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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"Nobody knows you as well as our spouse. And that means no one will be quicker to recognize a change when you deliberately start sacrificing your wants and wishes to make sure his or her needs are met."
"However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts."
"He who wishes to be a surgeon should go to war."
"The whole thing resolves itself into our mental ability to control our thought. The man who can do this can have what he wants, can do what he wishes and becomes what he wills."
"When a man is guided by the principles of reciprocity and consciousness, he is not far from the moral law. Whatever you don't wish for yourself don't do unto others."
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself. For, it is difficult to both keep your faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire external things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of necessity neglect the other"
"I have my own personal wish list."
"You hate someone whom you really wish to love, but whom you cannot love. Perhaps he himself prevents you. That is a disguised form of love."
"You cannot entirely control your subconscious mind, but you can voluntarily hand over to it any plan, desire, or purpose which you wish transformed into concrete form."
"The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him."
"If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness."
"You must work and do good, not be lazy and gamble, if you wish to earn happiness. Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction."
"I did not read the Bible today. I am not very good at being religious and don't really feel too bad about not being too good. I do wish that I loved God and His creatures more."
"Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us."
"If you can make music with someone you don't need words. If you wish to be a writer, write."
"Of all bad listeners, the worst and most terrible to encounter is the man who is so fond of listening that he wishes to hear, not only your conversation, but that of every other person in the room."
"I wish I studied more religions, I wish I read the Bible, the Quran. I think as I get older, I will start to really dive into religions, just because I feel like there's truths in all of those books. Clearly. I'm saying there's truths in all of them."
"It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
"I wish my shadow would get up and walk beside me."
"The truth about childhood, as many of us have had to endure it, is inconceivable, scandalous, painful. Not uncommonly, it is monstrous. Invariably, it is repressed. To be confronted with this truth all at once and to try to integrate it into our consciousness, however ardently we may wish it, is clearly impossible."
