Expectations Quotes

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
― Alexander Pope

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
― Bruce Lee

“If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?”
― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes

“It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary

“Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“You are most powerful when you are most silent. People never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words hanging leaping from their mouths. Silence? No.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

“I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations.”
― Bill Watterson

“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus."

[The Science of Second-Guessing (New York Times Magazine Interview, December 12, 2004)]”
― Stephen W. Hawking

“Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.”
― Patricia McCormick, Cut

“If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Insufferable Gaucho

“When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“You can't expect everyone to have the same dedication as you.”
― Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid

“Positive expectations are the mark of the superior personality.”
― Brian Tracy, Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed

“He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.”
― Robert Jordan, New Spring

“You are your own worst enemy. If you can learn to stop expecting impossible perfection, in yourself and others, you may find the happiness that has always eluded you.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon

“Know that everything is in perfect order whether you understand it or not.”
― Valery Satterwhite

“I mean, like most guys, you carry around this girl in your head, who is exactly who you want her to be. The person you think you will love the most. And every girl you are with gets measured against this girl in your head.”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician King

“What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave, sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened down to your very bones.”
― Sharon Creech, Walk Two Moons

“Everyone wanted me to feed them that story—darkness to light, weakness to strength, broken to whole. I wanted it, too.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“Would you like to know your future?

If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator.

So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence -- a surprise.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“If you expect nothing, you can never be disappointed.”
― Tonya Hurley, Homecoming

“Set the standard! Stop expecting others to show you love, acceptance, commitment, & respect when you don't even show that to yourself.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect.”
― Jonathan Lockwood Huie

“There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?"

"Are you a young lady?"

"I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley