Quotes About Expectations

All you girls get married, you have no strength of mind at all. I really do feel that all this sex is overrated, don't you?' 'I don't know,' said Martha humorously, 'I haven't tried yet.' But he would not accept the humour. He pressed her arm urgently, and looked down into her face and insisted, 'Well, don't you think so? All you girls want to be made love to, and really…' His face faded in disgust.

For she is remembering Paul's saying: There is no such thing as a frigid woman, there are only incompetent men.

The worst thing in the world was the way I felt when I wanted us to be like the families in the books in the library, when I just wanted Daddy Glen to love me like the father in Robinson Crusoe. (209)

The women I loved most in the world horrified me. I did not want to grow up to be them.

Men could do anything, and everything they did, no matter how violent or mistaken, was viewed with humor and understanding. The sheriff would lock them up for shooting out each other's windows, or racing their pickups down the railroad tracks, or punching out the bartender over at the Rhythm Ranch, and my aunts would shrug and make sure the children were all right at home. What men did was just what men did. Some days I would grind my teeth, wishing I had been born a boy.

I never expect anything,' said Marthe. 'It provides a level, low-pitched existence with no disappointments.' 'I'm all for a level, low-pitched existence,' said Philippa. 'And when you see your way back to one, for heaven's sake don't forget to tell me.' At which Marthe, surprisingly, laughed aloud.

A Scott, having got his bride pregnant, was apt to file her as completed business for eight months at a time.

The more modest your expectations, the less often you will court disappointment.

She rose. 'You mean,' Catherine d'Albon said, 'I have agreed to marry a libertine?' 'Everyone marries libertines,' Lymond said comfortably, rising and taking her elbow. 'But not everyone knows it beforehand.

You wouldn't expect me to make social calls if you had the remotest idea of the work entailed in bringing two unfortunate persons to the altar.' Careless words. 'It takes ten minutes, in my experience,' Lymond said.

Men fall short of your desire, and so you abandon men. The Crown falls short of your expectations, and you abandon the Crown. A leader with no following is an aerolite unloosed, M. Crawford, its power blinding and blistering where it wantonly falls, until it burns itself out. To take a puny man and make him great is your gift.

How nice to go through life being male, pretty and wanted.

Lymond made no concessions on the grounds of language. If they fought abroad they would be expected as a matter of course to speak as their allies did. If they did not already know several European languages, then they must learn.

I had no expectations,' Philippa said. The tears stood still on her face. 'This is one lesson I know by heart already.

You are offered love and won't accept it except on your own terms. That isn't tragic. It's the word you've just mentioned—it's childish.

I should rather, Philippa, marry where there is no love than marry and find love turn to jealousy.

He held her eyes and said clearly, 'You have a great deal to be responsible for.' 'She gave you birth,' Richard said. 'That was her first mistake. The next was to spoil you. So that everything you want, you must have immediately.

The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written. ( Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne , 8 September 1935)

But -- my dear, my heart is BROKEN! I have seen the perfect Peter Wimsey. Height, voice, charm, smile, manner, outline of features, everything -- and he is -- THE CHAPLAIN OF BALLIOL!! What is the use of anything? ... I am absolutely shattered by this Balliol business. Such waste -- why couldn't he have been an actor?

I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them." "Yes," said Harriet, "but I am one of them. I disconcert myself very much. I never know what I do feel." "I don't think that matters, provided one doesn't try to persuade one's self into appropriate feelings.

And by the way, my dear,' he said, 'you might just mention to Mrs. Sutton that if she must read the morning paper before I come down, I should be obliged if she would fold it neatly afterwards.' 'What an old fuss-box you are, darling,' said his wife. Mr. Mummery sighed. He could not explain that it was somehow important that the morning paper should come to him fresh and prim, like a virgin. Women did not feel these things. (Suspicion)

Harriet agreed that intellectual women should marry and reproduce their kind; but she pointed out the English husband had something to say in the matter and that, very often, he did not care for an intellectual wife.

But that's men all over. They want the thing done and then, of course, they don't like the consequences. Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.

In my day one had to have either brains or beauty to get on -- preferably both. Nowadays nothing seems to be required but a total lack of figure.