Industry need not wish. [ Benjamin Franklin ]
If you wish to be loved, love. [ Seneca ]
Better do it than wish it done. [ Proverb ]
Wish chastely, and love dearly. [ William Shakespeare ]
I gaze upon the thousand stars
That fill the midnight sky;
And wish, so passionately wish,
A light like theirs on high.
I have such eagerness of hope
To benefit my kind;
I feel as if immortal power
Were given to my mind. [ Miss Landon ]
Oft in the tranquil hour of night
When stars illume the sky,
I gaze upon each orb of light.
And wish that thou wert by. [ George Linley ]
Study to be what you wish to seem. [ John Bate ]
So sweet the blush of bashfulness
Even pity scarce can wish it less. [ Byron ]
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground. [ Pope ]
I have no wish to be made a bishop. [ Applied to an affected indifference to obtaining what one really desires ]
We cannot wish for that we know not. [ Voltaire ]
To wish for death is a coward's part. [ Ovid ]
Many kiss the hand they wish cut off. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Every wish Is like a prayer with God. [ Mrs. Browning ]
The wind breath'd soft a lover's sigh,
And, oft renew'd, seem'd oft to die
With breathless pause between,
O who, with speech of war and woes,
Would wish to break the soft repose
Of such enchanting scene! [ Scott ]
We are apt to believe what we wish for. [ Proverb ]
The most happy ought to wish for death. [ Seneca ]
What ardently we wish, we soon believe. [ Young ]
I am misanthropos, and hate mankind,
For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog.
That I might love thee something. [ William Shakespeare ]
Neither fear nor wish for your last day. [ Mart ]
If you resent, and wish a woman ill,
But turn her over one moment to her will. [ Young ]
Poets wish either to profit or to please. [ Horace ]
To purchase Heaven has gold the power?
Can gold remove the mortal hour?
In life can love be bought with gold?
Are friendship's pleasures to be sold?
No - all that's worth a wish - a thought.
Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought.
Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind,
Let nobler views engage thy mind. [ Dr. Johnson ]
The wish, which ages have not yet subdued
In man, to have no master save his mood. [ Byron ]
I wish you all the joy that you can wish. [ William Shakespeare ]
My pen is at the bottom of a page,
Which being finished, here the story ends;
'Tis to be wish'd it had been sooner done,
But stories somehow lengthen when begun. [ Byron ]
It is great folly to wish only to be wise. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Hell is full of good meanings and wish ings. [ Herbert ]
Friends I have made, whom envy must commend.
But not one foe whom I would wish a friend. [ Churchill ]
All wish to know, but no one to pay the fee. [ Juv ]
No day passes without something we wish not. [ Proverb ]
Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought. [ William Shakespeare ]
Many kiss the hands they wish to see cut off. [ Proverb ]
Men in rage strike those that wish them best. [ William Shakespeare ]
I wish the crowd to feel itself well treated,
Especially since it lives and lets me live. [ Goethe ]
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie;
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. [ Milton ]
Many wish to be pious, but none to be humble. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Till taught by pain,
Men really know not what good water's worth:
If you had been in Turkey or in Spain,
Or with a famish'd boat's crew had your berth,
Or in the desert heard the camel's bell,
You'd wish yourself where truth is - in a well. [ Byron ]
If you wish to ruin yourself, marry a rich wife. [ Michelet ]
As this auspicious day began the race
Of every virtue join'd with every grace;
May you, who own them, welcome its return,
Till excellence, like yours, again is born.
The years we wish, will half your charms impair;
The years we wish the better half will spare;
The victims of your eyes will bleed no more,
But all the beauties of your mind adore. [ Jeffrey ]
Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart.
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art. [ Johnson ]
When we cannot act as we wish, we must act as we can. [ Terrence ]
Men believe that willingly which they wish to be true. [ Caesar ]
If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the lowest. [ Syrus ]
If you wish to be good, first believe that you are bad. [ Epictetus ]
He who has no wish to be happier is the happiest of men. [ W. R. Alger ]
Wert thou all that I wish thee, great, glorious and free,
First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea. [ Moore ]
We are no longer happy, so soon as we wish to be happier. [ Walter Savage Landor ]
If you wish a coquette to regard you, cease to regard her.
The refusal of praise is only the wish to be praised twice. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Why wish for more? Wishing of all employments is the worst. [ Young ]
It is difficult to esteem a man as highly as he would wish. [ Vauvenargues ]
Pride wishes not to owe, and self-love does not wish to pay. [ La Roche ]
Opportunity, sooner or later, comes to all who work and wish. [ Lord Stanley ]
They wish to know of the family secrets, and so to be feared. [ Juv ]
I wish you all sorts of prosperity, with a little more taste. [ Le Sage ]
If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness. [ Alexander Smith ]
I wish I was as sure of anything as Macaulay is of everything. [ William Windham ]
You should not fear, nor yet should you wish for your last day. [ Martial ]
If you wish to remove avarice you must remove its mother, luxury. [ Cicero ]
As you can not do what you wish, you should wish what you can do. [ Terence ]
It will be long enough ere you wish your skin full of oilet holes. [ Proverb ]
Even every ray of hope destroyed and not a wish to gild the gloom. [ Burns ]
Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. [ Seneca ]
We wish to have what we have not, and what we have ceases to please. [ Monvel ]
You are as likely to obtain your wish, as the wolf is to eat the moon. [ Proverb ]
If you do no more than barely wish me well, you are no brother of mine. [ Proverb ]
You must be mad with the insane unless you wish to be left quite alone. [ Petronius ]
Do you wish men to speak well of you? Then never speak well of yourself. [ Pascal ]
Rivers are roads which travel, and which carry us whither we wish to go. [ Pascal ]
Speak to living ears as you will wish you had spoken when they are dead.
Speak little and well, if you wish to be considered as possessing merit. [ From the French ]
My highest wish is to find within the God whom I find everywhere without. [ Kepler ]
Sensitive people wish to be loved; vain people wish only to be preferred. [ Levis ]
If you wish to avoid seeing a fool you must first break your looking-glass. [ Rabelais ]
Fewer possess virtue than those who wish us to believe that they possess it. [ Cicero ]
I wish I had an answer to that, because I'm tired of answering that question. [ Yogi Berra ]
Philanthropy is the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow-creatures. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable. [ Heine ]
You are in a pitiable condition when you have to conceal what you wish to tell. [ Syrus ]
The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of poverty. [ Dr. Johnson ]
If you wish to write well, study the life about you, - life in the public streets. [ Horace Mann ]
There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love. [ Chamfort ]
Do you wish a portrait that is not flattered? Ask a woman to make one of her rival. [ De Propriac ]
Things are sullen, and will be as they are, whatever we think them or wish them to be. [ Cudworth ]
I intend no modification of my oftexpressed wish that all men everywhere could be free. [ Abraham Lincoln ]
If men wish to be held in esteem, they must associate with those only who are estimable. [ Bruyere ]
Better than fame is still the wish for fame, the constant training for a glorious strife. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula and Superman away. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price. [ Juvenal ]
What we wish we readily believe, and what we think ourselves we imagine that others think also. [ Caesar ]
Nobody knows who may be listening; say nothing which you would not wish put in the daily paper. [ Spurgeon ]
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is,
prose = words in their best order;
poetry = the best words in the best order. [ Coleridge ]
The greatest misfortune one can wish his enemy is that he may love without being loved in return. [ Labouisse ]
The Golden Rule Of Three.
Three things to be - pure, just and honest.
Three things to govern - temper, tongue and conduct.
Three things to live - courage, affection and gentleness.
Three things to love - the wise, the virtuous and the innocent.
Three things to commend - thrift, industry and promptness.
Three things about which to think - life, death and eternity.
Three things to despise - cruelty, arrogance and ingratitude.
Three things to admire - dignity, gracefulness and intellectual power.
Three things to cherish - the true, the beautiful and the good.
Three things for which to wish - health, friends and contentment.
Three things for which to fight - honor, home and country.
Three things to attain - goodness of heart, integrity of purpose and cheerfulness of disposition.
Three things to give - alms to the needy, comfort to the sad and appreciation to the worthy.
Three things to desire - the blessing of God, an approving conscience and the fellowship of the good.
Three things for which to work - a trained mind, a skilled hand and a regulated heart.
Three things for which to hope - a haven of peace, a robe of righteousness and the crown of life. [ Beattie ]
Hateful is the power and pitiable is the life of those who wish to be feared rather than to be loved. [ Nepos ]
That hour is coming, when we shall more earnestly wish to gain time, than ever we studied to spend it. [ Proverb ]
It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another thing to wish to be on the side of truth. [ Richard Whately ]
Before we passionately wish for anything, we should carefully examine into the happiness of its possessor. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves. [ Samuel Johnson ]
There is no beautifier of complexion or form or behavior like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us. [ Emerson ]
All mankind is one of these two cowards - either to wish to die when he should live, or live when he should die. [ Sir Robert Howard ]
We wish others to possess, or to acquire, all the qualities and virtues that can serve our pleasures or interests. [ De Finod ]
Be not angry that you cannot make others what you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself what you wish to be. [ Thomas à Kempis ]
It is dangerous to abandon one's self to the luxury of grief: it deprives one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery. [ Amiel ]
I wish a robot would get elected president. That way, when he came to town, we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
I wish it were never one's duty to quarrel with anybody; I do so hate it: but not to do it sometimes is to smile in the devils face. [ George MacDonald ]
The passion of hatred is so durable and so inveterate that the surest prognostic of death in a sick man is a wish for reconciliation. [ Bruyere ]
The wretch that would wish the poetry of life and feeling to be extinct, let him forever dwell in flame, in frost, in ever-during night. [ Dante ]
We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment. [ Henry Home ]
If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else. [ Carlyle ]
Lenity will operate with greater force, in some instances, than rigour. It is, therefore, my first wish to have my whole conduct distinguished by it. [ G. Washington ]
Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty. [ Savonarola ]
Cullen whispered in his last moments: I wish I had the power of writing or speaking, for then I would describe to you how pleasant a thing it is to die.
[ Dr. Derby ]
Art thou afraid of death, and dost thou wish to live for ever? Live in the whole that remains when thou hast long been gone{} (wenn du lange dahin bist). [ Friedrich Schiller ]
Look in the face of the person to whom you are speaking, if you wish to know his real sentiments; for he can command his words more easily than his countenance. [ Chesterfield ]
Swearing is invoking the witness of a spirit to an assertion you wish to make, but cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit in a mischief you wish to inflict. [ John Ruskin ]
Firmness, both in sufferance and exertion, is a character I would wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and the cowardly feeble resolve. [ Burns ]
It is not in the power of every one to taste humor, however he may wish it; it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him. [ Sterne ]
I wish scientists would come up with a way to make dogs a lot bigger, but with a smaller head. That way, they'd still be good as watchdogs, but they wouldn't eat as much. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
There are few who, either by extraordinary endowment or favour of fortune, have enjoyed the opportunity of deciding what mode of life in especial they would wish to embrace. [ Cicero ]
Is not marriage an open question when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in? [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
How readily we wish time spent revoked, that we might try the ground again where once - through inexperience, as we now perceive - we missed that happiness we might have found! [ Cowper ]
I cannot see why women are so desirous of imitating men. I could understand the wish to be a boa constrictor, a lion, or an elephant; but a man! that surpasses my comprehension. [ T. Gautier ]
I long to believe in immortality. If I am destined to be happy with you here - how short is the longest life. I wish to believe in immortality - I wish to live with you forever. [ Keats ]
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of close attention; and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read. [ Johnson ]
The reading of romances will always be the favorite amusement of women: old, they peruse them to recall what they have experienced; young to anticipate what they wish to experience. [ A. Ricard ]
I should as soon think of swimming across the Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue. [ Emerson ]
Procrastination has been called a thief, - the thief of time. I wish it were no worse than a thief. It is a murderer; and that which it kills is not time merely, but the immortal soul. [ Nevins ]
A true friend will appear such in leaving us to act according to our intimate conviction, will cherish this nobleness of sentiment, will never wish to substitute his power for our own. [ William Ellery Channing ]
It is more reasonable to wish for reputation while it may be enjoyed, as Anacreon calls upon his companions to give him for present use the wine and garlands which they propose to bestow upon his tomb. [ Dr. Johnson ]
I wish everybody had the drive he (Joe DiMaggio) had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I'd never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest high catch, and he never walked off the field. [ Yogi Berra ]
Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them: but we can be said only to fulfill our destiny in the place that gave us birth. [ Hazlitt ]
Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, carries the banished man home, and places all mortals on the same level, insomuch that life itself were a punishment without it. [ Seneca ]
I know not whether there exists such a thing as a coin stamped with a pair of pinions; but I wish this were the device which monarchs put upon their dollars and ducats, to show that riches make to themselves wings, and fly away. [ Gotthold ]
If I were not a king, I would be a university man; and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would desire to have no other prison than that library (the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford). [ James I ]
I have remarked that those who love women most, and are most tender in their intercourse with them, are most inclined to speak ill of them, us if they could not forgive them for not being as irreproachable as they wish them to be. [ T. Gautier ]
As to pay, sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress that as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to accept this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit from it. [ George Washington ]
Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children, and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it. [ Colton ]
One could not wish any man to fall into a fault; yet it is often precisely after a fault, or a crime even, that the morality which is in a man first unfolds itself, and what of strength he as a man possesses, now when all else is gone from him. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Simplicity is the straightforwardness of a soul which refuses to reflect on itself or its deeds. Many are sincere without being simple; they do not wish to be taken for other than they are, but they are always afraid of being taken for what they are not. [ Fénelon ]
In beginning the world, if you don't wish to get chafed at every turn, fold up your pride carefully, put it under lock and key, and only let it out to air upon grand occasions. Pride is a garment all stiff brocade outside, all grating sackcloth on the side next to the skin. [ Lytton ]
A blushing young damsel of 109 has just died at Mallow, Ireland. She had been an ardent smoker of twist tobacco for 81 years, and finally died in the bloom of her youth. To make matters worse, she was an orphan. Those who do not wish to die young should make a note of this. [ Tobacco Jokes For Smoking Folks, 1888 ]
O blessed health! thou art above all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee. [ Sterne ]
Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian - I mean, you take the sterilized Christian, for there's only one. Dear sir, I wish you wouldn't look at me like that. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]
As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish them to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture. [ Plutarch ]
Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two great faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasoning. [ Macaulay ]
A wise man will select his books, for he would not wish to class them all under the sacred name of friends. Some can be accepted only as acquaintances. The best books of all kinds are taken to the heart, and cherished as his most precious possessions. Others to be chatted with for a time, to spend a few pleasant hours with, and laid aside, but not forgotten. [ Langford ]
Never! never has one forgotten his pure, right educated mother. On the blue mountains of our dim childhood, toward which we ever turn and look, stand the mothers, who marked out to us from thence our life; the most blessed age must be forgotten ere we can forget the warmest heart. You wish, O women! to be ardently loved, and forever, even till death! Be, then, the mothers of your children. [ Richter ]
Mutability is the badge of infirmity; it is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike; now he is for marrying, and now a mistress is preferred to a wife; now he is ambitious and aspiring, presently the meanest servant is not more humble than he; this hour he squanders his money away, the next he turns miser; sometimes he is frugal and serious, at other times profuse, airy, and gay. [ Charron ]
Do you wish to become rich? You may become rich, that is, if you desire it in no half way, but thoroughly. A miser sacrifices all to his single passion; hoards farthings and dies possessed of wealth. Do you wish to master any science or accomplishment? Give yourself to it and it lies beneath your feet. Time and pains will do anything. This world is given as the prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world is truer still of the world to come. [ F. W. Robertson ]
If we wish to know the political and moral condition of a state, we must ask what rank women hold in it; their influence embraces the whole of life; a wife! - a mother! - two magical words, comprising the sweetest source of man's felicity; theirs is a reign of beauty, of love, of reason, - always a reign! a man takes counsel with his wife, he obeys his mother; he obeys her long after she has ceased to live; and the ideas which he has received from her become principles stronger even than his passions. [ Aime Martin ]
The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
In the matter of diet - which is another main thing - I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince-pie after midnight; up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That is all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it. And I wish to urge upon you this - which I think is wisdom - that if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. When they take off the Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a cemetery. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]