Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. —John Quincy Adams

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

                    —Lady Nancy Astor

Weep for the lives your wishes never led.

               —Wystan Hugh Auden

To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.

                   —Carlos Castaneda

Work will win when wishy washy wishing won’t.

                  —Thomas S. Monson

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

My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.

                          —Charles Lamb

Let us take things as we find them; let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not… We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.

              —John Henry Newman

To a resolute mind, wishing to do is the first step toward doing. But if we do not wish to do a thing, it becomes impossible.                —Robert Southey

Great minds have purposes; others have wishes.

                   —Washington Irving

If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the lowest.

                        —Publilius Syrus

Things don’t change, but by and by our wishes change.

                           —Marcel Proust

Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.     —Julius Caesar

Destiny has two ways of crushing us — by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.

              —Henri Frederic Amiel

The wishing gate opens into nothing.

    —Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Stop the mindless wishing that things would be different. Rather than wasting time and emotional and spiritual energy in explaining why we don’t have what we want, we can start to pursue other ways to get it.   –Greg Anderson

Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and to be that perfectly.

                —St Frances De Sales