"I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it."
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Wish quotes
Wish
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Wish quotes (page 63 of 238)
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"I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery."
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"Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible."
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"For life affords no higher pleasure, than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labours in any great or laudable undertaking, has his fatigues first supported by hope, and afterwards rewarded by joy... To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity."
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"There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by."
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"Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place."
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"A man had rather have a hundred lies told of him than one truth which he does not wish should be told."
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"Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves."
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"When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have undergone some labour in improving themselves, they set a proportionate value on their own thoughts, and wish to enforce them by efficacious expressions; speech becomes embodied and permanent; different modes and phrases are compared, and the best obtains an establishment. By degrees one age improves upon another."
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"Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favour, which an artful flatterer may gradually strengthen, till wishes for a particular qualification are improved to hopes of attainment, and hopes of attainment to belief of possession."
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"Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants. If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you."
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"I often wish I'd got on better with your father,' he said."
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"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say."
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"Go anywhere you wish, talk to everyone. Ask any questions; you will be given answers. When you want to learn, you will be taught. Use the library. Open any book."
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"That was always the dream, wasn't it? 'I wish I'd known then what I know now'? But when you got older you found out that you NOW wasn't YOU then. You then was a twerp. You then was what you had to be to start out on the rocky road of becoming you now, and one of the rocky patches on that road was being a twerp."
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"You can’t say ‘if this didn’t happen then that would have happened’ because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say ‘If only I’d…’ because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it."
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"I wish everyone could wake up with a birdie on your shoulder, reminding them that this could be your last day."
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"Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and confine it there, and even spurn it back when it wishes to get farther."
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"I wish you would let an old man, who has had his share of fighting, remind you that battles, like hypotheses, are not to be multiplied beyond necessity."
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"Well, Page, I do wish the Devil had old Cooke, for I am sure I never was so tired of an old dull scoundrel in my life ... But the old-fellows say we must read to gain knowledge; and gain knowledge to make us happy and be admired. Mere jargon! Is there any such thing as happiness in this world? No."
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