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- Death is not the worst; rather, in vain
To wish for death, and not to compass it. - Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC), Electra
- Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
- Demosthenes (384 BC - 322 BC), Third Olynthiac
- Men willingly believe what they wish.
- Julius Caesar (100 BC - 44 BC), De Bello Gallico
- Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.
- Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria
- Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
- Thomas a Kempis (1380 - 1471), Imitation of Christ
- To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,--'t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Hamlet", Act 3 scene 1
- Quotation ... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.
- Henry W. Fowler (1858 - 1933), A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926)
- 'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
- J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 - 1973), The Lost Road
- I wish you well and so I take my leave,
I Pray you know me when we meet again. - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
- The easiest thing of all is to deceive one's self; for what a man wishes he generally believes to be true.
- Demosthenes (384 BC - 322 BC)
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