Mere wishes are silly fishes. [ Proverb ]
I have Immortal longings In me. [ William Shakespeare ]
Oh, may I with myself agree,
And never covet what I see.
Content me with an humble shade,
My passions tamed, my wishes laid;
For, while our wishes wildly roll.
We banish quiet from the soul.
It is thus the busy beat the air,
And misers gather wealth and care. [ Dyer ]
I've often wished that I had clear.
For life, six hundred pounds a year,
A handsome house to lodge a friend,
A river at my garden's end,
A terrace walk, and half a rood
Of land, set out to plant a wood. [ Swift ]
We cannot wish for that we know not. [ Voltaire ]
Every wish Is like a prayer with God. [ Mrs. Browning ]
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. [ Walter Scott ]
Like our shadows
Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines. [ Young ]
In idle wishes fools supinely stay;
Be there a will, then wisdom finds a way. [ William Shakespeare ]
If wishes would bide, beggars would ride. [ Proverb ]
Our wishes lengthen, as our sun declines. [ Young ]
He is rich who wishes no more than he has. [ Cicero ]
In sleep, when fancy is let loose to play.
Our dreams repeat the wishes of the day. [ Claudius ]
Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought. [ William Shakespeare ]
Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek. [ William Shakespeare ]
In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the bless'd abodes,
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels men rebel;
And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of order, sins against the Eternal cause. [ Pope ]
If wishes were thrushes, beggars might eat birds. [ Proverb ]
Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart.
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art. [ Johnson ]
As each one wishes his children to be so they are. [ Terence ]
One always wishes to be happy before becoming wise. [ Mme. Necker ]
Still all great souls still make their own content;
We to ourselves may all our wishes grant;
For, nothing coveting, we nothing want. [ Dryden ]
No man is good but as he wishes the good of others. [ Johnson ]
No one wishes to be pitied on account of his errors. [ Vauvenargues ]
Pretexts are not wanting when one wishes to use them. [ Goldoni ]
Wishes, at least, are the easy pleasures of the poor. [ Douglas Jerrold ]
Men's thoughts are much according to their inclination. [ Bacon ]
A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be. [ La Bruyère ]
He wishes well
is worthless, unless the deed go with it. [ Plautus ]
What God wishes and man wishes are two different things. [ French Proverb ]
If a man wishes to become rich he must appear to be rich. [ Goldsmith ]
Wert thou all that I wish thee, great, glorious and free,
First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea. [ Moore ]
It is against womanhood to be forward in their own wishes. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Why wish for more? Wishing of all employments is the worst. [ Young ]
Not he who has little, but he who wishes for more, is poor. [ Seneca ]
No man at the head of affairs always wishes to be explicit. [ Macaulay ]
Pride wishes not to owe, and self-love does not wish to pay. [ La Roche ]
The pine wishes herself a shrub, when the axe is at her root. [ Proverb ]
Wishes, like castles in the air, are inexpensive and not taxable. [ Haliburton ]
What one has wished for in youth, in old age one has in abundance. [ Goethe ]
The lazy ox wishes for horse-trappings, and the steed wishes to plough. [ Horace ]
Hell is full of good meanings and wishes, but heaven is full of good works. [ Proverb ]
The superior man wishes to be slow in his words and earnest in his conduct. [ Confucius ]
If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed. [ Whately ]
He who praises you for what you have not, wishes to take from you what you have. [ Manuel ]
God wishes to exhaust all means of kindness before His hand takes hold on justice. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Humility is the altar upon which God wishes that we should offer Him His sacrifices. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
What folly can be ranker? Like our shadows, our wishes lengthen as our sun declines. [ Young ]
Happy is he who soon discovers the chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
An affectionate mother wishes that her offspring may be wiser and better than herself. [ Horace ]
The mind wishes for what it has missed, and occupies itself with retrospective contemplation. [ Petronius Arbiter ]
Gratitude which consists in good wishes may be said to be dead, as faith without good works is dead. [ Cervantes ]
It is a fearful mistake to believe that because our wishes are not accomplished they can do no harm. [ Gertrude ]
Power is detested, and miserable is the life of him who wishes rather to be feared than to be loved. [ Nepos ]
Service cannot be expected from a friend in service; let him be a freeman who wishes to be my master. [ Martial ]
Unattainable wishes are often called pious.
This seems to indicate that only profane wishes are fulfilled. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]
Before we passionately wish for anything, we should carefully examine into the happiness of its possessor. [ Rochefoucauld ]
The poorest human soul is infinite in wishes, and the infinite universe was not made for one, but for all. [ Carlyle ]
Eyes will not see when the heart wishes them to be blind; desire conceals truth as darkness does the earth. [ Seneca ]
The public wishes itself to be managed like a woman; one must say nothing to it except what it likes to hear. [ Goethe ]
Ever take it for granted that man collectively wishes that which is right; but take care never to think so of one! [ Friedrich Schiller ]
Much wishes man for himself, and yet needs he but little; for the days are short, and limited is the fate of mortals. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Every one is the poorer in proportion as he has more wants, and counts not what he has, but wishes only what he has not. [ Manilius ]
If fortune wishes to make a man estimable she gives him virtues; if she wishes to make him esteemed she gives him success. [ Joubert ]
The apparently irreconcilable dissimilarity between our wishes and our means, between our hearts and this world, remains a riddle. [ Richter ]
We are poor, indeed, when we have no half-wishes left us. The heart and the imagination close the shutters the instant they are gone. [ Landor ]
Beauty is a great gift of heaven; not for the purpose of female vanity, but a great gift for one who loves, and wishes to be beloved. [ Miss Edgeworth ]
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. [ Johnson ]
When I think back on all the blessings I have been given in my life, I can't think of a single one, unless you count that rattlesnake that granted me all those wishes. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
When the painter wishes to represent an event, he cannot place before us too great a number of personages; but he cannot employ too few when he wishes to portray an emotion. [ Joubert ]
The present is withered by our wishes for the future; we ask for more air, more light, more space, more fields, a larger home. Ah! does one need so much room to love a day, and then to die? [ E. Souvestre ]
We protract the career of time by employment, we lengthen the duration of our lives by wise thoughts and useful actions. Life to him who wishes not to have lived in vain is thought and action. [ Zimmermann ]
There is a moral excellence attainable by all who have the will to strive after it; but there is an intellectual and physical superiority which is above the reach of our wishes, and is granted to a few only. [ Crabb ]
I could write down twenty cases, wherein I wished God had done otherwise than He did; but which I now see, had I had my own will, would have led to extensive mischief. The life of a Christian is a life of paradoxes. [ Cecil ]
There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it; the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told. [ Lowell ]
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 labors in any great or laudable undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope and afterwards rewarded by joy. [ Dr. Johnson ]
I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut. [ Goethe ]
Gallantry to women (the sure road to their favor) is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes, a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself as being able to contribute towards it. The slightest indifference with regard to them, or distrust of yourself is equally fatal. [ Hazlitt ]
Infinity is the retirement in which perfect love and wisdom only dwell with God. In infinity and eternity the skeptic sees an abyss in which all is lost. I see in them the residence of Almighty power, in which my reason and my wishes find equally a firm support. Here, holding by the pillars of heaven, I exist - I stand fast. [ Miller ]
Luck is ever waiting for something to turn up. Labor, with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy. Labor turns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence. Luck whines. Labor whistles. Luck relies on chance. Labor on character. [ Cobden ]
A town, before it can be plundered and deserted, must first be taken; and in this particular Venus has borrowed a law from her consort Mars. A woman that wishes to retain her suitor must keep him in the trenches; for this is a siege which the besieger never raises for want of supplies, since a feast is more fatal to love than a fast, and a surfeit than a starvation. Inanition may cause it to die a slow death, but repletion always destroys it by a sudden one. [ Colton ]
See a fond mother encircled by her children; with pious tenderness she looks around, and her soul even melts with maternal love. One she kisses on its cheeks, and clasps another to her bosom; one she sets upon her knee, and finds a seat upon her foot for another. And while, by their actions, by their lisping words, and asking eyes, she understands their numberless little wishes, to these she dispenses a look, and a word to those; and whether she grants or refuses, whether she smiles or frowns, it is all in tender love. [ Krummacher ]