A Wish (n.) splits into paths: autopathically he must wish she become another's; sympathetically he wishes her religiously infinitized — which would condemn him to penitence in perpetuum.
A Wish (n.) fulfilled entirely by chance can drive a person to despair, because it negates the reality of life at its root.
A Wish (n.) always assumes the wisher would remain himself: he wants another man's intelligence, talent, even firmness, as though everything could change but him.
A Wish (n.) is only a temptation for the knight of faith when it is to do the intelligible thing — to love Isaac as a father, or sacrifice him for the nation.
A Wish (n.) one would trade heaven for might prove empty when fulfilled; which is worse, to keep the pain of what was missed, or to have it and see it is hollow?
A Wish (n.) grows harder to make the more you love: for a stranger any good will do, for the beloved no single good seems safe enough.
A Wish (n.) is already its own fulfilment, spiritually speaking, as God is already in the sorrow that is near him.
A Wish (n.) gives you away: tell someone what you wish and he learns not only your desire but, if it cannot rightly be wished, the confusion of your mind.
A Wish (n.) is the consolation that disconsolateness invents: it consoles for an instant, but looked at closely it does not console, and the poet's whole life is this despair.