Quotes About Wishing Things Were Better

#1. In order to be kind, one must do. There is no point in thinking good thoughts and not acting on them. There is no currency in wishing things were better but not rolling up one's sleeves and helping to change them.

Ingrid Newkirk

#2. Compassion is born out of lovingkindness.
It is born of knowing our oneness, not just thinking about it or wishing it were so. It is born out of the wisdom of seeing things exactly as they are.

Sharon Salzberg

#3. Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing.

Alexander Woollcott

#4. Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature.

Gustave Flaubert

#5. If you can't laugh when things go bad
laugh and put on a little carnival
then you're either dead or wishing you were.

Stephen King

#6. When do you quit wishing for things to be different? Months? Years? Decades? You think that if a sufficient amount of time goes by, it should be enough to help you stop caring anymore. But it doesn't. Ever.

T. Torrest

#7. 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

#8. Of all the things I have been privileged to do and experience in life, the highest honor has been fatherhood. Wishing Fathers everywhere a wonderful day.

Roy Yamaguchi

#9. You won't accomplish anything sitting around wishing. You've got to do things.

Allen Drury

#10. When you live a hard life, you spend years wishing for the easy stuff, but then when you get it, it never feels right. You get used to having to fight and claw for the things you want, and when you don't have to do that anymore, everything feels a little bit muted.

Cora Carmack

#11. Stop wishing for things you complain you have not, and start making the best of all that you've got.

Helen Steiner Rice

#12. I'd spent endless nights wishing things had been different - wishing that ours had been a fairy-tale story. But, it wasn't. It couldn't be.

Stephanie Connelley Worlton

#13. Then he put in a call for Nicole in Zurich, remembering so many things as he waited, and wishing he had always been as good as he had intended to be.

F Scott Fitzgerald

#14. Suffering is wishing things were other than they are.

Gautama Buddha

#15. Nostalgia is a way of remembering people and places and things, and wishing things hadn't changed. It has a sweetness to it. Sadness is just
well
being sad.

Linda Lael Miller

#16. I didn't grow up dreaming or wishing for things, Grace. Then I saw this woman in this motherfucking picture, and I let myself dream, let myself wish.

Cat Porter

#17. Everything that comes together falls apart. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you stopped suffering when they did.

John Green

#18. Relationships aren't about idealistic love and happily ever after. It's those things that bug [ ... ] us about each other and yet eventually we find ourselves wishing we could go back and do it all over again.

Julie Cross

#19. I almost wish I hadn't any conscience, it's so inconvenient. If I didn't care about doing right, and didn't feel uncomfortable when doing wrong, I should get on capitally. I can't help wishing, sometimes, that father and mother hadn't been so dreadfully particular about such things. -- Jo

Louisa May Alcott

#20. There must be a season for everything that measures what success means to you, there must be a deliberately scheduled time slot for the things that are important to you. Wishing is not enough, deliberate plans followed by deliberate actions make it possible.

Archibald Marwizi

#21. That's the fix for all of this? Eat Kisses?" I laugh, wishing life were just that easy: all things fixable with chocolate.

K. Bromberg

#22. Just watching people's ability to adapt, especially young people's, inspires me to accept more in life instead of wishing things were different all the time.

Rhea Seehorn

#23. I don't believe that wishing works. I think we get the things we work for.

Brendan Fraser

#24. Instead of wishing things would change, I'm asking God for His strength to make a change.

Lysa TerKeurst

#25. They say you're only as old as you feel but try telling that to a ninety-year-old on their deathbed, just wishing he could do all the bloody things he wants to do.

Karina Halle

#26. The beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things' selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

Richard Wilbur

#27. The same things are done by us, over and over, with terrible predictability. One may be forgiven, in view of this, for wishing at least to associate with beauty.

Saul Bellow

#28. Only two things you ignore: things that aren't important and things you wish weren't important, and wishing never works.

David Shore

#29. Stop thinking like Alice in Wonderland, Celia told herself sternly. You're a grown-up, it's no use shutting your eyes, wishing things would happen

Maeve Binchy

#30. Everybody in the world has a different reason for wishing they could say things that most people know not to say.

Lisa Edelstein

#31. We can't change things by wishing. Only by doing. It's our actions, Tara, not our thoughts.

Jennifer McMahon

#32. Forgiveness means letting go of the hope for a better past. You won't be able to forgive yourself for not doing things differently until you stop wishing things were different

Zoe York

#33. The main thing I've learned is that we all have to learn to work with - and appreciate - the brain we've been given, and not waste time wishing things were easier.

Laini Taylor

#34. Wishing you a happy birthday with all those special things, the things which make memories and for all the happiness it brings.

Susan Smith

#35. Wishing is for things you can't get on your own. Wanting is for things you can.

Abbie Zanders

#36. Be glad you're fifty - andThat you got there while things were nice,In a world worth looking at twice.So here's wishing you many more years,But not all that many. Cheers!

Kingsley Amis

#37. ...I'd like to know what you want out of life."
"I don't know what I want anymore." I toyed with the delicate lace on my pillowcase, wishing that lovely things didn't have to be so fragile.

Anita Higman

#38. I've seen people spend a lot of time wishing things are not the way they are. This kind of activity is a waste of mental and emotional energy that needs to be directed toward how God intended you to live today.

Jonas Beiler

#39. That's the really annoying thing about love. I probably would be happier if I didn't know it, but once you do know it, once you feel those things for someone, you can't make yourself really wish it away. It's like wishing away ... your soul.
- Jenny

Toni Blake

#40. And sometimes, sometimes, wanting things, wishing for, working for them, is a good thing. Otherwise, we become nothing but spoiled boys and girls frustrated that we don't get every new toy we see.

Lisa Tawn Bergren

#41. The sun will rise tomorrow. It always does, and all the wishing in the world for the way things were, or for what they could have been, won't change that. It won't change how things are.

Elizabeth Scott

#42. I suppose that's the secret, if you're ever wishing for things to go back to the way they were. You just have to look up. THROUGH

Lauren Oliver

#43. When you stop wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you stop suffering when they do.

John Green

#44. Rachel found herself wishing that the week would never end-that her father could stay here forever-but knew he couldn't. If there was one thing she had learned in her brief time at Kalaupapa, it was that all things end.

Alan Brennert

#45. And by and by Christopher Robin came to the end of things, and he was silent, and he sat there, looking out over the world, just wishing it wouldn't stop.

A.A. Milne

#46. His mother is dead, yet she has never not been, in theory, at his shoulder. He wants her not to have known and suffered or even witnessed all the things that followed her death. Including all this now. But that would be like wishing her dead. Merely dead.

Graham Swift

#47. Be ambitious, Spend time wanting, pursuing, wishing. Chase things with passion. Dream but never let the chase diminish what you already have.

Unknown

#48. Maybe that's just the nature of us, ever wishing for things that were and could be rather than things that are and will be.

Pierce Brown

#49. Just remember that certain things you see, you can't take them back. And no amount of wishing will make them go away.

Jeyn Roberts

#50. Do you not see what damage has been done to science through this: i.e. pedants wishing to be philosophers; to treat of natural things, and mix themselves with and decide about things Divine?

Giordano Bruno

#51. The whole point of wishing is not to focus on what you don't have it's to show you what could be. Once you know what you want then you know what to reach for what to dream about. It's how you change things.

Lisa Mangum

#52. There will be people wishing to see the things you see, but can't. So the things they see physical is temporal, but the things shone spiritually is eternal.

Anthony Liccione

#53. People around you that you feel you're close to, are they really wishing you good things, you know?

Julie Delpy

#54. I think my work is optimistic - as much as it is pathetic and funny and sad and ridiculous, at the end of the day it's about the hope that something will go right, and the constant wishing for a world where things might start to make sense.

Laurel Nakadate

#55. My life changed the day I moved beyond just wishing for things and I started earning them. That is the day I learned that we don't get what we wish for, we get what we work for.

Steve Maraboli

#56. I must stop wishing for things to happen. Because something will happen eventually, and when it does, I'll be bound to wish it hadn't.

Kristin Cashore

#57. And as far as wishing goes, I save my wishes for things that can still come true. There's no point in wasting them on the past.

G.A. McKevett

#58. Here comes goodbye, here comes the last time
Here comes the start of every sleepless night
The first of every tear Im gonna cry
Here comes the pain, Here comes me wishing things had never changed
And she was right here in my arms tonight, but here comes goodbye

Rascal Flatts

#59. Sounds to me like you're praying Violet, not wishing. When we wish, it's usually for something frivolous...Something not serious. Like what you want for your birthday. Prayers are for more serious things." -Mom

Brenda Woods

#60. It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.

George Eliot

#61. I definitely connected to the fact that life gets out of control and you end up doing things and wishing you were doing other things instead.

Adam Sandler

#62. Don't waste your life wishing things had been different. Change the now.

J.M. Madden

#63. I don't see what harm there is in my wishing not to tie myself. I don't want to begin life by marrying. There are other things a woman can do.

Henry James

#64. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart,
you'd stop suffering when they did.

John Green

#65. What remained would gradually acquire its own shape and dimension, but many of our favorite things, my favorite ways of being a couple, had vanished and it was no use pretending, hoping, wishing that he would return to his old self, and me to mine. [p. 156]

Diane Ackerman

#66. When we are young, we want to be old and for things to change.
When we are old, we want to be young and for things to go back to the way they were.

J.R. Rim

#67. In dream consciousness ... we make things happen by wishing them, because we are not only the observer of what we experience but also the creator.

Pir Vilayat Khan

#68. Freedom within is embodied in things as well as people. Like coins tossed into a wishing well, they contain our hopes and dreams.

Fennel Hudson

#69. wishing my hair was longer and straighter, wishing my skin was lighter, wishing I was someone else, asking God to make me beautiful. These are things I beg my daughter not to inherit.

Key Ballah

#70. No one is entitled to anything. Everything we get in this life we have worked for. And sometimes we take on baggage we never even signed up for, but that dosen't mean you deserve it. I wake up everyday wishing I could change things, but I can't change past. All I can do is change the future.

E.M. Youman

#71. Boobs are like boyfriends. You go around wishing for them and trying to figure out what you have to do to get them, and worrying about all the things you're probably doing wrong, and then one day, who knows why, you wake up and find you've got more than you wanted.

Pamela Todd

#72. Dark Fae are evil. They do evil things to each other, but there is an unspoken rule that you never harm family."
She held him tighter, wishing she could take away his pain with a hug. "Families hurt each other all the time.

Donna Grant

#73. We bring champagne to Franklin and Jeffrey, and I offer a final toast, 'Wishing you all good things in your life together.' Short, simple, to the point.
I look at Meredith, relaxed in her ivory gown, my sister is all grown up. I'm grateful we did our growing up together.

Steven Rowley

#74. ... wishing that I were one of those people who say all the right things at all the right times. But I'm not. Instead, I think of them hours later and only wish that I'd said them.

K. Bromberg

#75. Instead of complaining about how things should be, I embraced how things were. I stopped putting energy into wishing my life were any different - into wishing bad things didn't happen to me - and instead focused 100% on making the best of what I had. Since I

Hal Elrod

#76. They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.

Tom Bodett

#77. He keeps wishing for impossible things to happen. Like to see the stars while it's raining and for the person he loves to love him back.

Anonymous

#78. It's never gone so far as me wishing I'd never done 'Quadrophenia,' but there was a time when I wouldn't talk about it because I wanted people to be interested in me for other things as well.

Phil Daniels

#79. I'd wasted so much time wishing I could be different, wishing I could change things, change myself ... I thought it would be easier to be someone else than to be who I was becoming, but I didn't think that anymore

Michelle Hodkin