Wish quotes
4.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside wish — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"A charm invests a face Imperfectly beheld,— The lady dare not lift her veil For fear it be dispelled. But peers beyond her mesh, And wishes, and denies,— Lest interview annul a want That image satisfies."
"I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free... Why am I so changed? I'm sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills."
"Earnsha was not to be civilized with a wish, and my young lady was no philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but both their minds tending to the same point - one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed - they contrived in the end to reach it."
"Predigested food' should be inscribed over every hall of learning as a warning to all who do not wish to lose their own personalities and their original sense of judgment."
"Who are those people by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not these whom you are in the habit of saying that they are mad? What then? Do you wish to be admired by the mad?"
"If you would improve, submit to be considered wihout sense and foolish with respect to externals. Wish to be considered to know nothing; and if you shall seem to someone to be a person of importance, distrust yourself."
"If you wish to write, write."
"The wish fulfillment of growing younger is not necessarily all it's cracked up to be. You have new problems that arise which you are not anticipating and you deal with the same problems you would deal with if you were ageing normally: what is the end of life about? What have I accomplished?"
"Parenting is a negative thing. Keep your children from killing themselves, or anyone else, and hope for the best."
"I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her."
"I wish I really knew what the Republican foreign policy has been. I don't. I am a Democrat, and I really don't know what it has been."
"Proust again: One can only wish that a man with such powers of total recall had led a less tedious life, moved among somewhat livelier circles."
"What's a farmer's market without some guy singing Here Comes The Sun in a way that makes you wish the sun would stop coming up."
"All that money stuff was so strange; all it ever meant to me was freedom from worry. I'm happier now than I've ever been but I still wish I had that money."
"Poetry is a diary kept by a sea creature who lives on land and wishes he could fly."
"Societies will, of course, wish to exercise prudence in deciding which technologies that is, which applications of science are to be pursued and which not. But without funding basic research, without supporting the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, our options become dangerously limited."
"Poetry is the cipher key to the five mystic wishes packed in a hollow silver bullet fed to a flying fish."
"I wish I had more time to read. I do love books."
"Do I wish I could retire? Sure, but that's not life."
"You know, I'm cursed with morals. I was raised a certain way. I wish I wasn't. I wish I was raised by wolves."
