Quotes About Expectation

Why didn't your aunt come here to eat her Christmas dinner?" said the Squire. "Perhaps, sir, because you didn't ask her," said Kate, standing close to her grandfather, — for the old man was somewhat deaf. "And why didn't you ask her; — that is, if she stands upon asking to come to her old home?" "Nay, sir, but I couldn't do that without your bidding. We Vavasors are not always fond of meeting each other.

I shall wait so impatiently for your answer, so do pray write at once. I hear some people say that these sort of things are not so much thought of now as they were once, and that all manner of marriages are considered to be comme il faut. I do not want, you know, to make myself foolish by being too particular. Perhaps all these changes are bad, and I rather think they are; but if the world changes, one must change too; one can't go against the world.

All this was delightful in the extreme; but not the less did ordinary men seem to expect that the usual battle would go on in the old customary way. It is easy to love one's enemy when one is making fine speeches; but so difficult to do so in the actual everyday work of life.

But she was not a woman to be unhappy because she was growing old. Her happiness, like that of most of us, was ever in the future, — never reached but always coming. She, however, had not looked for happiness to love and loveliness, and

Already she fancied she could see the shadow of tomorrow faintly clouding his face...

There was indeed fear in hoping

think I'd prefer tomorrow morning.

La esperanza es el sueño del hombre despierto

youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.

Hope is the dream of a waking man

For this cause also children cannot be happy, for they are not old enough to be capable of noble acts; when children are spoken of as happy, it is in compliment to their promise for the future.

Confidence is characteristic of a person of hope

That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfil.

How could I possibly NOT be disappointed by what I would find? Nothing had ever met my expectation, since nothing could compete with my doctoring imagination, my pathetic compulsion to make the world quanter, funnier, kinder, and more mysterious than it actually was.

Readers of a certain class are apt to call good the plot of that story in which you can't tell what is going to happen next. But in some of the most tedious novels ever written you can't tell what is going to happen next--and you don't care a fig what is going to happen next.

Until an effort is made to satisfy that wish, the sense of uneasy waiting for something to start which has not started will remain to disturb the peace of the soul.

He was prepared, he thought, for any wonder. The only thing he had never expected was the utterly commonplace.

Floyd could imagine a dozen things that could go wrong; it was little consolation that it was always the thirteenth that actually happened.

Yes, it made sense, and was so absurdly simple that it would take a genius to think of it. And, perhaps, someone who did not expect to do it himself.

So the problem of Evil never really existed. To expect the universe to be benevolent was like imagining one could always win at a game of pure chance.

How foolish that expectation had been! He knew now that one might as well hope to see the wind, or speculate about the true shape of fire.

Somehow, he was not in the least surprised, nor was he alarmed. On the contrary, he felt a sense of calm expectation, such as he had once known when the space medics had tested him with hallucinogenic drugs. The world around him was strange and wonderful, but there was nothing to fear.

Anything that had happened once on Earth should be expected millions of times elsewhere in the Universe; that was almost an article of faith among scientists.

He felt confident that when he pulled open the drawer of that desk, he would find a Gideon Bible inside it….