominated, and told me that he had just visited a great slave-owner, who had called up many of his slaves and asked them whether they were happy, and whether they wished to be free, and all answered "No." I then asked him, perhaps with a sneer, whether he thought that the answer of slaves in the presence of their master was worth anything? This made him excessively angry, and he said that as I doubted his word we could not live any longer together. I thought that I should have been compelled to leave the ship; but as soon as the news spread, which it did quickly, as the captain sent for the first lieutenant to assuage his anger by abusing me, I was deeply gratified by receiving an invitation from all the gun-room officers to mess with them. But after a few hours Fitz-Roy showed his usual magnanimity by sending an officer to me with an apology and a request that I would continue to live with him.”

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

volume I, chapter II: "Autobiography", pages 60-61 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=78&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

Anger , Happiness

“My work has nothing to do with people, nothing to do with psychology. I am much more cerebral than Willink. I do not wish to be deep at all. I know that I don't hide anything at all in this work. When Carel Willink paints a naked lady in a street, I think: what is that lady doing there?... the house facades give me a lugubrious impression. So it is a lugubrious street. My work is not lugubrious. If you ask Willink: 'Why are those naked mistresses there', you do not receive an answer. With me you always get an answer when you ask: why..”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van M.C. Escher, in het Nederlands): Mijn werk heeft niets met de mens, niets met psychologie te maken. Ik ben veel cerebraler dan Willink. Ik wens helemaal niet diep te zijn. Ik weet dat ik in dit werk niets verberg. Als Carel Willink een naakte juffrouw in een straat schildert, denk ik: wat heeft die juffrouw daar te maken?.. ..de gevels maken op mij de indruk van iets lugubers. Het is dus een lugubere straat. Mijn werk is niet luguber. Als je Willink vraagt: waarom zijn die naakte juffrouwen daar, krijg je geen antwoord. Bij mij krijg je altijd antwoord als je vraagt: waarom..
1960's, M.C. Escher, interviewed by Bibeb', 1968

People , Thinking , Painting , Housing

“I wish sometimes that I just didn't have to think about any of this, and could drone away my life. It would be easier.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary

Life , Thinking

“Surely no one stops to think where the great world experiment was leading. Frankly, no one could know. We're only learning now. It would be a sorry day for this republic if we allowed our activities in seeking for peace in the Old World to blind us to the essentials of peace at home. We want a free America again. We want America free at home, and free in the world. We want to silence the outcry of nation against nation, in the fullness of understanding, and we wish to silence the cry of class against class, and stifle the party appeal to class, so that we may ensure tranquility in our own freedom. If I could choose but one, I had rather have industrial and social peace at home, than command the international peace of all the world.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

1920s, Nationalism and Americanism (1920)

World , Peace , Home , Understanding

“I do not wish to command so much as to persuade. I wish to induce people to see themselves as others see them, to regard what they are doing in reference to its far-off effects on the consciences of others, to cultivate a truer sense of proportion of things, to deal more with ideas than with the clothing of ideas; to pay more attention to the reason of a thing than to its antiquity; to remember that the chief danger that besets those who are pursuing a high object is to confuse means with ends; to examine themselves very fully, lest they confuse Christian zeal with the desire to have their own way.”

Mandell Creighton (1843–1901) English historian and ecclesiastic

Lecture at the Diocesan Conference (April 1899)

People , Way , Idea , Sense

“I would love to talk to you about that, Josh, but there's something else I want to bring up, and that's this. (Holds up a screenplay entitled "Live For The Moment: The Jeff Hardy Story") I had a friend in a fancy Hollywood agency the other day, and he ran across this little gem. Somebody actually took the time to write a screenplay about the Jeff Hardy story. So I was paging through it, and lo and behold, it culminates, of course, with Jeff conquering his demons and beating me her tonight in a TLC match at SummerSlam. What a great feelgood story, Josh, all except, of course, for the ending, which is not reality-based. It's fake, it's phony, just like everybody who lives in this town. I'd go as far as to say that I'm the only real person in this building right now. I wish I could say it's a Los Angeles epidemic, but the fact is it's worldwide. You have people that falsely idolize what they see in movies and on television; you have housewives in Iowa that subscribe to U. S. Weekly, US Weekly, or whatever it's called, so they can model their hair after Kate Gosselin, instead of helping their own children with their homework; you have little kids all over the world, millions of them, who idolize the "hip, cool star", and it doesn't matter if that hip cool star is some dork vampire in Twilight, or if it's Jeff Hardy. It doesn't matter if that hip cool star has a reprehensible, reckless lifestyle. You know, it doesn't matter if the collective intelligence of this entire country continues to spiral downward, day in and day out. It doesn't matter as long as it's cool, right? You know why they don't make movies about a guy like me? It's cause I don't support your poisoned society. I don't support this den of iniquity known as Hollywood. No, instead, I'm dismissed as being preachy, except I'm not preachy—I never have been. I just tell the truth. You know, I'm not a screenwriter either, but tonight I think I'll take a stab at it. Tonight I'm gonna rewrite the ending of "The Jeff Hardy Story."”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

It's gonna be horrifying. It's gonna be very, very graphic. It might be hard to watch for a lot of people, but it will have a happy ending: new World Heavyweight Champion—CM Punk.
At SummerSlam
Friday Night SmackDown

Love , Children , People , Truth

“Of which liberalism does one wish to speak? I distinguish two principal forms of liberalism. For one…liberty is a right; for the other a duty. For one it is a gift; for the other a conquest… One liberalism conceives liberty rooted in the individual, and therefore opposes the individual to the State, a State understood as possessing no intrinsic value—but exclusively serving the well being and the improvement of the individual. The State is seen as a means, not an end. It limits itself to the maintenance of public order, excluding itself from the entirety of spiritual life—which, therefore, remains exclusively a sphere restricted to the individual conscience. That liberalism, historically, is classical liberalism—of English manufacture. It is, we must recognize, a false liberalism, containing only half the truth. It was opposed among us by Mazzini with a criticism, that I maintain, is immortal. But there is another liberalism, that matured in Italian and German thought, that holds entirely absurd this view of the antagonism between the State and the individual.”

Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944) Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher and politician

Che cosa è il fascismo: Discorsi e polemiche (“What is Fascism?”), Florence: Vallecchi, (1925) pp. 42-45, 47-48, 49-51, 56,Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, A. James Gregor, translator and editor, Transaction Publishers, 2003, p. 63

Life , Truth , Falseness

“"You must go home eventually."
"I would throw myself off a precipice first, except that I would land in the arms of the gods, Whom I do not wish to see again."”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 61

God , Home

“I don't like the death penalty, although if there is one case where there should be an execution, the fairest case would be for Saddam. But I would never wish for that.”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

press After a cabinet meeting in Tehran http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/iranian-president-mohammad-khatami-speaks-to-the-press-news-photo/2816904 (18 December 2003)
Attributed

Death , Penalty

“Sometimes the obvious is only wishful thinking.”

Michael Flynn book Eifelheim

Source: Eifelheim (2006), Chapter 9 (p. 460)

Thinking

“It is not true that on an exchange of commodities we give value for value. On the contrary, each of the two contracting parties in every case, gives a less for a greater value. … If we really exchanged equal values, neither party could make a profit. And yet, they both gain, or ought to gain. Why? The value of a thing consists solely in its relation to our wants. What is more to the one is less to the other, and vice versa. … It is not to be assumed that we offer for sale articles required for our own consumption. … We wish to part with a useless thing, in order to get one that we need; we want to give less for more. … It was natural to think that, in an exchange, value was given for value, whenever each of the articles exchanged was of equal value with the same quantity of gold. … But there is another point to be considered in our calculation. The question is, whether we both exchange something superfluous for something necessary.”

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–1780) French academic

Le Commerce et le Gouvernement (1776), as quoted in Marx's Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 5.

Question , Nature , Thinking , Parting

“A man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Variant: A man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good.
Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 15; translated by W. K. Marriot

Evil

“There is not a man or woman, who violates the covenants made with their God, that will not be required to pay the debt. The blood of Christ will never wipe that out, your own blood must atone for it; and the judgments of the Almighty will come, sooner or later, and every man and woman will have to atone for breaking their covenants. To what degree? Will they have to go to hell? They are in hell enough now. I do not wish them in a greater hell, when their consciences condemn them all the time. Let compassion reign in our bosoms. Try to comprehend how weak we are, how we are organized, how the spirit and the flesh are continually at war.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 3:247 (March 16, 1856)
1850s

God , War , Hell , Time

“Alongside of the rare cases of true conversation where there is a genuine interchange of opinions or commands, one can observe in children between 2 and 6 a characteristic type of pseudo-conversation or "collective monologue", during which the children speak only for themselves, although they wish to be in the presence of interlocutors who will serve as a stimulus. Now here again, each feels himself to be in communion with the group because he is inwardly addressing the Adult who knows and understands everything, but here again, each is only concerned with himself, for lack of having dissociated the "ego" from the "socius."”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game

Children , Feeling , Understanding

“I wish to acquaint you with some of the occurrences of the present past and future.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Jerilderie Letter (1879)

Past , Future

“I believe anyone who supports feminism is anti-woman even if they are not conscious of it. Feminism and "female empowerment" has led to a generation of the least happy women in history. They are lost and are being told that they are the EXACT same as men and should be able to compete at the same level in all fields of life. How sad to always fail at something you are supposed to be equal in. How sad to be led astray to never get married then hit a wall where you wish for nothing more than a family but cannot have it… simply because you bought into this false notion of feminism that promised happiness and fulfillment. The reality is women are biologically different and different things will make them happy.”

Lauren Southern (1995) Canadian libertarian commentator

AMA on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4zlf89/lauren_southern_ama/d6wtbfx/ (August 25, 2016)

Life , Women , Men , Sadness

“Competition has been curtailed by larger corporations; it has been sabotaged by groups of smaller entrepreneurs acting collectively. Both groups have made clear the locus of liberalism's rhetoric of small business and family farm.The character and ideology of the small entrepreneur and the facts of the market are selling the idea of competition short. These liberal heroes, the small businessmen and the farmer, do not want to develop their characters by free and open competition; they do not believe in competition, and they have been doing their best to get away from it.When the small businessmen are asked whether they think free competition is…a good thing, they answer…, 'Yes, of course—what do you mean?' … Finally: 'How about here in this town in furniture?'—or groceries, or whatever the man's line is. Their answers are of two sorts: 'Yes, if it's fair competition,' which turns out to mean: 'if it doesn't make me compete.' … The small businessman, as well as the farmer, wants to become big, not directly by eating up others like himself in competition, but by the indirect ways means practiced by his own particular heroes—those already big. In the dream life of the small entrepreneur, the sure fix is replacing the open market.But if small men wish to close their ranks, why do they continue to talk…about free competition? The answer is that the political function of free competition is what really matters now…[f]or, if there is free competition and a constant coming and going of enterprises, the one who remains established is 'the better man' and 'deserves to be where he is.' But if instead of such competition, there is a rigid line between successful entrepreneurs and the employee community, the man on top may be 'coasting on what his father did,' and not really be worthy of his hard-won position. Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm. …… In Congress small-business committees clamored for legislation to save the weak backbone of the national economy. Their legislative efforts have been directed against their more efficient competitors. First they tried to kill off the low-priced chain stores by taxation; then they tried to eliminate the alleged buying advantages of mass distributor; finally they tried to freeze the profits of all distributors in order to protect their own profits from those who could and were selling goods cheaper to the consumer.The independent retailer…has been pushing to maintain a given margin under the guise of 'fair competition' and 'fair-trade' laws. He now regularly demands that the number of outlets controlled by chain stores be drastically limited and that production be divorced from distribution. This would, of course, kill the low prices charged consumers by the A&P;, which makes very small retail profits, selling almost at cost, and whose real profits come from the manufacturing and packaging.…Under the threat of 'ruinous competition,' laws are on the books of many states and cities legalizing the ruin of competition.”

C. Wright Mills book White Collar: The American Middle Classes

Section One: The Competitive Way of Life.
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Life , Men , Books , Family

“The present serves to enclose you the letter of the father in favor of his son from Mr. Charles Boarman, [Sr. ], addressed to me, and a letter from the son himself stating his wish to procure the place of midshipman in the navy. The son is not personally known to me. The father has been for a great number of years a preceptor of youth in Maryland and in this district and has sustained the best possible character. He would not, I persuade myself from his character, recommend even a son u[pon? ] the terms that he has, unless he Places Much had merit to authorize such recommendation. The son, you will observe by his Sought letter which is somewhat singular, has promised much should he be honored with the situation which he solicits at your hand.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

Robert Brent writing to then United States Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton endorsing Charles Boarman's application (August 1811)
A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815 (1991)

Youth , Personality

“For the present at least [1909] I shall restrict my work to the ordinary world of the senses, since that is the world in which we still live. But nevertheless art even now form a transition to the finer regions, which perhaps I am incorrect in calling spiritual, for everything that has form is not yet spiritual, as I read somewhere. But it is nonetheless the path of ascension away from matter. Well dear Querido, with many heartfelt wishes, Piet Mondriaan.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote from Mondrian's letter to Israel Querido, Summer of 1909; published in the weekly magazine 'De Controleur' 23 Oct, 1909; as cited in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 36
1900's

World , Art , Sense , Reading

“The eating of meat without doubt focuses the physical mechanism closely to the physical system. There is nothing wrong with this. If you are trying to develop inner abilities however, and if you wish to allow yourself a mobility of focus, then moderation in this respect must be used.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 185, Page 247
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 4

“Man as man can never know God: His wishing, seeking, and striving are all in vain.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

In "Karl Barth's Conception of God" (1952) http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol2/520102BarthsConceptionOfGod.pdf by Martin Luther King, Jr., King cites this as a statement of Barth's in The Epistle to the Romans, p. 91, but it does not actually appear in the 1933 translation of Edwin Hoskyns. It may be a paraphrase of some of Barth's ideas which were incorrectly cited.
Disputed

God

“I played him the Goldberg Variations. If one wishes to reduce a sensitive German to tears there is no surer lachrymatory.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Tear

“I wish that I wasn't seen differently. I wish that people looked at me and just saw that I was a good person with a good heart. And that wants to make people laugh. And that's who I am. I also happen to be gay. And I would love to have the same rights as everybody else. I would love, I don't care if it's called marriage. I don't care if it's called, you know, domestic partnership. I don't care what it's called. I mean, there are couples that have been together, 30 years, 40 years. And all of a sudden, they lose their house, you know, the taxes kill them, because it's different because they're not married. Everything is taken away just because. You know, with Sept. 11, there are a lot of people that lost their partner and didn't get the same benefits. It's not fair. And at the same time I know there are people watching right now saying, you know, it's sick it's wrong, it's this. And it's like, I can't convince them that I'm not sick or wrong, that there's nothing wrong with me. You know, I can live my life and hope that things change, and hope that we're protected as any other couples”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Ellen Degeneres talking about being gay with Stone Phillips in an interview for Dateline NBC, Nov. 8, 2004

Love , Life , Marriage , People

“I’ll sing you a song of the long ago -
Seven shine the shiners, oh!
What did the Seven do way back when?
Why, they wove the Charter then!
Five for the warp, from beginning to end.
Two for the woof, to make and mend.
That’s the Seven, but what of the Nine-
What of the two who chose not to shine?
The Eighth did hide, hide all away,
But the Seven caught him and made him pay.
The Ninth was strong and fought with might,
But lone Orannis was put out of the light,
Broken in two and buried under hill,
Forever to lie there, wishing us ill.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr (2001), pp. 525-526.

Lie , Way , Light , Strong

“The strength of representative democracy is its ability to slow down those in power who wish to govern by blank cheque, but also those not in power who wish to yank the state about on the sole basis of their self-interest.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)

Democracy

“I wish I could hold a concert…. It is unfair that the Shehnai is not played at concerts. Why should not the Shehnai be played at the concerts?… Then let me do it now. Let me break tradition…. May Lord Balaji help me.”

Bismillah Khan (1916–2006) Indian musician

When he was perturbed at not being invited to play in concerts when other instrumentalists held solo performances, and it is when Lord Balaji whispered in his ears “All good things begin with Shehnai”.
Quote, Encyclopedia of Bharat Ratnas

Help

“These, then, are our common hopes that unite us -- that as the shackles of prejudice and intolerance fall from our own limbs we can together strive to identify and remove the impediments to human development everywhere. The mechanisms by which this great task is to be achieved provide the proper focus of this great Forum. I feel sure that women throughout the world who, like me, cannot be with you join me now in sending you all our prayers and good wishes for a joyful and productive meeting.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Women , World , Hope , Feeling

“The transformation of part of the northern part of this continent into "America" inaugurated a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation, and thus deserves to be celebrated with great vim and gusto, with or without the participation of those who wish they had never been born.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Minority Report", The Nation, October 19, 1992; also in Salaita, p. 68.
1990s, Minority Report (1992)

Parting

“Over the years, I've made a lot of predictions that have come true. Remember this one: two years from now, even those who supported Barack Obama most enthusiastically will be feeling a certain nostalgia about George W. Bush and secretly wishing they'd voted for John McCain.
Yeah, I know, disgusting. But that's the way the world works. Nobody alive today would willingly admit to voting for Adolf Hitler, although the third or fourth worst mass-murderer in history (behind Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, and, on a per capita basis, Pol Pot) won by a landslide. Once the outrages to come have ended and there are thousands — perhaps even millions — of Obama's crimes to account for, would you want to admit to having voted to make those crimes possible?”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Only Nixon".

World , Way , Feeling , History

“Machine-held strings of binary digits can simulate a great many kinds of things, of which numbers are just one kind. For example, they can simulate automobiles on a freeway, chess pieces, electrons in a box, musical notes, Russian words, patterns on a paper, human cells, colors, electrical circuits, and so on. To think of a computer as made up essentially of numbers is simply a carryover from the successful use of mathematical analysis in studying models. Most of this series of lectures has been devoted to applications of computers, and this is not the time to give details about their usefulness. I merely wish to point out certain types of things being done with computers today that could not have been done in 1945. Some of these are technological, some are intellectual.”

George Forsythe (1917–1972) Stanford University computer scientist

As cited in: Zenon Pylyshyn (1970) Perspectives on the computer revolution. p. 379
"Educational implications of the computer revolution," 1963

Music , Color , Mathematics , Thinking

“If someone wishes to speak in his language about a new kind of entities, he has to introduce a system of new ways of speaking, subject to new rules; we shall call this procedure the construction of a linguistic framework for the new entities in question.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Source: Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology (1950), Ch. 2. Linguistic frameworks

Way , Question

“The vast majority of the peoples of the world are against war and against aggression. If they make their wishes known and effective, war can be stopped. It all depends on whether they are willing to make the effort necessary for the purpose. For, that it will require an effort, no one who considers the history of the world on these subjects can doubt.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

The Future of Civilization (1938)

War , People , World , History

“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

Fear , Fashion , Problem , Help

“I really wish the people that look sort of in anger at the 'weirdos,' at the happenings, at the psychedelic freak-out, would instead of just looking with anger, just look with nothing; with no feeling; be unbiased about it. They really don't realize that what these people are talking about is something that they really want themselves. It's something that everyone wants. You know, it's personal freedom to be able to talk and be able to say things And it's dead straight! It's a real sort of basic pleasure for everyone. But it looks weird from the outside.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

From the TV show "It's So Far Out It's Straight Down", 18.1.1967

People , Pleasure , Feeling , Freedom

“I have no doubt but that every State bordering upon the enemy, will apply for a proper force, to protect them against their ravages. To comply with these demands, will hard the safety of the whole army. Divide your force,, and you will fall a prey in every quarter; and, I am persuaded, were you to adopt the plan which would be most flattering to the wishes of the people, it would be so far from affording them that protection and security which they promise themselves, that it would become one of the principal causes of the enemy's making inroads, and committing depredations upon them.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

People

“Dost thou wish me to complete the catalogue by thy death? Thy life is a worthless thing. Tempt me no more. I am but a man, and thy presence may awaken a fury which may spurn my control. Begone!”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Life , Death

“You wonder about her crime. She was condemned
to death for stealing clothes from her employer, from
the wife of her employer. She wished to make herself
more beautiful. This desire in servants was not legal.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1987), Marrying the Hangman

Death , Beauty , Clothes

“Mr. President, I wish to tell you something personal - not about me, but about my generation. What you have just heard about the Jewish people's inherent rights to the Land of Israel may seem academic to you, theoretical, even moot. But not to my generation. To my generation of Jews these eternal bonds are indisputable and incontrovertible truths, as old as recorded time. They touch upon the very core of our national being. Ours is an almost biblical generation of suffering and courage. Ours is the generation of Destruction and Redemption. Ours is the generation that rose up from the bottomless pit of Hell. We were a helpless people, Mr. President. We were bled white, not once, not twice, but century after century, over and over again. We lost a third of our people in one generation - mine. One-and-a-half million of them were children - ours. No one came to our rescue. We were tertiated, Mr. President. … Tertiated, not decimated. The origin of the word 'decimation' is one in 10. When a Roman legion was found guilty of insubordination one in 10 was put to the sword. In our case it was one in three - tertiated! … Sir, I take an oath before you in the name of the Jewish people - this will never ever happen again.”

Menachem Begin (1913–1992) Israeli politician and Prime Minister

Amb. Yehuda Avner's account of a meeting with U.S. President Jimmy Carter (July 1977)

Children , People , Truth , Courage

“If you wish at once to do nothing and to be respectable now-a-days, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.”

Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) British author, literary critic, and first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography

Sketches from Cambridge http://books.google.com/books?id=mjA4AAAAMAAJ&q=%22If+you+wish+at+once+to+do+nothing+and+to+be+respectable+now-a-days+the+best+pretext+is+to+be+at%22+%22work+on+some+profound+study%22&pg=PA5#v=onepage (1865)

Study

“There is little abstract art, today, and what there is is stammering and imperfect. It is an attempt to let the world speak for itself, instead of reporting the speech of mind excited by their picture of the world. The Greek, The Gothic, and the Renaissance artist set forth the world the way he saw it, felt it, and wished to have it; man wished above all to be nourished by art; he achieved his desire but sacrificed everything else to this one aim: to construct homunculus, to substitute knowledge for strength and skill for spirit. The ape aped his creator. He learned to put art itself to the ends of trade..”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Source: 1915 - 1916, 100 Aphorisms', Franz Marc (1915), p. 445

World , Art , Way , Knowledge

“If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.”

Henry Clay (1777–1852) American politician from Kentucky

Speech on the Increase of the Navy, House of Representatives (22 January 1812).

“What is the use of speech? Silence were fitter:
Lest we should still be wishing things unsaid.
Though all the words we ever spake were bitter,
Shall I reproach you, dead?”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

You Would Have Understood Me

Silence , Dead

“When you’re so lonely lying in bed,
Night’s closed it’s eyes but you can’t rest your head.
Everyone’s sleeping all through the house,
You wish you could dream but forgot to somehow.

Sing this lullaby to yourself.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Lullaby.
Song lyrics, Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George (2006)

Dreams , Lying , Sleep , Singing

“Billiard-Fannon’s expression hardened. “Say the words,” he ordered. “Say them, or displease me. You do not wish to see the displeasure of the Holy One!”
“I do not wish to see the Holy One at all,” said Jhutti.”

Adam Roberts book Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

Source: Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (2014), Chapter 30, “The Tetragrammaton” (p. 277)

“Sitting here at Haidakhan, Mahaprabhuji has control over every particle of the Creation by the power of His mere wish, by His very thought. (…) Mahaprabhuji has control over the elements, the spiritual world - to say nothing of the world of men. He is the Creator, Sustainer and Destroyer of the world. Not a single blade of grass can grow but that He wills it. He has incarnated in a human body for the welfare of mankind. His sole desire - is to make it possible for the whole world to be liberated. He shall do His utmost to achieve liberation of the world.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Vishnu Dutt Shastriji about Mahaprabhuji
31 August 1983
The Teachings of Babaji

Men , World , Grass

“The social value of freeing women from a harem-enclosed existence to a life of activity can be questioned only by those advocates of a "man's world" who wish to perpetuate its butchers and savage jungle law.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

As quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, p.7 in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda" by Michelle R. Finn,
Attributed

Life , Women , World , Law

“You’ve got to choose a wish or command
At the turn of the tide”

Cat Power (1972) American singer-songwriter and actress

"Maybe Not"
You Are Free (2003)

“Science is international but its success is based on institutions, which are owned by nations. If therefore, we wish to promote culture we have to combine and to organize institutions with our own power and means.”

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

When asked the question, “Why a ‘Jewish’ University?” when Einstein was assisting Chaim Weizmann in fundraising for The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
As quoted in [Albert Einstein, Letter “Einstein in Singapore.” Manchester Guardian, October 12, 1929]
1920s

Science , Success

“I wish to God that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it to you.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

5 February 1750
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

God , Pleasure

“And there went some good old-fashioned wishful thinking, Sleepy. We were talking about human beings. If there is any way to be contrary, unreasonable and obnoxious, human beings are sure to find and pursue it. With verve and enthusiasm at whatever might be the most inconvenient time.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 85 (p. 308)

Way , Fashion , Thinking , Time

“I don't think there's necessarily a story, but there's definitely a theme here. One of my favorite kind of dark jokes is, "How do you make God laugh? You make a plan." Nobody ever makes a plan that they're gonna go out and get hit by a car. A plan almost always has a happy ending. Essentially, every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time. I really like the idea of a plan not being seen as having definite outcomes, but more like little wishes.”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

On the the title of the Death Cab for Cutie album Plans, as quoted in Mix online (1 January 2006) http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_death_cab_cutie_2/index.html

God , Cars , Idea , Thinking

“There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Screwtape Letters

Preface
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Hell , Thinking

“When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing — deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Letter to Thomas Hardy (27 March 1910)

Life

“I wished I had been born early enough to have been called a Little Englander. It was a term of sneering abuse, but I should be delighted to accept it as a description of myself. That little sounds the right note of affection. It is little England I love.”

J.B. Priestley book English Journey

English Journey, 1934. Reprinted in Judy Giles and Tim Middleton Writing Englishness: An Introductory Sourcebook,Routledge, 2003 (p. 26).

Love

“I wish that I could save myself constant repetition by printing across the dog's-ear place of these pages the warning, "Never judge a critic by your agreement with his likes and dislikes.””

George Saintsbury (1845–1933) British literary critic

Vol. 3, p. 644
A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day

Dogs

“The figure [neo-roman writers] wish to hold out for our admiration is described again and again. He is plain and plain-hearted; he is upright and full of integrity; above all he is a man of true manliness, of dependable valour and fortitude. His virtues are repeatedly contrasted with the vices characteristic of the obnoxious lackeys and parasites who flourish at court. The courtier, instead of being plain and plain-hearted, is lewd, dissolute and debauched; instead of being upright, he is cringing, servile and base; instead of being brave, he is fawning, abject and lacking in manliness.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), pp. 95-96

Heart , Dependency

“If the Moon is made of green cheese, then Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo.
We would be committing this fallacy (i. e., affirming the consequent) if we used this sentence to claim that the Moon is made of green cheese. Pseudosciences employ this fallacy frequently, because it enables you to claim the truth of any premise you wish simply by choosing a true conclusion.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari (1948) Israeli computer scientist

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 11, “Logic and Mathematics: Scientists Like It Clear and Precise” (p. 177)

Truth

“Let all the world witness how many different means Fortune employs when she wishes to destroy a man.”

Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) Florentine sculptor and goldsmith

Sí che vegga il mondo, quando la fortuna vuol torre a 'ssassinare uno uomo, quante diverse vie la piglia.
Autobiography, vol. 1, ch. 113; translation from Benvenuto Cellini (trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella) My Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. 196.

World

“The past is dead; let it bury its dead. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling. Make your place in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished – a reunited country.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

In the 1880s, as quoted on an inscription at Vicksburg National Military Park http://jeffreyevanbrooks.blogspot.com/2015/09/sadness-and-hope-along-siege-lines-of.html.
1880s

Feeling , Past , Dead , Country

“The proprietor should always direct his attention to obtain from his land a gradual increase of produce, or to augment its value continually. The farmer only desires the greatest profit during the continuance of his lease, without caring for the value of the land afterwards. "Whilst the proprietor can content himself with a trifling produce during a few years, in order to attain greater and more durable profit subsequently, the tenant must, on the contrary, endeavour to obtain the greatest produce, even though its amount should be diminished during the latter years of his lease; because the proprietor who wishes to farm on the best system, finds at the same time both pleasure and profit in laying out on his property as much capital as he can spare, whilst the tenant, on the contrary, withdraws as much of his pecuniary resources as possible, to employ it in other ways, or to place it at interest. The improvement of the land constitutes the pleasure of the proprietor, while the mere occupying farmer only thinks of augmenting his income. Thus the longer the lease may be, the more do the interests of the landlord and tenant become identified; the shorter the term, the more conflicting are those interests. With a lease of 24 years, a tenant ought, at least during the first two-thirds of its duration, to follow out the views of the proprietor. But the time will come when he will act on different principles, and endeavour to extract from the land a return in proportion to his outlay at the commencement.
To this must be added, that a tenant cannot have the means of laying out so much on the land as the proprietor, even if he wished to do so. The latter must pay the rent, whilst a proprietor anxious to improve can economize something from the net produce to expend on his property. The first may be compared to a merchant who trades on borrowed money; the second to one who speculates with his own funds. The former must first provide for his rent, the latter need only think of extending his speculations.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Thaer, cited in: Joseph Rogers Farmers Magazine Volume The Seventh http://books.google.com/books?id=8OnG6xwQkesC&pg=PA263, 1843, p. 263: Speaking of lease and covenants

Money , Pleasure , Way , Thinking

“But each man who worships you sees only what he wishes to see rather than any mystery you may actually embody.”

Michael Bishop (1945) American writer

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 6, “Inquisition: The Messiah Who Came Too Late” (p. 113)

“I wished to show that Pythagoras, the first founder of the vegetable regimen, was at once a very great physicist and a very great physician; that there has been no one of a more cultured and discriminating humanity; that he was a man of wisdom and of experience; that his motive in commending and introducing the new mode of living was derived not from any extravagant superstition, but from the desire to improve the health and the manners of men.”

Antonio Cocchi (1695–1758) Italian physician and naturalist

The Pythagorean Diet: for the Use of the Medical Faculty

Wisdom , Men , Health , Motivation

“I once asked Aragon, the historian, how history was written. He said, 'You have to invent it.' When I wish as now to tell of critical incidents, persons, and events that have influenced my life and work, the true answer is all of the incidents were critical, all of the people influenced me, everything that happened and that is still happening influences me.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote of John Cage: the first lines of his 'Autobiographical Statement', April, 1990 http://www.johncage.org/autobiographical_statement.html
1990s

Life , People , History , Personality

“The whole tendency of empiricism and democracy in speech, dress and manners has been toward a plainness which is without symbolic significance. The power of symbolism is greatly feared by those who wish to expel from life all that is nonrational in the sense of being nonutilitarian”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 160.

Life , Fear , Democracy , Sense

“All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

A Letter from Cuba (1934)

Hope , Failure , Nature

“The new man, wishing to enjoy his independence, needed a God with limited powers, a God whose authority was regulated by fundamental laws, so that the sinner, when summoned before the throne of the last judgment, might plead his cause, documents in hand.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 90

God , Law

“Peace I do not find, and I have no wish to make war; and I fear and hope, and burn and am of ice.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

Pace non trovo, et non ò da far guerra;
e temo, et spero; et ardo, et son un ghiaccio.
Canzone 134, lines 1–2
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

War , Fear , Peace , Hope

“Ever ever after
It may only be a wish away”

Stephen Schwartz (1948) American musical theatre lyricist and composer

Ever Ever After
Enchanted (2007)

“"I have often wished in vain," said she, "for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it."
"That," replied I, "is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us."”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. VII : The Excursion; Helen and Gilbert

Life , Idea , Evil

“The news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would, I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out are they are pro-America or anti-America.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, October 17, 2008 http://rawstory.com/rawreplay/?p=2203
on whether there are anti-American members of Congress
2000s, Hardball Appearance (October 2008)

People