We are fond of looking to the future, because our secret wishes make us apt to turn in our favour the uncertainties which move about in it hither and thither.
Until the boy’s sexual wishes in regard to his mother become more intense and his father is perceived as an obstacle to them; from this the Oedipus complex originates.
Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness.
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
There is a difference between WISHING for a thing and being READY to receive it. No one is ready for a thing, until he believes he can acquire it.
The world is not a wish-granting factory.[repeated often in the rest of the book]
Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
I wish I could say twelve things at once. I wish I could say all there was to say in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end.
I don’t know why it is, but every time I reach out for something I want, I have to pull back because other people will suffer.
Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
An urgent wish is no guarantor of a sound solution.
