Quotes About Expectations

Realism is the embrace of disappointment, in order no longer to be disappointed. 4 "So I came to the city, my friend," the Doll then told Jodie, "what of it?

My dad used to say, you young never carry your weight.

It was a part he felt himself feeling his way into, and the longer it went on, the more the men around him confirmed him in his role. It was as if they were willing him into being, as though there had to be a Big Fella, and, having desperate need of such, their growing respect, their whispered asides, their opinion of him - all this trapped him into behaving as everything he knew he was not. As if rather than him leading them by example they were leading him through adulation.

Don't let what your parents do disappoint you.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him sing opera.

Meeting a girl, falling in love, marrying her, moving to Connecticut, buying a fucking house, starting a life with her and thinking you really knew anything about her--the last part was a complete fiction, which made all the rest a joke.

People are unrealistically optimistic even when the stakes are high. About 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, and this is a statistic most people have heard. But around the time of the ceremony, almost all couples believe that there is approximately a zero percent chance that their marriage will end in divorce—even those who have already been divorced!10 (Second marriage, Samuel Johnson once quipped, "is the triumph of hope over experience.")

But then that's humans for you—never can trust the stroppy fuckers to live up to the stereotypes you assign.

The perfectionist writes, paints, creates with one eye on her audience. Instead of enjoying the process, the perfectionist is constantly grading the results. The perfectionist has married the logic side of the brain.

You may call it having standards. What you should be calling it is perfectionism.

When well-meaning parents and friends push marriage or nine-to-five or anything on us that doesn't evolve in a way that allows for our art to continue, we will react as if we are fighting for our lives—we are.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Hacer progresos, no llegar a la perfección es lo que deberíamos pedirnos a nosotros mismos.

After we'd moved into 81, we had placed an order for a phone, and waited. First a man came by to see if we lived where we said we did. Then two men visited to make a study of our situation. Then another man appeared to find out if we really wanted a phone. The process was very French, and made me laugh, especially when I thought of how quickly such a transaction would have taken place in the States.

Some might have referred to Vince, Buck and Calvin as ordinary fellows or salt of the earth. Such terms are merely code for men who've led lives in which boyhood dreams become a luxury, a whim, before boyhood even comes to an end.

You don't always have to kiss a lot of frogs to recognize a prince when you find one -Henrietta Barett

Mother," Hyacinth said, pausing for slightly longer than normal to steal a bit of time to organize her thoughts, "I am not going to chase after Mr. St. Clair. He's not at all the right sort of man for me." "I'm not certain you'd know the right sort of man for you if he arrived on our doorstep riding an elephant." "I would think the elephant would be a fairly good indication that I ought to look elsewhere.

When we fall in love, we hope - both egotistically and altruistically - that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and approved. Of course, love does not always bring approval: being seen may just as well lead to a thumbs-down and a season in hell.

His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.

With a lover, a wife, when you find the worst - be it infidelity or lack of love, madness or the suicidal spark - you are almost relieved. Life is as I thought it was; shall we now celebrate this disappointment?

At times, I suspect that the concept of maturity is maintained by a conspiracy of niceness.

Because just as all political and historical change sooner or later disappoints, so does adulthood. So does life. Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn´t all it´s cracked up to be.

Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Some Englishman once said that marriage is a long dull meal with the pudding served first.