Quotes & Sayings About Three Wishes

Once upon a winter I met a man in the woods The man beckoned me over To see a satchel of goods He offered three wishes I asked for beauty, love, riches And he froze me in stone where I stood. - "The Greedy Ghost of Cypress Pass," common folk song — Marie Lu

Set between England and the Spanish Canary Islands, three women learn the truth about their shared past, and discover the importance of family. Spain, 1939. Following the wishes of her parents to keep her safe during the war, a young girl, Julia, enters a convent in Barcelona. — Rosanna Ley

It appears, from all this, that our eyes are uncertain. Two persons look at the same clock and there is a difference of two or three minutes in their reading of the time. One has a tendency to put back the hands, the other to advance them. Let us not too confidently try to play the part of the third person who wishes to set the first two aright; it may well happen that we are mistaken in turn. Besides, in our daily life, we have less need of certainty than of a certain approximation to certainty. Let us learn how to see, but without looking too closely at things and men: they look better from a distance. — Remy De Gourmont

There are three forces
of the body, mind and feeling. Unless these are together, equally developed and harmonized, a steady connection cannot be made with a higher force. Everything in the Work is a preparation for that connection. That is the aim of the work. The higher energy wishes to but cannot come down to the level of the body unless one works. Only by working can you fulfill your purpose and participate in the life of the cosmos. This is what can give meaning and significance to your life. — Jeanne De Salzmann

What this world doesn't have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who *invented* this system? — Robin McKinley

The impression she left on others and her self-perception had been sewn into a whole so consummate that she could no longer tell how much of each day was defined by what was wished upon her and how much of it was what she really wanted.
--Three Daughters of Eve. — Elif Shafak

The man who wishes to know the "that" which is "thou" may set to work in any one of three ways. He may begin by looking inwards into his own particular thou and, by a process of "dying to self"
self in reasoning, self in willing, self in feeling
come at last to knowledge of the self, the kingdom of the self, the kingdom of God that is within. Or else he may begin with the thous existing outside himself, and may try to realize their essential unity with God and, through God, with one another and with his own being. Or, finally (and this is doubtless the best way), he may seek to approach the ultimate That both from within and from without, so that he comes to realize God experimentally as at once the principle of his own thou and of all other thous, animate and inanimate. — Aldous Huxley

If someone said to me that you can have three wishes, my first would have been to get into racing, my second to be in Formula 1, my third to drive for Ferrari. — Gilles Villeneuve

The truth is that good fantasies carefully limit the magic that's possible. In fact, the magic has to be defined, at least in the author's mind, as a whole new set of natural laws that cannot be violated during the course of the story. That is, if at the beginning of the story you have established that your hero can make only three wishes, you better not have him come up with a fourth wish to save his neck right at the end. That's cheating, and your reader will be quite correct to throw your book across the room and carefully avoid anything you ever write in the future. All speculative fiction stories have to create a strange world and introduce the reader to it - but good fantasy must also establish a whole new set of natural laws, explain them right up front, and then faithfully abide by them throughout. — Orson Scott Card

I thought I was pretty damn clever. She said that was all right, she'd make three wishes. The first was that I wouldn't piss this money away being an idiot and forgetting I had — Nora Roberts

WHAT CAN YOU HAVE found at Holme to entertain you all this time?" complained Sir Julius, looking at his friend through his quizzing glass. His lordship had come down to London on business. Within the hour, news of his arrival had reached a good number of his acquaintances. He had been invited to dine by three particular friends, and a note had been brought around to his house asking him to present himself at his mother's house as a matter of urgency. Having been in London several days and having failed to abide by her wishes, the earl was bracing himself for an imminent visit from the countess. As his lordship had a very fair notion of what his mother wished to ask him about, he was much relieved to have found Sir Julius upon his doorstep instead. — Norma Darcy

He was also active in his local community, a tireless worker for the Democratic Party and, for three consecutive years, director of Chicago's annual Polish Constitution Day Parade. Through this latter activity, he was introduced to (and photographed with) First Lady Rosalynn Carter on May 6, 1978. Mrs Carter signed the photo: "To John Gacy. Best wishes. Rosalynn Carter. — Robert Keller

We hunt the White Stag, like Quentin did. We catch it or shoot it or whatever you do with it. We get three wishes. We wish Fillory would last forever and not die. Done. Mischief managed." Eliot — Lev Grossman

Ending

I lied.
I wanted you from that moment.
I wanted you, wrapped in starlight and reflections,
To be tied up with strings.
And ropes.
And chains.
I wanted you hanging around my neck
Like a charm I could press to my heart and
Make three wishes on.

But I trapped the want
And the words inside my mouth.
I buried those secret things under my tongue,
Biting down until blood and bitterness
Filled my mouth
And poured down the back of my throat.

In the beginning, you said, there was only water.
But what about the end?

I closed my eyes and lay flat
With my back to the ocean
And my face to the sky.
I lifted my hands and caught ribbons of wind
Underneath my fingernails.
I rode the water for so long,
I forgot what my skin felt like when it was dry. — Autumn Doughton

The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster cruel vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging three headed beast like god one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes fools and hypocrites. — Thomas Jefferson

She is sad. She does not speak Japanese. Her husband went to the desert months and months ago. Every day she goes to the market and brings back chocolate, a peach, and a salmon rice-ball for her dinner. She sits and eats and stares at the wall. Sometimes she watches television. Sometimes she walks three miles to Blue Street to look at necklaces in the window that she wishes someone would buy for her. Sometimes she walks along the pier to see the sunken bicycles, pinged into ruin by invisible arrows of battleship-sonar, crusted over with rust and coral. She likes to pet people's dogs as they walk them. That is her whole life. What should she dream of?"
"Something better. — Catherynne M Valente

If the infidels live among the Muslims, in accordance with the conditions set out by the Prophet - there is nothing wrong with it provided they pay Jizya to the Islamic treasury. Other conditions are . . . that they do not renovate a church or a monastery, do not rebuild ones that were destroyed, that they feed for three days any Muslim who passes by their homes . . . that they rise when a Muslim wishes to sit, that they do not imitate Muslims in dress and speech, nor ride horses, nor own swords, nor arm themselves with any kind of weapon; that they do not sell wine, do not show the cross, do not ring church bells, do not raise their voices during prayer, that they shave their hair in front so as to make them easily identifiable, do not incite anyone against the Muslims, and do not strike a Muslim. . . . If they violate these conditions, they have no protection .40 — Raymond Ibrahim

If you were given one wish, what would you wish for? To wish no more. — J.R. Rim

E. Tory Higgins (1987) suggests that self-knowledge encompasses three major domains: the actual self, the ideal self, and the ought self. The actual self consists of your representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) believes that you actually possess. The ideal self consists of your representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) would like you, ideally, to possess = that is a representation of hopes, aspirations, or wishes. The ought self consists of your representation of the attributes that someone believes you should or ought to possess - that is, a representation of duties, obligations or responsibilities. Discrepancies between the actual/own self and ideal selves lead to experiences of dejection-related emotions, such as sadness, disappointment and shame. — Dan P. McAdams

Make three wishes and they shall all come true. Make three hundred and I will honour every one — Jeanette Winterson

She thought about Penny's stories. There was one about a man who had three wishes and married a swan. If I had three wishes, I know what I'd wish for, thought Is. I'd wish for those two boys to be found, and for us all to be back on Blackheath Edge. She thought about Penny teaching her to read. "What's the point of reading?" Is had grumbled at first. "You can allus tell me stories, that's better than reading." "I'll not always be here," Penny had said shortly. "Besides, once you can read, you can learn somebody else. Folk should teach each other what they know." "Why?" "If you don't learn anything, you don't grow. And someone's gotta learn you."
Well, thought Is, if I get outta here, I'll be able to learn some other person the best way to get free from a rolled-up rug. — Joan Aiken

But while capitalism may be a convenient scapegoat, it did not cause any of these problems. Indeed, whatever one wishes to call the unruly mixture of freedom and government controls that made up our economic and political system during the last three decades, one cannot call it capitalism. — Yaron Brook

Make a wish," Oliver said, gesturing to the upturned cup, "and turn it clockwise three times. — Danika Stone

The psychiatric interviewer is supposed to be doing three things: considering what the patient could mean by what he says; considering how he himself can best phrase what he wishes to communicate to the patient; and, at the same time, observing the general pattern of the events being communicated. In addition to that, to make notes which will be of more than evocative value, or come anywhere near being a verbatim record of what is said, in my opinion is beyond the capacity of most human beings. — Harry Stack Sullivan

In art one is concerned with the condition of the spirit for three quarters of the time; one must therefore care for oneself if he wishes to make something great and lasting. — Paul Gauguin

The Handsome Prince Handbook is mute on the subject of chronic workaholism - Prince Charming, apparently, knew how to delegate - and I didn't know where else to turn for help. What do you do when life begins to go wrong and you've used up all three wishes? — Nancy Atherton

Rayna beamed as she hugged everyone good-bye and accepted their wishes for a long and happy relationship. Sage looked dazed.
"How did it go?" I asked.
"I think your mother just arranged peace in the Middle East while brokering a marriage deal for Rayna and me."
"I'm not surprised. How many kids are you having?"
"Four. But we can't start until she's twenty-six, three years after the wedding. Oh, and we're honeymooning at the minister's beach house in Tel Aviv."
"That's nice. I'll have to pop in for a visit."
Sage just shook his head, still shell-shocked.
"Piri forgive you yet?" Ben grinned.
"I don't think so. She put an inch of garlic on everything she served me."
"Don't take it personally. There's lots of garlic in Hungarian food," I assured him.
"Including my chocolate torte," Sage added.
"Okay, you can take that personally," I admitted. — Hilary Duff

We're playing Three Wishes," she told her friend. "Cake, hot bath, soft bed. How about you?"
"World peace," said Karou.
Zuzana rolled her eyes. "Yes, Saint Karou."
"Cure for cancer," Karou went on. "And unicorns for all."
"Bluh. Nothing ruins Three Wishes like altruism. It has to be something for yourself, and if it doesn't include food, it's a lie."
"I did include food. I said unicorns, didn't I?"
"Mmm. You're craving unicorn, are you?" Zuzana's brow furrowed. "Wait. Do they have those here?"
"Alas, no."
"They did," said Mik. "But Karou ate them all."
"I am a voracious unicorn predator. — Laini Taylor

When King asked Adam to make three wishes, he wished that whatever was granting the wishes would not exist. — Anonymous

My wife says books aren't real."
"Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV and parlour? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes truth and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and scepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimension, and I being in and part of those incredible parlours. — Ray Bradbury

Three wishes - no substitutes, exchanges or refunds — Robin Williams

If I could have three wishes, one would be to take an '88 and shove that barrel up Hitler's ass so that cocksucker can cry like the little god-damned girl he is. And hell, after that, I wouldn't need two more wishes. — George S. Patton

The three wishes of every man: to be healthy, to be rich by honest means, and to be beautiful. — Plato

One can be tired of Rome after three weeks and feel one has exhausted it; after three months one feels that one has not even scratched the surface of Rome; and after six months one wishes never to leave it. — Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Christian, you are the state lottery, the cure for cancer, and the three wishes from Aladdin's lamp all rolled into one — E.L. James

Three things are required of you: the wishes you made when you first knew the breadth of this life; the contract you signed when you decided your wishes were not true or possible; and the exacting of the punishment you agreed to when you knew you would break the contract of your life. — Jesse Ball

Compassion is a mind that focuses on the sentient beings that are miserable and wishes them to be free from suffering. Compassion can be of three types, depending on the aspect of wisdom that accompanies it. These three are: compassion focused on sentient beings, compassion focused on phenomena, and compassion focused on the unapprehendable. — Dalai Lama XIV

If I had Aladdin's lamp and the usual three wishes, the first would always be, 'Give me the first day of June. — Gladys Taber

Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be spanked, and their wishes should be granted ... [T]wo or three stinging strokes on the legs or buttocks with a switch are usually sufficient to emphasize the point, 'You must obey me.' — James Dobson

I will begin with what in my opinion is your lack of restraint. You are like a spectator in a theatre who expresses his enthusiasm so unrestrainedly that he prevents himself and others from hearing. That lack of restraint is particularly noticeable in the descriptions of nature with which you interrupt dialogues; when one reads them, these descriptions, one wishes they were more compact, shorter, say two or three lines. — Anton Chekhov

There are three different takes on career women in this house, she thought to herself: that of my husband, who respects working women but wishes I wasn't one of them; that of my mother, who hates the very idea; and then there's me, a working woman who has no idea what she really wants! There — Ayse Kulin

As the crowd jeered and laughed, the leader of the attackers vowed meekly, "We will never touch girls again. Honest, we won't." Then the three men edged away from the smirking crowd. As my pulse rate returned to normal, I discovered I was as amazed as everyone else. Taking a deep breath, I thanked God for His help and miraculous assistance. Those who had seen the encounter continued to call out their approval and good wishes. "Well done, Superwoman!" "You should be a coach. You should be training all the young women and girls. Make the streets safe!" Eventually I would earn my black belt, become a coach and share the Gospel the same way that I was saved. — Samaa Habib

No practical biologist interested in sexual reproduction would be led to work out the detailed consequences experienced by organisms having three or more sexes; yet what else should he do if he wishes to understand why the sexes are, in fact, always two? — Ronald Fisher

Oh, and 13.1 million American people had their homes foreclosed. Because their debt, it turns out, was real; it was only the debt within the financial sector that was imaginary. It was only the people who generated the crisis who got three magical wishes from an economic genie. There was no abracadabra for ordinary people; they just got abraca-fucked. — Russell Brand

My three wishes are just be respected out the game. I want respect from everybody. And just make a successful clothing line and company. I'm not going to put a number on it. Just to have a great career. — Nayvadius Cash

When I was growing up I had three wishes. I wanted to be a Lindbergh-type hero, learn Chinese, and become a member of The Algonquin Round Table. — John F. Kennedy

If I had three wishes for my country, they would be these: keep fighting, keep moving forward, and don't act like a douchebag. — Michael Ian Black

It does not matter if you are asking for health, for happiness, for financial wealth, or for all three. It doesn't matter if you have no idea how this will come to you. Neither does it matter if you have no reason to expect it to. — Stephen Richards

It's time you go back to your cell. Your phone call is over. If anyone wishes to speak to you now, we have to arrange it. She said gesturing the guard to come escort me. Only reason you're getting the guard is because if I'm not restrained in three seconds I'm gonna kick your ass from here to Timbuktu ... — Bella Shadow

Be sure that if you are unhappily celebrated for either beauty, wit, intellect, or all three together, half society wishes you dead already, and the other half tries to make you as wretched as possible while you are alive. — Marie Corelli

I want to find a genie in a bottle that can grant me three wishes. I want to be able to speak, read, write, and understand any language ever written or spoken, just any language throughout the history of man. That would be one of my wishes from the genie, so I would have to put "multilingual" on the resume, should I ever find the genie. — Maynard James Keenan

At Imbolg, we always use a version of that in our ritual, with each person who wishes to pulling out three strands of hair by the roots and feeding them into a flame while putting themselves anew under the protection of Brighidh. — Lunaea Weatherstone

Some days he wishes that he could simply empty the chambers of the men, fill the halls instead with women: the short sharp shock of three thousand two hundred mothers. The ones who picked through the supermarket debris for pieces of their dead husbands. The ones who still laundered their gone son's bed sheets by hand. The ones who kept an extra teacup at the end of the table, in case of miracles. The elegant ones, the angry ones, the clever ones, the ones in hairnets, the ones exhausted by all the dying. They carried their sorrow
not with photos under their arms, or with public wailing, or by beating their chests, but with a weariness around the eyes. — Colum McCann

Tell me something, Toru," She said. "Do you love me?"
"You know I do."
"Will you do me two favors?"
"You can have up to three wishes, Madame."
Naoko smiled and shook her head." No, two will do. One is for you to realize how grateful I am that you came to see me here. I hope you'll understand how happy you've made me. I know it's going to save me if anything will. I may not show it, but it's true."
"I'll come to see you again." I said. "And what is the other wish?"
"I want you always remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?"
"Always," I said. "I'll always remember. — Haruki Murakami

He wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow. He put a spell on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it. — W.W. Jacobs

I suppose that if we in intelligence were one day given three wishes, they would be to know everything, to be believed when we spoke, and in such a way to exercise an influence to the good in the matter of policy. — Sherman Kent

Some men may be unready
for the coming of the genie
who grants three wishes. — Toba Beta

There were three thin wrinkles at her neckline, sharply etched, like notches on the road of life. Or maybe they were marks to commemorate when three wishes had come true - though Ushikawa had serious doubt that this had ever happened. — Haruki Murakami

There is an old saying that man only dares use his words for three purposes, to "heal, bless or prosper." What man says of others will be said of him, and what he wishes for another, he is wishing for himself. — Florence Scovel Shinn

You don't approve?" Joan asked, picking up on Delphine's tone.
"Their stories were for themselves, not the Mirrors."
"What do you mean?" said Bea.
"Certainly sometimes a good little character would find a lamp, and would not be so corrupted by the strangely endless possibilities of three wishes that they ended up causing more harm than they ever imagined. Those stories fostered belief, they were retold, certainly; but they were few and far between. Most of the genie's tales showed the characters exactly who they really were, not when they were despised and degraded, not when they'd reached the gutter and been given licence to look at the stars. No, the genies showed them who they were when they were invincible. The characters, they try to forget stories like that. — F.D. Lee

We belong to the camp of peace. We believe in peace. We believe that our one God wishes us to live in peace and wishes peace upon us, for these are His teachings to all the followers of the three great monotheistic religions, the Children of Abraham. — King Hussein I

The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in the stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own. — Charles De Lint