We do not understand that life is paradise, for it suffices only to wish to understand it, and at once paradise will appear in front of us in its beauty.
That politician who curries favor with the citizens and indulges them and fawns upon them and has a presentiment of their wishes, and is skillful in gratifying them, he is esteemed a great statesman.
Such is the strength of the burden of habit. Here I have the power to be but do not wish it. There I wish to be but lacks the power. On both grounds, I'm in misery.
[Michelle Obama] used to say to our friends, "Barack's exactly the kind of guy I want to be president. I just wish he didn't want to do it when I was married to him."
You may wish that some parts of (your face) were different, but the actual fact is shown in the mirror. Now, can you look at your conditioning in a similar way?
All through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire- a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away.
The State must act as the guardian of a millennial future in the face of which the wishes and the selfishness of the individual must appear as nothing and submit.
If you wish to assured of the truth of Christianity, try it. Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually transmutes faith into knowledge will be the reward of thy belief.
Now if you should hear any one say that Lincoln don't [sic] want to go to Congress, I wish you as a personal friend of mine, wouldtell him that you have reason to believe he is mistaken.