Quotes About Wishes

When the men of antiquity realized their wishes, benefits were conferred by them on the people. If they did not realize their wishes, they cultivated their personal character, and became illustrious in the world. If poor, they attended to their own virtue in solitude; if advanced to dignity, they made the whole empire virtuous as well.

Naturalism aimed at giving the primitive wishes full play but failed because these wishes are too primitive, too infantile, too inconsistent with themselves to be satisfied even by the greatest license.

He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator -- though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.

Through practice he has accustomed himself to wish for nothing, and for a person with no wishes, everything goes just as he wishes, explains the Abbot Dorotheus. His will has coincided with God's will, and whatever he asks, he will receive.

Christ wishes to raise men up to heaven, and has given them all the means to attain this; whilst the Devil, who himself for his pride was cast down from heaven into the dominions of the air, wishes by every means to attach men to earthly,- sensual, transitory things, and, in order to attain this end, he employs the most powerful, most prodigious means.

In modern society, where most people live in cities, and where both needs and wishes are absolved through the same remote agency - money - the distinction between wishes and needs has altogether vanished.

Conflict may be defined as a situation of competition in which the parties are aware of the incompatibility of potential future positions, and in which each party wishes to occupy a position that is incompatible with the wishes of the other.

Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.

Whoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumours so little founded on truth

Art is about expressing the true nature of the human spirit in whatever way one wishes to express it. If it is honest, it is beautiful. If it is not honest, it is obvious.

When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment. As all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.

Who will deny that true religion consists, in a great measure, in vigorous and lively actings of the inclination and will of the soul, or the fervent exercises of the heart? That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless, wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference.

Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made him rich.

On your birthday . . . Have a cuppa, kick off your shoes, sit back and relax ? you deserve it! Best Wishes for a Very Relaxing Birthday.

At some time in the history of the universe, there were no human minds, and at some time later, there were. Within the blink of a cosmic eye, a universe in which all was chaos and void came to include hunches, beliefs, sentiments, raw sensations, pains, emotions, wishes, ideas, images, inferences, the feel of rubber, Schadenfreude, and the taste of banana ice cream.

Peace is the whole truth that wishes to enrapture humanity. War is the whole falsehood that wants to capture humanity. Peace begins in the soul and ends in the heart. War begins in the mind and ends in the body.

We must calculate not on the weather, nor on fortune, but upon God and ourselves. He may fail us in the gratification of our wishes, but never in the encounter with our exigencies.

It wasn’t like in the storybooks. No witches lurked at crossroads disguised as crones, waiting to reward travelers who shared their bread. Genies didn’t burst from lamps, and talking fish didn’t bargain for their lives. In all the world, there was only one place humans could get wishes: Brimstone’s shop. And there was only one currency he accepted. It wasn’t gold, or riddles, or kindness, or any other fairy-tale nonsense, and no, it wasn’t souls, either. It was weirder than any of that. It was teeth.

Beware of your wishes: They will probably come true.

He who wishes for goods will never have devotion.

Many a man wishes he were strong enough to tear a telephone book in half - especially if he has a teenage daughter.

Whenever a great physician treats diseases, he has to be mentally calm and his disposition firm. He should not give way to wishes and desires, but has to develop first a marked attitude of compassion. He should commit himself firmly to the willingness to take the effort to save every living creature.

October— You were sleeping so peacefully that I was loath to wake you. Duke Torquill, after demanding to know what I was doing in your apartment, has requested that I inform you of his intent to visit after ‘tending to some business at the Queen’s Court.’ I recommend wearing something clinging, as that may distract him from whatever he wishes to lecture you about this time. Hopefully, it’s your manners. You are truly endearing when you sleep. I attribute this to the exotic nature of seeing you in a state of silence. —Tybalt

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.

The prosperity of Masonry as a means of strengthening our religion and propagating true brotherly love, is one of the dearest wishes of my heart, which, I trust, will be gratified by the help of the Grand Architect of the Universe.

The first principle of my own philosophy is that wisdom is meant for anyone who wishes to reach for it. It is the servant of commoner and king alike and should never be regarded with awe.

Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies-- but not before they have been hanged.

There's a part of me that wishes I'd never said one single solitary word on any subject publicly. Then I could have been the tortured poet, and there's so much mileage in that. But it's too late to stop now.

Religion is indeed woman's panoply; no one who wishes her happiness would divest her of it; no one who appreciates her virtues would weaken her best security.

Velius--so who is she? no wait, let me guess. skin of the finest porcelain. hair of the softest silk. a voice like birdsong, a smile like sunshine, and a mouth that would sate your brightest and darkest wishes Rumbold-- You've m-met her? Velius--oh yes, my friend. we all know her. we've all pursued her. some of us have even been lucky enough to have her. we've been drunk on her sin, become fools of her favor. she might have borne a different face each time, but her name was always the same. Trouble

There was a war going on in our house. A silent war that sounded no guns, and the bodies that fell were only wishes that died and the bullets were only words and the blood that spilled was always called pride.

We are very far from always knowing our own wishes.

Life is sinister. I don't know if I am representing life exactly, but sinister, I think it has to do with dreams. You're dreaming when you're awake: you're sitting on the subway and you look around, and you can think of sinister things that are kind of delightful to think of because they're not really happening, but they are in your mind. They're about wishes, desires - sexy, dangerous, hopeful, the way it could be, maybe.

The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens - and honor its own previous commitments - by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel's right to live in peace under these conditions.

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm [parts per million] to at most 350 ppm... If the present overshoot of this target CO₂ is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

If someone wishes for good health, one must first ask oneself if he is ready to do away with the reasons for his illness. Only then is it possible to help him.

Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go.

For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.

No form of violence can ever be excused in a society that wishes to call itself decent

Dreams are nothing more than wishes and a wish is just a dream you wish to come true.

Wishes and fears are illusions, Dil Bahadur, not realities. You must practice detachment.

Early to bed and early to rise is a bad rule for anyone who wishes to become acquainted with our most prominent and influential people.

A person should design the way he makes a living around how he wishes to make a life.

There are quite a lot of people asking for a painting so I'm not able to fulfil all their wishes. And this gives me a lot of freedom, because if I cannot please them at all I don't have to start to try.

Man's best friend is one who wishes well to the object of his wish for his sake, even if no one is to know of it.

Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice.

Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.

A Muslim man can have up to four wives. He can divorce his wife without offering any reason, while it is quite difficult for a woman to get a divorce. The testimony of two women is equal to that of one man. Any woman who wishes to travel needs the written permission of her husband. And the number of unemployed women is four times that of men.