Quotes About Expectation

The two women looked at me as if I were the Messiah returning with their personal salvations sealed in separate envelopes.

He who has never hoped can never despair

You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and toes because you do.

A solider always assumes that he is going to shoot, not to be shot.

I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same fifty percent rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't...Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe...same as the voodoo lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles. It's all the same...so just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself...

We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.

Fred dislikes the idea going into the ministry partly because he doesn't like feeling obligated to look serious, and he centers his doubts on what people expect of a clergyman.

Instead of trying to still his fears he encouraged them, with that superstitious impression which clings to us all that if we expect evil very strongly it is the less likely to come...

She] looked as if her nerves were quivering with the expectation that something would be thrown at her. But she never had anything worse than words to dread.

She felt that she was beginning to know the pang of disappointed love, and that no other man could be the occasion of such delightful aerial building as she had been enjoying for the last six months.

but, dear me! has it not by this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

On the verge of a decision we all tremble: hope pauses with fluttering wings.

Rosamond being one of those women who live much in the idea that each man they meet would have preferred them if the preference had not been hopeless.

For in general mortals have a great power of being astonished at the presence of an effect toward which they have done everything, and at the absence of an effect toward which they had done nothing but desire it.

Tom's mind was set to the expectation of the worst that could happen—not death, but disgrace.

The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy. But Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly — something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.

Left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from without; and there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

thinking of its wings and never flying.

I shall be glad of a cup of coffee as soon as possible.

I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the doorsill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present.

To Mr. Casaubon now, it was as if he suddenly found himself on the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the oncoming oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons.

When events turn out so much better for a man than he has had reason to dread, is it not a proof that his conduct has been less foolish and blameworthy than it might otherwise have appeared? When we are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not altogether unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune .

But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight — that in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.