Quotes about disappointment
page 4

“The absence of a golden rule for mattress flipping is a disappointment, but it does not pertend the demise of civilization. We can adapt; we can learn to live with it.”

Brian Hayes (scientist) (1900) American scientist, columnist and author

Source: Group Theory in the Bedroom (2008), Chapter 12, Group Theory In The Bedroom, p. 229

Learning

“[It is] a question of personal appeal and conviction, rather than any argument. The cards I fancy are sympathy, understanding of his hopes, suspicions and disappointments, but above all, striving to convey to him, through what one says, a real echo of the sincerity that pervaded your doings in London.”

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician

Letter (16 February 1931), quoted in Birkenhead, Halifax (Hamish Hamilton, 1965), p. 296
Viceroy of India

Hope, Understanding, Question, Personality

“It is funny, but I’m disappointed that it accentuates the shallow.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Remarks on "Kernel mentor", an Everybody loves Eric Raymond internet cartoon (17 May 2005) http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/kernel-mentor in which he is depicted stating "GNU's not understood by everyone, Linus." 2000s

“The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment… We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1910s, An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), ch. 1.

Star, Mathematics, Effort, Study

“I have finally realized how rarely you will find a flawless woman, one who is simply perfect. No doubt there are many who seem quite promising, write a flowing hand, give you back a perfectly acceptable poem, and all in all do credit enough to the rank they have to uphold, but you know, if you insist on any particular quality, you seldom find one who will do. Each one is all too pleased with her own accomplishments, runs others down, and so on. While a girl is under the eye of her adoring parents and living a sheltered life bright with future promise, it seems men have only to hear of some little talent of hers to be attracted. As long as she is pretty and innocent, and young enough to have nothing else on her mind, she may well put her heart into learning a pastime that she has seen others enjoy, and in fact she may become quite good at it. And when those who know her disguise her weaknesses and advertise whatever passable qualities she may have so as to present them in the best light, how could anyone think ill of her, having no reason to suspect her of being other than she seems? But when you look further to see whether it is all true, I am sure you can only end up disappointed.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Tale of Genji

Spoken by Tō no Chūjō in Ch. 2: The Broom Tree (trans. Royall Tyler)
Tale of Genji

Life, Men, Girl, Thinking

“High school is tough on anyone, an absolute rule of the Universe being that if high school is not a buttockclenchingly awkward, emotionally difficult, and unpleasant time of your life, then the rest of it will be a crushing disappointment. Academic success is desirable, popularity (the only thing that most students really desire) is not. Those who excel socially in high school are truly damned. The homecoming queen does indeed bear the mark of the beast.”

Craig Ferguson book Between the Bridge and the River

Between the Bridge and the River (2006)

Life, School, Universe, Time

“It is not, however, the unfamiliarity or strangeness of a work or of a composer's manner that is a bar to understanding, but rather the disappearance of the familiar, the ongoing disappointment of the expectations and hopes fostered by the musical tradition in which we have grown up.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 1 : The Frontiers of Nonsense

Hope, Music, Understanding

“I’m very disappointed that a national captain, within a few months of retirement, has been retained by another team at a World Cup. I had a lot of respect and gratitude for Mahela’s knowledge but now he’s adviser to a competing team of ours.”

Mahela Jayawardene (1977) Former Sri Lankan cricketer

Thilanga Sumathipala on Mahela being a coaching consultant for England, quoted on The Guardian, "Kumar Sangakkara: England made smart move on mentor Mahela Jayawardene" http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/mar/13/kumar-sangakkara-england-mahela-jayawardene-world-twenty20-sri-lanka, March 13, 2016. About

World, Knowledge, Gratitude

“One thing, however, did become clear to him [Goldmund] – why so many perfect works of art did not please him at all, why they were almost hateful and boring to him, in spite of a certain undeniable beauty. Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing – mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery.”

Hermann Hesse book Narcissus and Goldmund

Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)

Hate, Beauty, Dreams, Art

“Despite a decade or more of restructuring and downsizing, many U. S. companies are still unprepared to operate in the 1990s. In a time of rapidly changing technologies and ever-shorter product life cycles, product development often proceeds at a glacial pace. In an age of the customer, order fulfillment has high error rates and customer inquiries go unanswered for weeks. In a period when asset utilization is critical, inventory levels exceed many months of demand.
The usual methods for boosting performance — process rationalization and automation — haven’t yielded the dramatic improvements companies need. In particular, heavy investments in information technology have delivered disappointing results — largely because companies tend to use technology to mechanize old ways of doing business. They leave the existing processes intact and use computers simply to speed them up.
p. 104; The two lead paragraphs”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

"Reengineering work: don't automate, obliterate," 1990

Life, Age, Way, Error

“The first star vehicle of the summer of 1996 is also the first major disappointment of the season. Mission: Impossible, the big-screen resurrection of the popular late-'60s/early-'70s series, fails to generate much in the way of excitement or intrigue. This globetrotting adventure looks like an opportunity for Tom Cruise to play James Bond — a role he is totally unsuited for. The writing for last year's 007 return, GoldenEye, isn't a lot better than that for Mission: Impossible, but, as an action hero, Pierce Brosnan is considerably more debonair and charismatic than Cruise.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/m/mission.html of Mission: Impossible (1996). Two-and-a-half star reviews

Way, Star, Summer, Season

“Contempt for science could perhaps depend on the fact that, science hasn’t been able to solve any of our basic problems, for example the environmental pollution or the problems with HIV and AIDS. This is the worst disease of our time, and scientists are lost. I believe that many people are disappointed with science when the answers we need are not delivered.”

Björn Ulvaeus (1945) Swedish musician

Björn Ulvaeus Speaks on Humanism, 14 July 2006

People, Disease, Problem, Science

“I have often been asked to be fair and view a matter from all sides. I did so, hoping something might improve if I viewed all sides of it. But the result was the same. So I went back to viewing things only from one side, which saves me a lot of work and disappointment. For it is comforting to regard something as bad and be able use one's prejudice as an excuse.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Hope

“I had long known that there was something about me that was either violent or frightening for some reason. In certain three-sided clothing store images I had for some years come upon myself, with shock and disbelief, regret, and shame, disappointment and despair, for I am indeed clearly violent, mad, and ugly, all because of intensity of some kind, a tension, an obsession with getting everything that there was to be got, a passion, an insanity.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever (1976)

Passion, Madness, Despair, Clothes

“I believe that more women are disappointed in marriage than men; a woman gives the whole of her heart — the man only gives the remains of his, and very often there is only a little left. Besides his idol is rarely so much the work of his own hands as her's; at the end of the first year she may ask, where are the picturesque and ennobling qualities with which she invested her lover? in nine cases out of ten echo will indeed answer “where."”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No.15. Ivanhoe — REBECCA.
Literary Remains

Women, Men, Marriage, Lovers

“perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Love, Sadness, Search, Spring

“I'm so disappointed that they came with their Eurotrash game.”

Mike Milbury (1952) American ice hockey player

http://www.nj.com/olympics/index.ssf/2010/02/nbcs_mike_milbury_uses_eurotra.html
On the 2010 Olympic Russian Team

Game

“The only difference between disappointment and depression is your level of commitment.”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

Tickets Still Available (2006)
Variant: I think, in most cases, the difference between depression and disappointment is your level of commitment.

“Most human lives are forgotten after four generations. We build our splendid houses on the edge of the abyss then distract and dazzle ourselves with entertainers and sex while we slowly at first, then more rapidly, spin around the ever-thirsty plughole in the middle. My treasured possessions -- all the silly little mementoes and toys and special books I’ve carried with me for decades -- will wind up on flea market tables or rot on garbage heaps. Someone else will inhabit the rooms that were mine. Everything that was important to me will mean nothing to the countless generations that follow our own. In the grand sprawl of it all, I have no significance at all. I don’t believe a giant gaseous pensioner will reward or censure me when my body stops working and I don’t believe individual consciousness survives for long after brain death so I lack the consolations of religion. I wanted Annihilator to peek into that implacable moment where everything we are comes to an end so I had to follow the Black Brick Road all the way down and seriously consider the abject pointlessness of all human endeavours. I found these contemplations thrilling and I was drawn to research pure nihilism, which led me to Ray Brassier’s Nihil Unbound and back to Ligotti. I have a fundamentally optimistic and positive view of human existence and the future and I think it’s important to face intelligent, well-argued challenges to that view on a regular basis. While I agree with Ligotti that the universe is, on the face of it, a blind emergent process, driven by chance over billions of years of trial and error to ultimately produce creatures capable of little more than flamboyant expressions of the agonizing awareness of their own imminent deaths, I don’t share his slightly huffy disappointment at this state of affairs. If the universe is intrinsically meaningless, if the mindless re-arrangement of atomic debris into temporarily arising then dissipating forms has no point, I can only ask, why do I see meaning everywhere, why can I find a point in everything? Why do other human beings like me seem to see meaning in everything too? If the sun is only an apocalyptic series of hydrogen fusion reactions, why does it look like an angel and inspire poetry? Why does the flesh and fur-covered bone and jelly of my cat’s face melt my heart? Is all that surging, roaring incandescent meaning inside me, or is it out there? “Meaning” to me is equivalent to “Magic.” The more significance we bring to things, even to the smallest and least important things, the more special, the more “magical” they seem to become. For all that materialistic science and existential philosophy tells us we live in a chaotic, meaningless universe, the evidence of my senses and the accounts of other human beings seem to indicate that, in fact, the whole universe and everything in it explodes second-to-second with beauty, horror, grandeur and significance when and wherever it comes into contact with consciousness. Therefore, it’s completely down to us to revel in our ability to make meaning, or not. Ligotti, like many extreme Buddhist philosophers, starts from the position that life is an agonizing, heartbreaking grave-bound veil of tears. This seems to be a somewhat hyperbolic view of human life; as far as I can see most of us round here muddle through ignoring death until it comes in close and life’s mostly all right with just enough significant episodes of sheer joy and connection and just enough sh-tty episodes of pain or fear. The notion that the whole span of our lives is no more than some dreadful rehearsal for hell may resonate with the deeply sensitive among us but by and large life is pretty okay generally for most of us. And for some, especially in the developed countries, “okay” equals luxurious. To focus on the moments of pain and fear we all experience and then to pretend they represent the totality of our conscious experience seems to me a little effete and indulgent. Most people don’t get to be born at all, ever. To see in that radiant impossibility only pointlessness, to see our experience as malignantly useless, as Ligotti does, seems to me a bit camp.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2014
http://www.blastr.com/2014-9-12/grant-morrisons-big-talk-getting-deep-writer-annihilator-multiversity
On life

Life, Death, Pain, People

“He who expects little is rarely disappointed.”

Edmund Cooper book Seed of Light

Seed of Light (1959)

“More often than not, even the people and even the moments and even the circumstances that you feel you can go to for stability, for that piece of happiness, can all of a sudden shift, and can all of a sudden become tainted. And everything that you believe, or even that small moment of connection that you can feel can sometimes be destroyed. And I’m not a negative person — shockingly. I’m somewhat of a realist. And I’m a very passionate person, so I don’t like to expect that shift, I don’t like to expect for things that I love to become malignant or to become a great disappointment. But it happens. And it’s devastating. Every time.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

About the song "The Missing Frame", on I Heard A Voice

Love, Happiness, People, Feeling

“You do not know what things you set in motion, he said. No man can know. No prophet foresee. The consequences of an act are often quite different from what one would guess. You must be sure that the intention in your heart is large enough to contain all wrong turnings, all disappointments. Do you see? Not everything has such value.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

The Crossing (1994)

Heart

“Godzilla 2014 missed the mark primarily because it is not an origins story. Gojira was a monster of our own making. Similarly Gino was supposed to impose nature’s response to our meddling. But G2014 pre-existed genetic modifications and nuclear testing. We have no responsibility for him, nor the mutos either. They come from a time that never was, millions of years ago, “when the world was much more radioactive than it is today”. The story implies that mutos ‘eat radiation’. In the film, they can track it through every kind of protective shielding, and they eat nuclear devices like fruit -metallic peal and all. I guess millions of years ago, nuclear missiles grew on trees, and kaiju were common even though they’re absent from the fossil record -with only one top-secret exception. As an advocate of science education with a deep interest in paleontology, and as someone who would rather see humans held accountable for what they do to their environment, this film was very disappointing. As an atheist, it was even worse. The star of the film not only has impossible dimensions and an inexplicable power, he is also immortal. He’s been alive forever, and spends all his time sleeping. He awakens only he senses submarines or the arrival of other kaiju, because he has a mission to protect humanity. G2014 put the ‘god’ in Godzilla. The director called him a god, and some of the characters in the movie describe him as a god too. So he’s not a lizard, not a dinosaur, but one of the Lovecraftian great old ones like Cthulhu. In a video I made years ago, I too joked about Godzilla being a god. But it was still somewhat disappointing to see him depicted that way.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Weighing in on Godzilla http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2014/06/08/weighing-in-on-godzilla/ (June 8, 2014)

God, Secret, World, Education

“I'm just saying, a lot of people are on medicine, they don't need to be. Because let's be honest folks, it isn't easy for anyone. And I think in most cases, the only difference between depression and disappointment is your level of commitment. And to be honest, in the day and age we live in now, if someone comes up to you and says, “I think you might be clinically depressed,” the proper response is, “Thank you, thank you very much. That means I’m awake." Is there any indication we shouldn’t be depressed— are you living on the same planet that I am? Did you ever think that depression is the reasonable human response to the crap we’re going through as a species, meant to propel us into the next evolutionary step, or at least into taking some different course of action so we might survive? Did you ever think that maybe it’s the happy people that are really screwed up in the head? Where’s that spin on the situation? Maybe it's those guys. "Hey, how ya doing?" "I don't know, I feel great, again!" "Really, well, that's creepy and weird. Maybe you should be on medication. Clearly you're self-centered, delusional, narcissistic. I don't know, but you're draining me with your happy. Could you move along because I'm doing the big work, creating a world that functions properly in my brain."”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/2ufif7/comedy-central-presents-bipolar-coaster
Comedy Central Presents (2007)

Happiness, People, Age, World

“Every woman must live by some sense of victory over disappointments, and Olympias was not the sort of woman to find compensation in her own powers of self-control and endurance.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

Lives of Wives (London: Cassell, 1939)

Sense, Victory

“There are no Reconstruction reenactors. And who would want to be? Reconstruction is the disappointing epilogue to the American Civil War, a sort of Grimm fairy tale stepchild of the war and the ugly duckling of American history. Even Abraham Lincoln was uneasy at using the word "reconstruction"--he qualified it with add-ons like "what is called reconstruction" or "a plan of reconstruction (as the phrase goes)"--and preferred to speak of the "re-inauguration of the national authority" or the need to "reinaugurate loyal state governments." Unlike the drama of the war years, Reconstruction has no official starting or ending date. Although we usually bookend the period with the Confederate surrender in 1865 and the withdrawal of federal occupation troops in 1877, people had been talking about "reconstruction" even before the shooting began in 1861, and the federal occupation troops who were withdrawn in 1877 were by that time little more than a corporal's guard. In some sense, Reconstruction ended when Democrats managed to regain control of the House of Representatives in 1874; other parts of it spluttered on…”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Defending Reconstruction (2017)

War, People, History, Sense

“Princess: I am always disappointed with mountains. There are no mountains in the world as high as I could wish.
Adrian: No?
Princess: They irritate me invariably. I should like to shake Switzerland.”

Ronald Firbank (1886–1926) British novelist

The Princess Zoubaroff, Act I, sc. iv (1920), cited from Steven Moore (ed.) Complete Plays (Normal, Ill.: Dalkey Archive Press, 1994) p. 55.

World, Mountain, Princess

“Barack Obama has been a grave disappointment to many of us, particularly with the increase in the number of drone strikes. His Administration is now strangling any country that would dare to stand up to the might of imperial America. Ireland should be an example of a small country that stands up against this international bullying. It has already got Bradley Manning, a person I salute, from inside the army. We need more of these people to tell the truth. Meanwhile Mr. Obama is off on this vulgar deathbed tourism. The one time I agreed with Mrs. Winnie Mandela was when she condemned Jacob Zuma for having his photograph taken with the poor unfortunate Nelson Mandela who was a complete zombie in the photograph and did not have a clue who it was who was molesting him by touching his hand and this horrid stuff. Let us, please, have a little [interrupted] I am asking him to appeal to the Government to offer sanctuary to Mr. Snowden. Even though this is a small country in economic difficulty, we should affirm to the world that we stand for openness, accountability, truth, honesty, decency and integrity, all of which Mr. Snowden represents.”

David Norris (1944) Irish scholar, independent Senator, and gay and civil rights activist

2 July 2013 http://www.kildarestreet.com/sendebates/?id=2013-07-02a.8&s=speaker%3A210#g52

People, Truth, World, Time

“No one thinks he will escape death, so there is no disappointment and, as long as we know neither the when nor the how, the mere fact that we shall one day have to go does not much affect us; we do not care, even though we know vaguely that we have not long to live. The serious trouble begins when death becomes definite in time and shape. It is in precise fore-knowledge, rather than in sin, that the sting of death is to be found; and such fore-knowledge is generally withheld; though, strangely enough, many would have it if they could.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Fore-knowledge of Death
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXIII - Death

Death, Knowledge, Thinking, Time

“I come here today…not just because you are doing well and because you are outstanding students, but because we expect something of you. And unless in this free country of ours we are able to demonstrate that we are able to make this society work and progress, unless we can hope that from you we are going to get back all of the talents which society has helped develop in you, then, quite obviously, all the hopes of all of us that freedom will not only endure but prevail, of course, will be disappointed. So we ask the best of you…I congratulate you on what you have done, and most of all I congratulate you on what you are going to do.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: "Remarks in New York City to the National Convention of the Catholic Youth Organization (463)," (15 November 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx

Hope, Freedom, Help, Country

“He stayed in no one place very long, but he usually managed to absorb something of the atmosphere of each town, village or rubber estate he visited, and he always made quick contact with the local residents. These residents were invariably Europeans - planters, colonial officials, businessmen, or just men living in exile to escape from trouble or sadness at home - and there is little evidence that Maugham gained, or wished to gain, any direct knowledge of the lives and customs of the native peoples of the East. This must be disappointing to present-day Malay and Indian and Chinese and Eurasian readers of his stories, but we have to remember that (apart from the fact that Maugham had no time to learn Malay or Chinese or Tamil) the Western attitude to the Far East was very different in Maugham's time from what it is today.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Introduction to Maugham's Malaysian Stories (1969)
People, Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham

Men, People, Sadness, Home

“He heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself.”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. VII

Way

“There is no. man, there is no people, without a God. That God may be a visible idol, carved of wood or stone, to which sacrifice is offered in the forest, in the temple, or in the market-place; or it may be an invisible idol, fashioned in a man's own image and worshipped ardently at his own personal shrine. Somewhere in the universe there is that in which each individual has firm faith, and on which he places steady reliance. The fool who says in his heart "There is no God" really means there is no God but himself. His supreme egotism, his colossal vanity, have placed him at the center of the universe which is thereafter to be measured and dealt with in terms of his personal satisfactions. So it has come to pass that after nearly two thousand years much of the world resembles the Athens of St. Paul's time, in that it is wholly given to idolatry; but in the modern case there are as many idols as idol worshippers, and every such idol worshipper finds his idol in the looking-glass. The time has come once again to repeat and to expound in thunderous tones the noble sermon of St. Paul on Mars Hill, and to declare to these modern idolaters "Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."
There can be no cure for the world's ills and no abatement of the world's discontents until faith and the rule of everlasting principle are again restored and made supreme in the life of men and of nations. These millions of man-made gods, these myriads of personal idols, must be broken up and destroyed, and the heart and mind of man brought back to a comprehension of the real meaning of faith and its place in life. This cannot be done by exhortation or by preaching alone. It must be done also by teaching; careful, systematic, rational teaching, that will show in a simple language which the uninstructed can understand what are the essentials of a permanent and lofty morality, of a stable and just social order, and of a secure and sublime religious faith.
Here we come upon the whole great problem of national education, its successes and its disappointments, its achievements and its problems yet unsolved. Education is not merely instruction far from it. It is the leading of the youth out into a comprehension of his environment, that, comprehending, he may so act and so conduct himself as to leave the world better and happier for his having lived in it. This environment is not by any means a material thing alone. It is material of course, but, in addition, it is intellectual, it is spiritual. The youth who is led to an understanding of nature and of economics and left blind and deaf to the appeals of literature, of art, of morals and of religion, has been shown but a part of that great environment which is his inheritance as a human being. The school and the college do much, but the school and the college cannot do all. Since Protestantism broke up the solidarity of the ecclesiastical organization in the western world, and since democracy made intermingling of state and church impossible, it has been necessary, if religion is to be saved for men, that the family and the church do their vital cooperative part in a national organization of educational effort. The school, the family and the church are three cooperating educational agencies, each of which has its weight of responsibility to bear. If the family be weakened in respect of its moral and spiritual basis, or if the church be neglectful of its obligation to offer systematic, continuous and convincing religious instruction to the young who are within its sphere of influence, there can be no hope for a Christian education or for the powerful perpetuation of the Christian faith in the minds and lives of the next generation and those immediately to follow. We are trustees of a great inheritance. If we abuse or neglect that trust we are responsible before Almighty God for the infinite damage that will be done in the life of individuals and of nations…. Clear thinking will distinguish between men's different associations, and it will be able to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to render unto God the things which are God's.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Making liberal men and women : public criticism of present-day education, the new paganism, the university, politics and religion https://archive.org/stream/makingliberalmen00butluoft/makingliberalmen00butluoft_djvu.txt (1921)

Life, Men, God, People

“[He] looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed.”

Orson Scott Card Songmaster

Songmaster (1979)

Death

“I think in reviewing the doctrines connected with our Foreign policy which I have preached and defended during 40 years of my public life, you will not be surprised at the decision I am now compelled to take. I cannot accept any share of the responsibility for the acts of war which have taken place at Alexandria. I cannot see to what they may lead, and I know not to what greater wrong and mischief they may force the Government. I feel therefore compelled to withdraw from the Administration, and to ask you to place my resignation of the office I hold in the hands of the Queen. I bitterly lament the disappointment of many hopes as I separate myself from your Government. My feelings towards yourself are those of profound esteem and regard, and an overpowering sense of duty has alone forced me to the only course which seems now open to me. To add to your difficulties and to give you trouble is a cause of much unhappiness to me. I can only hope you will be able to judge me rightly and to forgive me.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Resignation letter to Gladstone (12 July 1882), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 433.
1880s

Life, War, Hope, Feeling

“Past, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one--the knowledge and the dream.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Dreams, Hope, Knowledge, Memory

“I'm reading a very quaint American book, The Power of Positive Thinking, written, I'd suppose, by a sectarian minister, presumably of Methodist dye. (Norman Vincent Peale).. He's full of stories of prayers heard - and extols the power of prayer.."Before leaving for an important business conference I brace myself with texts like 'If God be for us, who can be against us?'… Then I stalk into the conference room, sure of my victory, and carry off the most marvellous deal.." This, in essence is the burden of the whole book. That's what people call Christian optimism. But it's wasted on us - we've been spoilt for this sort of thing… But isn't it rather self suggestion than authentic religious impulse? It doesn't seem to have dawned on him that suffering, disappointment, defeat or loss might also have some point too, or that God's designs could sometimes be hidden…”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

God, People, Books, Optimism

“Therefore, you must never be disappointed in life and you must remember that what even God cannot achieve, you can achieve through hard work. Karma is a thing, which can even change the course laid down by God.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Karma yoga
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 4 February 1984.

Life, God, Change

“Well, it took me over two hours to find Frencesco’s keys which was disappointing but I did go to Venice for free and I didn’t fall into the canal on the way home like a twat.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Way, Home

“The professional and financial interest in continuing animal experimentation helps to explain at least some resistance to the notion that animals have a complex emotional life and are capable of experiencing the higher emotions, such as love, compassion, altruism, disappointment and nostalgia. To acknowledge such a possibility implies certain moral obligations. If chimpanzees can experience loneliness and mental anguish, it becomes more wrong to use them for experiments in which they are isolated and anticipate daily pain.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson book When Elephants Weep

Preface, p. 15
When Elephants Weep (1994)

Love, Life, Pain, Nostalgia

“I was number one on the Who's Likely To Die list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

NME; reported in " In quotes: Keith Richards http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6526133.stm", BBC (April 4, 2007).

“The last speaker alluded to this movement as being that of a few disappointed women. From the first years to which my memory stretches, I have been a disappointed woman… I was disappointed when I came to seek a profession worthy an immortal being—every employment was closed to me, except those of the teacher, the seamstress, and the housekeeper. In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of woman. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

Remark made at a National Woman's Rights Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. (1855) as quoted in Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings (1972) by Miriam Schnier

Life, Women, Marriage, Education

“In 2014, one of the key agendas of the BJP’s election campaign was highlighting the dismal management of the Indian economy, ironically under an ‘economist’ prime minister and a ‘know-it-all’ finance minister. We all knew that the economy was in the doldrums but since we were not in government, we naturally did not have the complete details of the state of the economy. But, what we saw when we formed the government left us shocked! The state of the economy was much worse than expected. Things were terrible. Even the budget figures were suspicious. When all of this came to light, we had two options – to be driven by Rajneeti (political considerations) or be guided by Rashtraneeti (putting the interests of India First)… Rajneeti, or playing politics on the state of the economy in 2014, would have been extremely simple as well as politically advantageous for us. We had just won a historic election, so obviously the frenzy was at a different level. The Congress Party and their allies were in big trouble. Even for the media, it would have made news for months on end. On the other hand, there was Rashtraneeti, where more than politics and one-upmanship, reform was needed. Needless to say, we preferred to think of ‘India First’ instead of putting politics first. We did not want to push the issues under the carpet, but we were more interested in addressing the issue. We focused on reforming, strengthening and transforming the Indian economy. The details about the decay in the Indian economy were unbelievable. It had the potential to cause a crisis all over. In 2014, industry was leaving India. India was in the Fragile Five. Experts believed that the ‘I’ in BRICS would collapse. Public sentiment was that of disappointment and pessimism.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Narendra Modi, Swarajya Interviews Prime Minister Modi, Interview, R Jagannathan- Jul 02, 2018 https://swarajyamag.com/economy/swarajya-interviews-prime-minister-modi-the-state-of-indian-economy 2018

Nature, Thinking, Light

“A few old men began to say there had been a winter like this when they were warriors, and that it was a year of catastrophe and disappointment. But old men will ever spin this wheel. The summers were always hotter and the winters colder in the days of their strength, and the air thick with epic drama and portent.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book One, Part II “The Warrior”, Chapter 1 (p. 41)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

Men, Winter, Summer

“For 40 years, I didn't miss a single deadline, but since July, I have missed every one. I also, to my intense disappointment, missed the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Having just written my first review since June (The Queen), I think an update is in order.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

"Roger writes to readers" Chicago Sun Times (11 October 2006) http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/roger-writes-to-readers

Thinking

“The person who, let us say, expects generosity from a bank, efficient flexibility from a government agency, open-mindedness from a religious institution will be disappointed. In each purview the notions represent immorality. The poor fool might as quickly discover love among the mantises.”

Jack Vance book The Book of Dreams

Quotations and text from the Demon Princes novels, The Book of Dreams

Love, Fools, Personality

“What sometimes enrages me and always disappoints and grieves me is the preference of great schools of learning for the derivative as opposed to the original, for the conventional and thin which can be duplicated in many copies rather than the new and powerful, and for arid correctness and limitation of scope and method rather than for universal newness and beauty, wherever it may be seen.”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

VIII. Role of the Intellectual and the Scientist. p. 135
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

School, Beauty, Learning, Universe

“Many times, God speaks blessing and breakthrough through pain and disappointment.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

Message to Tanzanian Presidential candidate Edward Lowassa - "VIDEO - Accept Election Results, TB Joshua Urges Tanzanian Opposition Leader" http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2015/11/08/video-accept-election-results-tb-joshua-urges-tanzanian-opposition-leader/ PM News, Nigeria (November 8 2015)

God, Pain, Time

“Suspense is worse than disappointment.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Letter to Thomas Sloan, (1 September 1791)

“There is joy over disappointment
And delight in hopes that were vain.
Each poet is glad there was no cure
To stop his lonely pain.
For nothing keeps a poet
In his high singing mood
Like unappeasable hunger
For unattainable food.”

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), Apology

Hunger, Pain, Food, Hope

“Because you love me I have much achieved,
Had you despised me then I must have failed,
But since I knew you trusted and believed,
I could not disappoint you and so prevailed.”

Paul Laurence Dunbar book The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar

Encouraged, in the 1913 collection of his work, The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Love

“I wish to know your Excellency's pleasure about my returning to camp. I expect Mrs. Greene will be put to bed every day. She is very desirous of my stay until that event; and, as she has set her heart so much upon it, I could wish to gratify her, for fear of some disagreeable consequences, as women sometimes, under such circumstances, receive great injury by being disappointed.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (September 1778)

Women, Pleasure, Fear, Heart

“I am admittedly insecure about my racial identity, an attitude that has much improved since my younger days when I absolutely abhorred it. Any attention paid to me being different was incredibly shameful…but the mirrors became too much…what a disappointing reality check!”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, HATING ONESELF

Reality

“Parents – especially step-parents – are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fufill the promise of their early years.”

Anthony Powell A Dance to the Music of Time

A Buyer's Market (1952), ch. 2.
A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-1975)

Children, Parent

“Shortly after the ignominious expulsion of the Texas invaders, General J. H. Carleton was appointed to the command of this Department, and with the greatest promptitude he turned his attention to the freeing of the Territory from these lawless savages. To this great work he brought many years' experience and a perfect knowledge of the means to effect that end. He saw that the thirty (30) millions of dollars expended and the many lives lost in the former attempts at the subjugation, would not have been profitless, had not there been something radically wrong in the policy pursued. He was not long in ascertaining that treaties were as promises written in sand. nor in discovering that they had no recognized 'Head' authority to represent them; that each chief's influence and authority was immediately confined to his own followers or people; that any treaty signed by one or more of these chiefs had no binding effect on the remainder, and that there were a large number of the worst characters who acknowledged no chief at all. Hence it was that on all occasions when treaties were made, one party were continuing their depredations, whilst the other were making peace. And hence it was apparent that treaties were absolutely powerless for good. He adopted a new policy, i. e., placing them on a reservation (the wisdom of which is already manifest); a new era dawned on New Mexico, and the dying hope of the people was again revived; never more I trust, to meet with disappointment. He first organized a force against the Mescalero Apaches, which I had the honor to command. After a short and inexpensive campaign, the Mescaleros were placed on their present reservation.”

Kit Carson (1809–1868) American frontiersman and Union Army general

Letter to General James Henry Carleton (May 17, 1864)

Wisdom, People, Peace, Hope

“Knowledge accumulated during recent decades challenges and contradicts assumptions which are still axiomatic in conventional organizational theory. Unfortunately, those classical principles of organization — derived from inappropriate models, unrelated to the political, social, economic, and technological milieu, and based on erroneous assumptions about behavior — continue to influence our thinking about the management of the human resources of industry. Management's attempts to solve the problems arising from the inadequacy of these assumptions have often involved the search for new formulas, new techniques, new procedures. These generally yield disappointing results because they are adjustments to symptoms rather than causes. The real need is for new theory, changed assumptions, more understanding of the nature of human behavior in organizational settings.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 17 (2006: 24)

Behavior, Search, Understanding, Nature

“When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of “popular” writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as “conjecture and refutation.””

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"An Essay on a Pig Roast", p. 437
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

Truth, Error, Literature, Light

“The story of a theory's failure often strikes readers as sad and unsatisfying. Since science thrives on self-correction, we who practice this most challenging of human arts do not share such a feeling. We may be unhappy if a favored hypothesis loses or chagrined if theories that we proposed prove inadequate. But refutation almost always contains positive lessons that overwhelm disappointment, even when […] no new and comprehensive theory has yet filled the void.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"The Face of Miranda", p. 496
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

Sadness, Art, Feeling, Failure

“All those years that my image on the screen as "sex goddess"—well that makes me laugh. Sex was never important to me. I'm sorry if that disappoints you, but it's true. Romance, yes. Romance was very important. But I never liked being rushed into bed, and I never allowed it. I'd put it off as long as I could and I gave in only when I was in love, or thought I was. It was always the courtship, the cuddling, and the closeness that I cared about, never the act of sex itself—with some exceptions of course. I'm not masquerading as a prude, but I've always been portrayed as a sexy woman, and that's wrong. Sensuous, yes. When I'm involved with someone I care for deeply, I can feel sensual. But that's a private matter.”

Lana Turner (1921–1995) American actress

On her sexuality, p. 309
Autobiography

Love, Sex, Feeling

“Part of the rationalist ethos is binding yourself emotionally to an absolutely lawful reductionistic universe — a universe containing no ontologically basic mental things such as souls or magic — and pouring all your hope and all your care into that merely real universe and its possibilities, without disappointment.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

Mundane Magic http://lesswrong.com/lw/ve/mundane_magic/(October 2008)

Law, Hope, Soul, Universe

“Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high
As I can now discern with this clear eye.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Prayer http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/poetry/Great%20God.htm, st. 1 (1842)

God

“Democracy has failed to dampen the right/left ideological schism, which is historically rooted in the early years of separate state creation. And neither the right nor the left is fully able to provide a convincing alternative vision of how democracy in Korean society can robustly develop and thereby enhance its quality. The rightists/conservatives, who continue to retain their predominant power and influence over the state and civil society, still cling to an old-fashioned, outmoded black-and-white ideology derived from the Cold War period. That ideology can no longer provide a political vision and values and norms pertinent to the post-Cold War era as well as a democratized, highly modernized and globalized social environment. Thereby they have failed to play a leading role in enhancing autonomy of civil society vis-à-vis the state, respecting rule of law, and contributing to bringing social integration and inclusiveness.
On the other hand, the leftists have disappointed many people who expected that the entirely new generations which appeared on the political center stage in the course of democratization could play a decisive role in changing Korean politics. In recent years we have witnessed a growing disillusionment with the radical discourses and ideas as well as with their inability to develop a new type of party politics, deal with the socio-economic problems and provide a certain substantive model for ethical life.”

Choi Jang-jip (1943) South Korean political scientist

"The Fragility of Liberalism and its Political Consequences in Democratized Korea" (2009)

Life, War, People, Law

“I am upset I am very much disappointed when I see within myself a wrong image of myself…. A man can live without fingers, but he cannot live without self-respect…. That is why I took up leprosy work. Not to help anyone but to overcome that fear in my life. That it worked out good for others is a byproduct. But the fact is I did it to overcome fear.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

On his motivation to treat leprosy patients, Page=9
Baba Amte: A Vision of New India

Life, Fear, Help

“It is my greatest year, but my biggest disappointment.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

Assessing his 1967 season, as quoted in "Roberto Clemente—Baseball's Brightest Superstar" https://books.google.com/books?id=7LsdgvCy-S4C&pg=PA24 by Arnold Hano, in Boy's Life (March 1968), pp. 25 and 54 Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1968</big>

“Critic, relent!
Your hope for repentance
Will meet with disappointment.
For this is the life,
Not desert tents,
Not camel's milk!”

Abu Nuwas (762–814) Arabic poet

Diwan, 11–12.

Life, Hope

“The postwar era has not surprised Arthur Burns, for business cycles have continued their "unceasing round." although the United States recession of 1981-82 was the eighth since World War II and the deepest postwar slump by almost any measure, the 1983-84 recovery displayed an upward momentum sufficient to befuddle forecasters and delight incumbent politicians. Nor would a reincarnated Joseph Schumpeter be disappointed in the current status of business cycle research in the economics profession. To be sure, interest in business cycles decayed during the prosperity of the 1960s, as symbolized in the 1969 conference volume, Is the Business Cycle Obsolete? and in Paul Samuelson's remark the same year that the National Bureau of Economic Research "has worked itself out of one of its first jobs, namely, the business cycle."”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Source: The American Business Cycle, 1986, p. 1-2

War, World, Business

“Botany is the school for patience, and it’s amateurs learn resignation from daily disappointments.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Thomas Jefferson, in letter to Madame de Tessé (25 Apr 1788). In Thomas Jefferson Correspondence: Printed from the Originals (1916), 7.
Posthumous publications, On botany

School, Learning, Patience

“I treat all film roles one way: very seriously," exclaims Pleasence. "I never play anything tongue-in-cheek, though at times it might appear that way. I'm a professional actor who has no particular approach to acting. I get the part, I read the script. If I decide to do it, I learn the lines. People expecting a longwinded explanation on my approach will be disappointed. I have no theory about acting. There is no method, there is no way. I just do it.”

Donald Pleasence (1919–1995) British actor

INTERVIEW BY MARC SHAPIRO https://www.pleasence.com/articles/MADMAN.HTML (February 1989)

People, Way, Learning, Appearance

“"I've been waiting to be arrested all day. I'm disappointed!" [Mair replies] "We're all with you on that one."”

Eddie Mair (1965) Scottish broadcaster

Reporter waiting to be arrested on cycle-path (a woman jogger had been arrested and cautioned earlier that week)
From PM and Broadcasting House

Waiting

“I was much disappointed at seeing those who had once belonged to the United States navy excelled in matters of honor and propriety by the officers of another corps.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 56

“And you, young engineer, you who dream of improving the lot of the workers by the application of science to industry — what a sad disappointment, what terrible disillusions await you! You devote the useful energy of your mind to working out the scheme of a railway which, running along the brink of precipices and burrowing into the very heart of mountains of granite, will bind together two countries which nature has separated. But once at work, you see whole regiments of workers decimated by privations and sickness in this dark tunnel — you see others of them returning home carrying with them, maybe, a few pence, and the undoubted seeds of consumption; you see human corpses — the results of a groveling greed — as landmarks along each yard of your road; and, when the railroad is finished, you see, lastly, that it becomes the highway for the artillery of an invading army…”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

An Appeal to the Young (1880)

Sadness, Dreams, Home, Mountain

“I consider myself very sentimental, very sensitive, but obviously my outward appearance is a bit scruffy-haired, and I have a general tendency toward snarling at people, and a sort of misanthropic nature. Maybe that is what people actually read. I do actually believe that misanthropy and sensitivity go hand in hand, because I have a tremendous disappointment in the ways of the world.”

Larry Fessenden (1963) American actor, producer, writer, director, film editor, and cinematographer

Larry Fessenden https://film.avclub.com/larry-fessenden-1798217556 (January 19, 2014)

People, World, Way, Nature

“Two disappointed believers
Two people playing the game
Negotiations and love songs
Are often mistaken for one and the same.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Train In The Distance
Song lyrics, Hearts and Bones (1983)

Love, People, Game

“Let us be courageous in the face of life's disappointments - all the while knowing we are a step closer toward our goal as we grow in determination.”

Danny Yamashiro (1967) American radio evangelist

From Building Blocks for Better Living, pages 65

Life, Courage

“Because your candle burns too brightwell, I almost forgot it was twilight. Even if I think that you are right, well, I'm tired of being down, I got no fight. You're wonderful, and it's beautiful, but I'm already somebody's baby. And if i went with you, I'd disappoint you, too.”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Twilight.
Lyrics, From a Basement on the Hill (posthumous, 2004)

Beauty, Thinking, Fight, Baby

“That's the embarrassment. The embarrassment is that I'm given credibility in this world, because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does. Not because I have an ideological agenda.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Jon Stewart to Chris Wallace, Fox News Interview June 19, 2011

World

“We found that success in each case depended largely on enlisting the services of an efficient and enthusiatic local organiser, director, or warden, and many of our grants took the form of paying the salary of such leaders. The results were seldom disappointing. The reports which we regularly received showed how responsive the people were to sympathy and practical help, and we felt amply rewarded.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 291

People, Success, Help, Dependency

“Now, as an embittered cynic, I should be almost programmed to vomit all over the screen at the mere sight of this, but instead, I find it strangely moving. You see, as I stare into their happy smiling faces filled with naive joie de vivre, I know they're just blissfully unaware of the crushing despair that awaits them as they venture further into adulthood. The myriad disappointments, the yawning chasms of pain, the slow gnawing descent into physical decay, the sheer unrelenting horror of it all.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Screenwipe S4E4
Discussing the High School Musical series
Screenwipe

Pain, Happiness, Smile, Adulthood

“The 23-year-old took to manage, for efficiency, and risking gained experience, his mother disappointed, do not know what does, but it's conformed with what happened.”

MC Daleste (1992–2013) Brazilian funk and rap musician

In the song Mãe de Traficante http://www.vagalume.com.br/mc-daleste/mae-de-traficante.html

“Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night," he had said. "You must not try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses.”

Sherwood Anderson book Winesburg, Ohio

"Death"
Winesburg, Ohio (1919)

Love, Kiss, Tree, Grass

“Lord, oh Lord, will I return to you once, being a genuine artist. Will all those Art lovers once behold my works with reverence and the laurel of Art then adorn my head... I experience so ardently all the beauty of my noble career... And once again I call to you, it would be much better not to live at all than being disappointed in my feeling.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch text: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat uit de brief van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): God God zal ik nog eenmaal als een waarachtig kunstenaar tot u keeren. Zullen nog eenmaal al die Kunstminnaren mijne werken met eerbied aanschouwen en de lauwer der Kunst mijn schedel sieren.. .Ik voel zo vurig al het schoone mijner edele loopbaan.. .Ach nogmaals roep ik tot u, laat mij veel liever niet leven dan in mijne gevoelen teleurgesteld te worden.
In a letter of Jozef Israels from Amsterdam, 16 July 1843, to his friend in Groningen, pharmacist Essingh; from RKD: Archive, A.S. Kok, The Hague
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1840 - 1870

Beauty, Art, Feeling, Lovers

“In electron microscopy, the difficulties took considerably more time to surmount, and therefore the doubters held the field for a longer period. I can, however, also confirm from my own experience the observation of my colleagues that the doubt of the others has the advantage of leaving the field uncrowded. Mostly, this is understood only much later, in the beginning one is very disappointed.”

Ernst Ruska (1906–1988) German physicist

On the advantage of facing doubt when one has discovered something new. Speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1986 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1986/ruska-speech.html.

Time

“Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“I've been playing since fifth grade. I've never played more poorly than I did today. I've never been more disappointed in myself.”

Jon Kitna (1972) American football quarterback

Remarks after losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers http://scores.espn.go.com/nfl/recap?gameId=221013004 13 October 2002.

“I have to come to terms with the fact that I am not good at human relationships. I've known some wonderful women and I have beautiful children but I've probably disappointed them all. I regret that.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

I howled for the woman I loved... and she howled back - British wolfman tells how his obsession drove away the love of his life http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1245507/I-howled-woman-I-loved--howled--British-wolfman-tells-obsession-drove-away-love-life.html, Daily Mail, (23 January, 2010)

Women, Children, Beauty

“When I go to the house of God I do not want amusement; I want the doctrine which is according to godliness. I want to hear the remedy against the harassing of my guilt and the disorder of my affections. I want to be led from weariness and disappointment to that goodness which filleth the hungry soul. I want to have light upon the mystery of Providence; to be taught how the judgments of the Lord are right; how I shall be prepared for duty and for trial; how I may fear God all the days of my life, and close them in peace.”

John M. Mason (1770–1829) American Doctor of Divinity

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, P. 150.

Life, God, Fear, Peace

“There can have been few occasions in all our long political history when to the son of a man who counted for something in his day and generation has been vouchsafed the privilege of setting the seal on the work which the father began but had perforce to leave unfinished. Nearly 29 years have passed since Joseph Chamberlain entered upon his great campaign in favour of Imperial Preference and Tariff Reform. More than 17 years have gone by since he died, without having seen the fulfilment of his aims and yet convinced that, if not exactly in his way, yet in some modified form his vision would eventually take shape. His work was not in vain. Time and the misfortunes of the country have brought conviction to many who did not feel that they could agree with him then. I believe he would have found consolation for the bitterness of his disappointment if he could have foreseen that these proposals, which are the direct and legitimate descendants of his own conception, would be laid before the House of Commons, which he loved, in the presence of one and by the lips of the other of the two immediate successors to his name and blood.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1932/feb/04/import-duties in the House of Commons (4 February 1932) introducing the Import Duties Act 1932. Chancellor of the Exchequer

Love, Way, Feeling, History

“When we consider the positive evil caused to the disqualified half of the human race by their disqualification — first in the loss of the most inspiriting and elevating kind of personal enjoyment, and next in the weariness, disappointment, and profound dissatisfaction with life, which are so often the substitute for it; one feels that among all the lessons which men require for carrying on the struggle against the inevitable imperfections of their lot on earth, there is no lesson which they more need, than not to add to the evils which nature inflicts, by their jealous and prejudiced restrictions on one another. Their vain fears only substitute other and worse evils for those which they are idly apprehensive of: while every restraint on the freedom of conduct of any of their human fellow-creatures (otherwise than by making them responsible for any evil actually caused by it), dries up pro tanto the principal fountain of human happiness, and leaves the species less rich, to an inappreciable degree, in all that makes life valuable to the individual human being.”

John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women

Source: The Subjection of Women (1869), Ch. 4

Life, Men, Happiness, Fear

“But even further from the light were the cats. Their perfection was alarming. Wrapped up in the precision and meticulousness of their bodies, they knew neither deviation nor error. They sank for a moment, far into themselves, to the bottom of their being; they froze in their soft fur and grew menacingly and ceremoniously serious, and their eyes grew as round as moons, soaking up the view into their fiery craters. But a moment later, cast out to the edge, to the surface, they yawned in their nihility, disappointed and without illusions.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“The Brilliant Epoch” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/epoch1.htm His father, Living things

Error, Cats, Light, Perfection

“…[T]ry not to be too angry or disappointed with your fellow Americans. Most of them don't care about politics as much as the majority of my readers, and the education they have received about it from the government's public school system is nothing more than a septic tank full of warmed-over self-serving statist lies and leftist propaganda.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Only Nixon," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle492-20081109-02.html 9 November 2008.

Education, School

““You didn’t do any of these things because they were necessarily good unto themselves, but because you saw them as means to shape events to serve your own ends. The entire legacy of the Matriarch is the exploitation of others like pieces in some great game.”
She laughed in his face. “You can see it that way if you like. The weak usually do, if they see it at all. But you disappoint me. Despite your study of history, you fail to understand power. It’s obvious you never will… There’s really only one choice you ever have to make in any act of creation. Will you be the instrument or the artist? If you’re only now coming to realize that you’ve been a tool all your life, there’s no one to blame for it but yourself. If you don’t like that state of affairs, then act! Impose your will upon the world and walk your own path. If you don’t, you’ll just end up being a token in someone else’s game; you’ll continue to be used as they see fit. That’s how the universe works. You don’t have to like it, but you’d do well to get used to it.”…
“No, maybe that’s the way the world looks once you’ve already decided to take your path. Or maybe it’s just you’re so jaded, or you’ve bought into your own delusions. I don’t know which, and I don’t care. Those aren’t the only choices: use of be used. There is more than being tyrant or servant. I reject both options and I reject you. You’ve been dead for centuries, Margda, it’s about time you accepted that.””

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 38, “Loose Ends” (pp. 362-363; ellipses represent elisions of descriptive sections)

Life, World, Way, History

“At the end of what is called the "sexual life" the only love which has lasted is the love which has everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.”

Graham Greene book May We Borrow Your Husband?

May We Borrow Your Husband? (1967)
Short Stories

Love, Life, Sadness, Failure

“I wasn’t disappointed, inasmuch as I expected nothing.”

Roger Zelazny book This Immortal

Source: This Immortal (1965), p. 29

“I read all the movie reviews, especially those of Ebert, a graceful and witty prose stylist with profound erudition, whose reviews are worth reading just for themselves, whether or not I have any intention of viewing the movie … Ebert, the smart and handsome one, gave thumbs up to my first movie Garfield: The Movie], but [Richard] Roeper, the other one, gave thumbs down and was particularly unkind. He went on forever attacking Ebert for liking Garfield. This from a man with enough taste to praise Duma. How very disappointing. One of Roeper's complaints was that I was animated and all of the other characters in the movie were "real." Do you have any idea how a statement like that hurts an actor who has worked all of his life as a media cat? Yes, Richard Roeper, I was animated. Read my lips: I am a character in a comic strip.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/garfield-a-tail-of-two-kitties-2006 of Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, written in the first person as Garfield. (16 June 2006) Reviews, Three star reviews

Life, Cats, Idea, Reading

“The question we must all ask ourselves is how Mr. Benn was able to come within striking distance of the very heart of our economic life in the first place… an important part of the answer must be that our industry, economic life and society have been so debilitated by 30 years of Socialistic fashions that their very weakness tempts further inroads. The path to Benn is paved with 30 years of interventions: 30 years of good intentions: 30 years of disappointments. These have led the collectivists to say that we are failing only because we are taking half measures. The reality is that for 30 years the private sector of our economy has been forced to work with one hand tied behind its back by government and unions. Socialist measures and Socialist legacies have weakened free enterprise.”

Keith Joseph (1918–1994) British barrister and politician

Speech in Upminster http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/displaydocument.asp?docid=110604 (22 June 1974) 1970s

Life, Fashion, Question, Reality