Quotes about wish
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“Remorse is a terrible thing to bear, Pam, one of the worst of all punishments in this life. To wish undone something you have done, to wish you could look back on kindness to someone you love, instead of on unkindness - that is a very terrible thing.”

Enid Blyton (1897–1968) author

Source: House at the Corner

Love, Life

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

D. H. Lawrence : An Unprofessional Study (1932); also quoted in The Mirror and the Garden : Realism and Reality in the Writings of Anais Nin (1971) by Evelyn J. Hinz, p. 40

Life, Death, People

“It feels strange to have spen much time wishing for something, for someone and then one day, suddenly, to just stop”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Feeling, Time

“How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

“After all who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of their loneliness”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Loneliness

“I do wish you wouldn't argue with me when I'm knitting.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

Source: My Family and Other Animals

“I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

As quoted in An Uncommon Scold (1989) by Abby Adams, p. 176

“I wonder what Piglet is doing," thought Pooh.
"I wish I were there to be doing it, too.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

“What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves -- our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Hunger

“And truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed; but when they cannot, and wish to do it anyway, here lies the error and the blame.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Men, Error, Nature

“If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive?… Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“Have you talked to North?" he said.
"Yes," she said. "I asked him to get us cable."
"I wish you weren't talking to him."
"I'd talk to Satan to get cable," Andie said.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Maybe This Time

“I do so wish my breasts would stop staring at your eyes.”

Kresley Cole book No Rest for the Wicked

Source: No Rest for the Wicked

“Gods, I wish the world was full of passive women. He thought for a moment longer, then scowled. On second thoughts, what a nightmare that'd be. It's the job of a man to fan the spark into flames, not quench it…”

Steven Erikson book Memories of Ice

Source: Memories of Ice

Women, God, World

“Commander! Sir! Wake up!"
Jack surfaced from sleep, wondering who the commander was and wishing he'd respond so he could go back to sleep - until he remembered that he was the commander.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Dragon Heir

Sleep

“… even a mirror will not show you yourself, if you do not wish to see.”

Roger Zelazny Lord of Light

Source: Lord of Light

“I am not insane," he said. "A woman of your highly advanced intellect ought to be able to perceive that I am in love. With you. I wish you had told me. It was deuced embarrassing to find it out from your *brother*.”

Loretta Chase (1949) American writer

Source: Mr. Impossible

Love

“We’re Nephilim. Every one of our life’s passages has some mystical component — our births, our deaths, our, marriages, everything has a ceremony and a rune. There is one as well if you wish to become someone’s parabatai. It’s no small commitment.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Life, Death, Marriage, Birth

“Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

Art, Understanding, Effort

“What is a Shadowhunter made of, if they desert their own, if they throw away a child’s heart like rubbish left on the side of the road? Tell me, Simon Lewis, if that is what Shadowhunters are, why would I wish to be one?”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Bitter of Tongue

Heart

“Alec keeps sending me annoying photos. Lots of captions like Wish you were here, except not really.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Photo

“Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them.”

Ishmael Beah book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Source: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Star, Night

“Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is "Thou shalt not question."”

Sigmund Freud book The Future of an Illusion

Source: 1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927)

Religion, Question, Reality

“If you wish for something hard enough, the fairy tales teach us, you can get it in the end. But it's hardly ever the way you thought it would be, and the endings aren't always happy ones.”

Jennifer Weiner book Good in Bed

Source: Good in Bed

Way, Happiness

“I wish everyone would stop crying, Tom. Uncle Joe would be so angry about it." But she's crying herself now. "He'd be so angry at us, Tom, for crying so much when all he did was laugh.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: The Piper's Son

Cry

“I'm scared of you two in the same place. That's like putting in an order for trouble, rather than just wishing for it.”

Lora Leigh (1965) American writer

Source: Wicked Pleasure

“No rest
without love,
No sleep
without dreams
of love -
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines
the final wish
is love.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

Love, Dreams, Angels, Sleep

“I wish to live for myself. I should never want to be trapped.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

“The weather is here Wish you were beautiful.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Beauty, Weather

“Bird and bear and hare and fish, give my love her fondest wish.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Love, Bird, Fish

“I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.”

Jennifer Donnelly book Revolution

Source: Revolution

Death, Music, Time

“In order to be a part of the totalitarian mind-set, it is not necessary to wear a uniform or carry a club or a whip. It is only necessary to wish for your own subjection, and to delight in the subjection of others.”

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

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Parting

“Sometimes I wish I had an easy answer for why I'm depressed.”

Ned Vizzini (1981–2013) American writer

“Even when we were standing in church and I was getting ready to take my vow I can remember wishing that you were standing there instead of him.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

“We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act … Our faculties are more fitted to recognize the wonderful structure of a beetle than a Universe.”

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

" Notebook N http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/vanWyhe_notebooks.html" (1838) page 36 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=25&itemID=CUL-DAR126.-&viewtype=text <br class="br">quoted in [Darwin's Religious Odyssey, 2002, William E., Phipps, Trinity Press International, 9781563383847, 32, http://books.google.com/books?id=0TA81BTW3dIC&pg=PA32] <br class="br">also quoted in On Evolution: The Development of the Theory of Natural Selection (1996) edited by Thomas F. Glick and David Kohn, page 81 <br class="br">Other letters, notebooks, journal articles, recollected statements <br class="br">Source: Notebooks

Law, Universe, Sun

“I wish we didn't live so far apart… You're kind of addicting.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

“I am looking for the people who have always been there, and belong to the places they live. The others I do not wish to see.”

Norman Lewis (1908–2003) British travel writer

People

“You, on the other hand, wish to know things. And no one can forgive a girl for that.”

Jennifer Donnelly (1963) American writer

Source: These Shallow Graves

Girl, Forgiveness

“Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.”

Alan Bennett book The Uncommon Reader

Source: The Uncommon Reader

Books, World, Time

“And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories.”

Maud Hart Lovelace book Heaven to Betsy

Source: Heaven to Betsy

Love, Memory

“Don't you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don't even have to be true!”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Thinking

“Don't lose heart if it's very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes.”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Time, Heart

“Toohey: "Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."
Roark: "But I don't think of you.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Thinking

“Its unfortunate and I really wish I wouldn't have to say this, but I really like human beings who have suffered. They're kinder.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Suffering

“The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Love, Truth

“Don't tell me what's necessary, you presumptupus pup. What's necessary is whatever I wish to do, regardless of how unnecessary it might be.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

“Oh, Eva." He rubbed his cheek against my damp face. "I must've wished for you so hard and so often you had no choice but to come true.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

“We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“I swear, Oliver, when did you become such a stick-in-the-mud?”
“I’ve always been a stick-in-the-mud.” Her brother cast her a thin smile. “I just hid it beneath all the debauchery.”
She sniffed. “I wish you’d hide it again. It’s quite annoying.”

Sabrina Jeffries (1960) American writer

Source: How to Woo a Reluctant Lady

Smile

“Pippa's laugh is bitter, tinged with tears. 'Ha! Why do girls think being beautiful will solve every problem? Being beautiful just creates problems. It's a misery. I wish I were someone else.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Beauty, Girl, Problem, Thinking

“There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

“You’re so beautiful. I wish I’d seen you as a child. (Acheron)
You didn’t miss much. I had buck teeth and stringy hair. (Kat)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

Beauty

“She wrote, I wish I could be a girl again, with a chance to live my life again. I have suffered so much more than I needed to. And the joys I have felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Life, Girl, Suffering, Chance

“Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.”

John Irving book A Widow for One Year

Source: A Widow for One Year

People, Education

“I am the son of Hades. I go where I wish. The darkness is my birthright.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“There are times I wish I were invisible. Which is silly, since I do everything I can to stand out.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

Time

“Everyone has crap in their background, everyone has things they wish they could undo. But most people don't go around doing their best to screw up their present lives because of it.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Rescue

Source: The Rescue

People

“No rest without love,
no sleep without dreams of love-
be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines,
the final wish is love
-cannot be bitter, cannot deny,
cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

Love, Dreams, Angels, Sleep

“I wish I could take away your pain. I wish I could go back to when you were born and take you somewhere safe. Far away from all the people who’ve hurt you. (Kiara)
You’re doing that now. (Nykyrian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Pain, People, Hurt

“You can want one thing and have a secret wish for its opposite.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Six Rules of Maybe

Secret

“What is it with me? Am I absolutely nobody, but merely inordinately vain? I do not know…. But I am most fearfully unhappy. That is all. I am so unhappy that I wish I was dead—yet I should be mad to die when I have not yet lived at all.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Madness, Dead

“Sometimes I wish I had never met you, because then I could go to sleep at night not knowing there was someone like you out there.”

Gus Van Sant (1952) American film director, producer, photographer and musician

Source: Good Will Hunting

Cute, Sleep, Night

“I've been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn't listen. Every time you said 'Farm Boy do this' you thought I was answering 'As you wish' but that's only because you were hearing wrong. 'I love you' was what it was, but you never heard.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Love, Boy, Time

“May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Anniversary, Love

“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”

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

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Circles
Source: The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

People, Hope

“But if we’re going to kill them all, we might as well make an occasion of it.”
Toshak shrugged. “Do as you wish,” he said. “Occasion or not, as long as they’re all dead, I’m happy.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Erak's Ransom

Dead, Happiness

“I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.”

Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) fashion designer

New York Magazine (November 28, 1983), p. 53.

Hope, Sex, Clothes

“Appear as you may wish to be”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

Appearance

“I am a slow reader, and fast eater; I wish it were the other way around.”

Amy Krouse Rosenthal (1965–2017) author, a radio show host and producer, and filmmaker

Source: Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

Way

“If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Love Among the Chickens

Source: Love Among the Chickens

“I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.

Life, Time, Parting

“A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Art of Travel

Life, Beauty

“There are moments when i wish i could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but i have a feeling that if i did, the joy would be gone as well. So i take the memories as they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever i can.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Sadness, Feeling, Memory, Joy

“How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.”

Toni Morrison book Paradise

Source: Paradise

Imagination, Happiness

“Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

As quoted in The Films of Barbra Streisand (2001) by Christopher Nickens and Karen Swenson
Variant: Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.

Success, Hate, People, Way