The wishing-gate opens into nothing. [ Spurgeon ]

Wishing, of all employments, is the worst. [ Young ]

Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all. [ E. B. Browning ]

Why wish for more? Wishing of all employments is the worst. [ Young ]

Poetry has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me. [ Coleridge ]

Look upon every day, O youth, as the whole of life, not merely as a section, and enjoy the present without wishing, through haste, to spring on to another. [ Jean Paul ]

Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me. [ S. T. Coleridge ]

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. [ George Eliot ]

The flatterer's object is to please in everything he does; whereas the true friend always does what is right, and so often gives pleasure, often pain, not wishing the latter, but not shunning it either, if he deems it best. [ Plutarch ]

Your invitation honors me, and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection; and that when you in your return shall arrive at pier No. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]