empty wish

This ambition would have remained an empty wish but for the action of a few ardent missionaries who undertook to convert the German conquerors, in the seventh century, as the vanquished Celts had been converted in the third.

It is impossible to understand a consciousness existing without an object, a perception without a sensation to be perceived, an attention without a point of application, an empty wish which should have nothing to wish for; in a word, a spiritual activity acting without matter on which to act, or more briefly still—mind without matter.

His salutation is no empty wish, but a command which makes its own fulfilment possible.

He is," said Butler to himself, "rich in what I want; why should I feel vexed that he has the heart to dedicate some of his pelf to render them services, which I can only form the empty wish of executing?

Yer making no empty wish, Miss Amy.