Like our shadows,
Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.
Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes bless'd!
In idle wishes fools supinely stay;
Be there a will, and wisdom finds a way.
True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.
Though all the bards of earth were dead,
And all their music passed away,
What Nature wishes should be said
She'll find the rightful voice to say.
While Thee I seek, protecting Power,
Be my vain wishes stilled;
And may this consecrated hour
With better hopes be filled.
Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad.
If any man wishes to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.
Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.
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.
You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don't let yourself indulge in vain wishes.
The problem with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than their minds.
The Father and His Two Daughters A man had two daughters, the one married to a gardener, and the other to a tile-maker. After a time he went to the daughter who had married the gardener, and inquired how she was and how all things went with her. She said, All things are prospering with me, and I have only one wish, that there may be a heavy fall of rain, in order that the plants may be well watered. Not long after, he went to the daughter who had married the tilemaker, and likewise inquired of her how she fared; she replied, I want for nothing, and have only one wish, that the dry weather may continue, and the sun shine hot and bright, so that the bricks might be dried. He said to her, If your sister wishes for rain, and you for dry weather, with which of the two am I to join my wishes?'.
Where there is great love, there are always wishes.
A wise unselfishness is not a surrender of yourself to the wishes of anyone, but only to the best discoverable course of action.
Anger wishes that all mankind had only one neck; love, that it had only one heart; grief, two tear-glands; and pride, two bent knees.
Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.
He who prefers to give Linus the half of what he wishes to borrow, rather than to lend him the whole, prefers to lose only the half.
How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, By all their country's wishes blest! . . . . By fairy hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung.
The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday.
Their wants but few, their wishes all confin'd.
Daughter of Time, the hypocrite Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands; To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all; I, in my pleached garden watched the pomp Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I too late Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.