You become what you believe - not what you wish or want but what you truly believe. Wherever you are in life, look at your beliefs. They put you there.
A pessimist asked God for relief. Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness, said God. No, replied the petitioner, I wish you to create something that would justify them. The world is all created,said God, but you have overlooked something
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.
I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.
I did say, at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction.