Quotes About Expectations

You all looked so happy together in the photograph. You looked like the perfect family. Is there such a thing anymore because if there is, my happy little unit was definitely not in the queue when they were handing out the titles.

I'd tried enough to know that anything long term wasn't going to work.

She didn't feel thirty. But then again again, what was being thirty supposed to feel like? When she was younger, thirty seemed so far away, she thought that a woman of that age would be so wise and knowledgeable, so settled in her life with a husband and children and a career. She had none of those things. She still felt as clueless as she had felt when she was twenty, only with a few more gray hairs and crow's feet around her eyes.

It's funny because when you're a child, you believe you can be anything you want to be, go wherever you want to go. There are no limits. You expect the unexpected, you believe in magic. Then you grow older and that innocence is shattered. The reality of life gets in the way and you're hit by the realization that you can't be all you wanted to be, that you just might have to settle a little bit less.

There's the person who you think you should be and there's the person who you really are. I've lost sense of both.

And while positivity is the seed of many a great thing, wishful thinking alone doesn't make a good foundation for marriage.

The reality of life gets in the way and you're hit by the realisation that you can't be all you wanted to be

UnsureOne: But surely if you've been friends since you were six and you're now thirty-two, you've both been married once and are now living with other people in different countries, then if it hasn't happened by now, it won't be happening at all.

Why can't people just be really good at something? Why do they have to be the best at something?

People do whatever the hell they want to do at any age they fancy. Last month you were thirty-five. That means you're five years from forty. Do you think that the day you reach forty you will be any different than you were at thirty-nine or forty-one for that matter? People create little ideas about ages so they can write silly self-help books, stick stupid comments in birthday cards, create names for internet chat rooms and look for excuses for crisis that are happening in their life.

The stress of it all. How the hell are we expected at the age of sixteen (and seventeen, in your case) to decide what we want to do for the rest of our lives? Right now all I want to do is get out of school, not start planning to get into another one. You're lucky you've always known what you want to do.

She also wants the freedom to be able to act as she deems appropriate, without fearing or dreading the feedback, the sensing the disapproval and disappointment. Of always letting him down. Of having to check herself. She doesn't want any more cold air between them, but mostly she doesn't like to have to second-guess herself at a job that she knows she's more than capable of doing.

Do you think that the day you reach forty you will be any different than you were at thirty-nine or forty-one for that matter? People create little ideas about ages so they can write silly self-help books, stick stupid comments in birthday cards, create names for internet chat rooms and look for excuses for crises that are happening in their life.

She never wanted anybody to fail to meet their potential. To her that was the greatest error of all.

It was not a union which seemed likely to prosper, since its chief characteristics were imprudence, youth and extreme good looks.

Maybe too many of my expectations have been shaped by bad television.

Why did you lead me on for weeks only to tell me you didn't like me. Is that something you learned from Serena?

Tinsley hated the thought of people greeting her with "Where's Julian?" It was like once you were a couple, you ceased to exist as an individual. It made her a little sick to her stomach.

Humans, with the arrogance of a supposedly superior species (tell that to your cat!), expect domestic animals to fit into their lifestyle. They bring cats into their homes and expect them to follow a human timetable and human rules.

The great lovers will always be unhappy, because for them love is great and so they ask of their beloved the same intensity of thought that they have for her – otherwise they feel betrayed.

The quickest path to missing your commitments is to make commitments that you know you can't meet.

The book is also about cultivating the desire to live a remarkable life. Strangely, we don't all set out on the quest to lead remarkable lives when we start our careers. Most of us are content to go with the flow. Our expectations have been lowered for us by the media and by our friends, acquaintances, and family members. So, leading a remarkable life is something you have to discover as even being a reasonable goal. It's not obvious.

So what's your major? Have you figured it out yet? Yeah, biology. I'm hoping to go to med school. How about you? Elementary education. She could have told me she was majoring in shit-eating with a minor in injecting guys with AIDS blood while they slept, and I would have thought it was the greatest, most noble thing in the world.

I hated what I had drawn in that sketchbook. I should not have done it. Why had he asked me to do it? I hated the drawings. They were lies, stagnant creations done to someone else's demand, and I despised them.