When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers I kind of wanted to be a vampire.
What I need and what I want are two very different things.
We cannot wish for that we know not.[On ne peut désirer ce qu’on ne connaît pas.]
We are never further from our wishes than when we fancy we possess the object of them.
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.
Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness.
To do nothing evil is good; to wish nothing evil is better.
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’s always going to need surgeons, but it’s going to need bowls too. Forget what you think anyone else wants. What do you want?
The world is not a wish-granting factory.[repeated often in the rest of the book]
The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.
