Best 54 quotes in «wishful thinking quotes» category

Don't wish away your problems. They need action, not wishful thinking

I didn't know that I've completely left them all in the past. There's a part of me, wishing and hoping, that she would come back for me, and we would start a new life together, but she didn't.

Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely.

I don't believe in magic, yet I see making wishes as a nod to hope, an acknowledgement of the power of will, the recognition of a goal.

If coffee were like dreams, then I would be wired in constant bliss, never needing sleep to live out my dreams.

If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The only real philosophical answer is automatically self-contradictory: 'Only if I did not know that I was doing so.' To go through the entire experience once more would be banal and Sisyphean—even if it did build muscle—whereas to wish to be young again and to have the benefit of one's learned and acquired existence is not at all to wish for a repeat performance, or a Groundhog Day. And the mind ought to, but cannot, set some limits to wish-thinking. All right, same me but with more money, an even sturdier penis, slightly different parents, a briefer latency period… the thing is absurd. I seriously would like to know what it was to be a woman, but like blind Tiresias would also want the option of re-metamorphosing if I wished. How terrible it is that we have so many more desires than opportunities.

I do not much trust the man who cares solely to inspire - he does not really inspire me - only the man who cares mostly to tell the truth, whatever that may do. For when the man who cares to tell the truth happens to inspire, I, in addition, find it easier to believe that he in fact does his homework on how and when one should truly inspire.

I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.

I might not yet be falling in love, but I might be flirting with the promise of love, the idea of love, the making of a place in my heart for love, though it may have been more a wish than a promise.

I have too many wishes and feel that none of them are within my reach. But I also believe that the moment we're beyond making wishes is either the moment we're truly happy, or the moment to give up

In the days when wishing was having, I got what I wished and then I wish I hadn't.

It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished.

It is not as if I want to be a princess. Since I was four years old I've spent every birthday, shooting star, wishbone, and lost eyelash wishing I did not have to be a princess!

[...] "Marry me," he said. "Marry me, Tess. Marry me and be Tessa Herondale. Or be Tessa Grey, or be whatever you wish to call yourself, but marry me and stay with me and never leave me, for I cannot bear another day of my life to go by that does not have you in it.

I have enough patient to wait for the fulfillment of my wishes.

In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure, death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing, the world lies waiting.

Is that stupid?" he asked. It was the first time she'd seen him look anything less than sure of himself. "To want a chance at greatness?

IV   The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels. V   If the many become the same as the few, when possess'd, More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy Man. VI   If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing, despair must be his eternal lot. VII   The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite.

I wish I could read my books over for the first time to see what you guys see.

I wish I knew why she never told me any of this. Maybe she thought I wouldn't be able to handle it, that I was too sheltered or too innocent or something. If she had told me why she cut herself all the time, or that it was the pills that made her act so spaced out, or that she was even on pills, or even saw doctors, or any of it, I would have done my best to help her. I'm not saying I'm a superhero. I'm not saying I would have just swooped down and saved her. I'm just saying the only reason everything was a waste was that she made it a waste. That whole time, back when I was just a normal kid in high school, living out my normal life, I really thought everything mattered.

People who don’t construe their life and don’t frame their own tale, stay on the sidelines, remain only an act without a story and turn into an "empty box". Out-of-the-box thinking and inventiveness remains then merely wishfull thinking. ( "Everybody his story" )

Perhaps they suspected that I thought less of them because I knew it. (I'm too aware of human frailty to have let that happen. If anything, I thought more of them for wanting to face up to what they had done and for trying to change.)

Most people’s religion is what they want to believe, not what they do believe.

Oh, how I wish I was a woman—his woman.

Please tell me the truth about yourself.

Some people live disconnected, in a world of their own. Their wishful thinking represents their sole veracity. But when the mirror smashes the reflection of their delusion, it will not falter to talk back. ( "The day the mirror was talking back" )

Soil, blood, seed- Let me draw strength from you. let it be enough.

Rick feels almost the way he used to halfway through his third drink, his favorite moment, the way he wishes all moments in life could feel: heightened with the sense that anything could happen at any moment--that being alive is important, because just when you least expect it, you might receive exactly what you least expect.

Sometimes something that you've been asking for It's just something that you could not see before. For it was something that made you belong, And that was there the whole time all along.

The graceful wings of a dove lead to the endless imagination in a dream wings of pain.

The best antidote to the furtive poison of anger, fear, anxiety, or any of our destructive, unwieldy passions, is just gratitude. And not the grandiose, boisterous or especially obvious kind. It is not necessarily the verbose or expressive kind. It's often the full immersion, a kind of deep submersion even, into a pool of awareness. This penitent affect distills within us surreal realizations; it is a focus, tinged with layers of deep remorse and the profound beauty of newfound appreciation that washes over us about the simplest things we have slipped into, or suddenly become aware of our own complacency over. This cooling antidote instantly soothes any veins swollen with the heat of pride, or stopped up with pearls of finely polished self-pity. This all comes about with a balm of humility that is simultaneously soothing and jolting to all of our senses at the same time. It is a cocktail both sedative and stimulant in the same, finite instant. It often occurs as we are halted dead in our tracks by a thing so extraordinary and breathtakingly natural, even luscious in its simplicity and unusually ordinary existence; often something we have been blatantly negligent of noticing as we routinely trudge past it in our self-absorbed haze. These are akin to the emotions one might feel as they finally notice the well-established antique rose garden, in full bloom; the same one they have walked by for years on their way to somewhere - but never noticed before. This is the feeling we get when our aging parent suddenly, in one moment, is 87 in our mind's eye - and not the steady 57, or eternal 37 we have determinedly seen our so loved one to be, out of purely wishful thinking born of the denial that only the truest love and devotion can begin to nurture - for the better of many decades.

The main wall that's standing between you and success is having the courage to face your fear of failure. The foundation of success or failure can only be built with one's thoughts and beliefs. Positive thoughts and beliefs breed positive results. However, positive thoughts without consistent actions make every dream a wishful thinking. Therefore, if you truly want success, you have to consistently think and work positively regardless of the circumstances you are faced with.

The vision people hold of the world to come is but a reflection, with predictable wishful distortions, of the world in which they live.

they should invent a car that stays cool inside when it is parked

We all know dogmatists who are more concerned about holding their opinions than about investigating their truth. ... if they are mistaken, they will never discover it; they have condemned themselves to perpetual error. Human beings (including myself) sometimes use their beliefs for wish-fulfillment. Too often we believe what we want to be true.

Whenever He answers prayers, God usually prioritizes those by people who, instead of their mouths, have prayed with their hands and/or feet.

…the day had been both unprofitable and unsatisfactory, and he was wishing he could live it over again.

The self-centered man will always expect nothing but praise. He will hope and expect all incoming criticism to be mere self-projection from the critic because when you're self-centered, self-projection is all you can imagine one can do.

They don't know who I am; what they do know, is that I'm not nothing, and that I'm not noone.

To live with tremendous and proud composure; always beyond —. To have and not to have one's affects, one's pro and con, at will; to condescend to them, for a few hours; to seat oneself on them as on a horse, often as on an ass — for one must know how to make use of their stupidity as much as of their fire. To reserve one's three hundred foregrounds; also the dark glasses; for there are cases when nobody may look into our eyes, still less into our "grounds." And to choose for company that impish and cheerful vice, courtesy. And to remain master of one's four virtues: of courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude.

We want so badly to be happy – to live the kinds of lives that we always hoped we’d live – that we give gifts to ourselves by remembering things not as they were, but as we wish they were.

Wishful thinking and voluntary daydreaming can occasionally make dreams come true. Unrealistic projects, improbable ventures and unfeasible missions can sometimes be achieved through 'conscious dreaming'. At times, dreams can be an inspiration and generate creative reflections. (<"Lost dreams")

You can be all that you wish and desire to be. Take the challenge and pursue your most cherished dreams.

You know what, your imagination works faster than your mind.

When they wish to be top dogs and become the heartbeat of all attention, some appear to be missing grit and find themselves relentlessly out of steam. Since the philosophy of their living seems to restrict itself to ‘enjoying wanting’ and keeping everything on a wish list, their life, eventually, remains mere wishful thinking. ( "Feeling like a fallen star" )

You can get what you want in life. You must reach out with all your heart.

You have to choose your path. You have to decide what you wish to do. You are the only person that can determine your destiny.

Alex stepped out from behind the rock. Relieved to see him in one piece, I threw myself forward and hugged him. He returned the embrace with a low chuckle, "Jeez, Dez, if I knew this was what it would take to get you to put your hands all over me again, I would have done it sooner.

All leading from the rear gets you, is first place at the back of the line.

All great people had critics, but they still believe in beauty of their dreams.