quotations about expectations
We love to expect, and when expectation is disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
"Butler", The Works of Samuel Johnson
What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it is supposed to be.
ANONYMOUS
Expectations are blossoms; few only mature in fruit.
EMPEROR YE-WANG
attributed, Day's Collacon
Sometimes the unexpected happens when you don't expect a person to come up to expectations.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Expectations are like organic sesame rice cakes--good in theory but seldom nourishing.
JASON PARHAM
"Depth of Field", Wired, May 23, 2019
High expectations are the key to everything.
MICHAEL BERGDAHL
High Expectations are the Key to Everything
The crane, hoping to eat dried fish when the sea dried up, wasted away in expectancy.
INDIAN PROVERB
If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected -- an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON
Housekeeping
We ought not to speculate on the future as if it were already past, nor build expectations on events which may eventually turn out very differently from what they seemed at first to promise.
POLYBIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.
L. M. MONTGOMERY
Anne of Green Gables
You are your own worst enemy. If you can learn to stop expecting impossible perfection, in yourself and others, you may find the happiness that has always eluded you.
LISA KLEYPAS
Love in the Afternoon
There is abundant reason to believe that optimism – big, little, and in between – is useful to a person because positive expectations can be self-fulfilling.
CHRISTOPHER PETERSON
American Psychologist, Jan. 2000
These expectations are like a drumbeat in the background--after a while, you don't even consciously hear it, but you are nonetheless walking in step with the beat.
SUSAN NOLEN-HOEKSEMA
Eating, Drinking, Overthinking
Expectation ends only in heaven.
KENTIJERN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Role expectations are like social recipes that enable us to cook up a number of social interactions with relative ease, rather than having to produce a newly created social behavior each time.
CAROLINE HODGES PERSELL
Understanding Society
For this moment, I am wholly myself, unshaped by the needs of others, by their dreams or expectations or sensibilities. But I am also lonely. With no one to shape me, who stands here, watching the moon, or the stars, or the clouds?
KIJ JOHNSON
The Fox Woman
People live up to your expectations, not their potential.
STEPHEN YOUNG
Micro Messaging: Why Great Leadership is Beyond Words
There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.
JODI PICOULT
Nineteen Minutes
In expectation there is happiness.
SHI-KA-SHIU
attributed, Day's Collacon
Positive expectations are the mark of the superior personality.
BRIAN TRACY
Maximum Achievement