Quotes About Expectation

For, if unduly prolonged, the rapture of waiting for Eulalie became a torture,

By the last days of December, it had come to seem likely that I would receive such a letter. Whether it was really likely or not, our desire for such a letter, our need for it, is enough to make us believe it will probably come. The soldier is convinced that an indefinitely extendable period must elapse before he will be killed, the thief before he will be arrested, all of us before we must die.

My first impression of them had been quite the opposite: I had found them very ordinary, just like anyone else, but this was because, before actually meeting them, I had seen them, as I saw Balbec, Florence, and Parma, as magical names.

love which, ever unsatisfied, lives always in the moment that is about to come)?

But, less disappointing than life is, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

With women who do not love Us, as with the 'missing,' the knowledge that there is no hope left does not prevent our continuing to wait for news. We live on tenterhooks, starting at the slightest sound

Con le donne che non ci amano, come con i "dispersi", sapere di non avere più nulla da sperare non ci impedisce di continuare ad attendere.

Let's hope that when we are dead things will be better arranged.

For while an event for which we are longing never happens quite in the way we have been expecting, failing the advantages on which we supposed that we might count, others present themselves for which we never hoped, and make up for our disappointment; and we have been so dreading the worst that in the end we are inclined to feel that, taking one thing with another, chance has, on the whole, been rather kind to us.

It has been said that beauty is the promise of happiness. Reversing the idea, the prospect of pleasure can also be the beginning of beauty.

E recomecei a escutar, a sofrer; quando estamos à espera, do ouvido que recolhe os ruídos ao espírito que os despoja e analisa, e do espírito ao coração a quem ele transmite os seus resultados, tão rápido é o duplo trajeto que nem sequer lhe podemos perceber a duração, e parece estarmos escutando diretamente com o nosso coração.

The hierophant was not even conscious of my absence. When he heard of it, he was distressed: "What, you didn't see me carving the turkeys myself?" I replied that having failed, so far, to see Rome, Venice, Siena, the Prado, the Dresden gallery, the Indies, Sarah in Phèdre, I had learned to resign myself, and that I would add his carving of turkeys to my list.

Actually, the very notion that it will come within reach—that there is no fulfillment which will be forever denied us, as long as it has ceased to be a fulfillment we desire—is one which, though true, is only partly true. By the time it comes to us, we have become indifferent to it.

For what people have once done they will do again indefinitely, and if you go every year to see a friend who, the first time, was not able to meet you at the appointed place, or was in bed with a chill, you will find him in bed with another chill which he has just caught, you will miss him again at another meeting-place at which he has failed to appear, for a single and unalterable reason in place of which he supposes himself to have various reasons, drawn from the circumstances.

O modo inquisitivo, ansioso, exigente com que olhamos para a pessoa amada, nossa expectativa da palavra que nos vai dar ou tirar a esperança de um encontro para o dia seguinte, e, até que essa palavra seja dita, a nossa imaginação alternada, se não simultânea, da alegria e do desespero, tudo isso torna a nossa atenção em face do ente querido muito trêmula para que se possa obter uma imagem sua devidamente nítida.

the knowledge that the hour was approaching when her husband ought to arrive without knowing whether or not he would send one of those telegrams of which the model had been wittily invented by M. de Guermantes: "Impossible to come, lie follows," paled her cheeks and ringed her eyes.

As for our sentiments, we have spoken of them too often to repeat again now that as often as not love is nothing more than the association of the face of a girl (whom otherwise we should soon have found intolerable) with the heartbeats inseparable from an endless, vain expectation, and from some trick that she has played upon us. All this is true not merely of imaginative young men brought into contact with changeable girls.

As for our feelings, we need hardly repeat that love is often only the association between the image of a girl (of whom otherwise we would very quickly have tired) and the increased heart rate inseparable from a long, futile wait when the young lady in question has "stood us up.

I had the feeling of something inside me that flipped like a fish in a net. It was hope. As much as I bad-mouth people in general and think the worst of them, I'm secretly waiting for them to surprise me. Try as I might, I haven't been able to give up on them wholly. Even though they are nine and nine-tenths dirt, now and again they are capable of something angelic. I can't say that it restores my faith, because I really had none in the first place, but when it happens it does confuse you.

As much as I bad-mouth people in general and think the worst of them, I'm secretly waiting for them to surprise me. Try as I might, I haven't been able to give up on them wholly. Even though they are nine and nine-tenths dirt, now and again they are capable of something angelic. I can't say that it restores my faith, because I really had none in the first place, but when it happens it does confuse you.

Everyone expects to be at the end of something. What no one expects is to be at the end of everything .

Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: there's the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.

It can't be the best day in the history of the entire earth. Because tomorrow is going to be even better.

Niet om onzentwil, maar omdat vader en moeder naar een aardig speelpopje verlangen, wordt een kind de levenstaak opgelegd.