Quotes about disappointment
page 5

Will Arnett photo
Ludwig Feuerbach photo
Colley Cibber photo

“We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman,—scorned, slighted, dismissed without a parting pang.”

Love's Last Shift, Act IV (1696). Compare: "Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd", William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697), Act III, scene viii (often paraphrased: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned").

Herbert Spencer photo

“Strong as it looks at the outset, State-agency perpetually disappoints every one. Puny as are its first stages, private efforts daily achieve results that astound the world.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Vol. 3, Ch. VII, Over-Legislation
Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891)

James Hudson Taylor photo

“We have so often been disappointed that we must not be too sure of anything, save of God’s help and presence which He will never withhold.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 78).

Donald J. Trump photo
Karen Armstrong photo
Bernard Baruch photo

“Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.”

Bernard Baruch (1870–1965) American businessman

As quoted in Meyer Berger’s New York (1960)

William H. Gass photo
Ben Carson photo

“I was confident that something good would come out of yet another difficult and disappointing case.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 35

PewDiePie photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo
Elon Musk photo
John McCain photo
Gouverneur Morris photo
Philip Larkin photo
Plautus photo

“For true it is, good oft befalls us when we least expect it. And true it is, that when we trust in hope, we’re often disappointed.”
Nam multa praeter spem, scio, multis bona evenisse. At ego etiam qui speraverint, spem decepisse multos.

Rudens, Act II, scene 3, line 69
Rudens (The Rope)

Bill Bryson photo
Horace Greeley photo
George Eliot photo
Richard Nixon photo
Billy Collins photo
Nick Clegg photo
Irvine Welsh photo
Cyril Connolly photo
Graham Greene photo
George W. Bush photo
H. G. Wells photo
Robbie Williams photo

“I'm not scared of dying, I just don't want to.
If I stop lying, I'll just disappoint you.”

Robbie Williams (1974) British singer and entertainer

Come Undone
Escapology (2002)

George W. Bush photo
Georges Bernanos photo
Claudia Alexander photo
J. P. Donleavy photo

“I got disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own.”

A Fairy Tale of New York (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973) p. 224.

Mohamed Nasheed photo
Anthony Burgess photo
John Newton photo

“There is many a thing which the world calls disappointment; but there is no such thing in the dictionary of faith. What to others are disappointments are to believers intimations of the will of God.”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 281.

Karl Wolff photo
David Quammen photo
Barbara Hepworth photo
Peter Medawar photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Sania Mirza photo
Phil Brown (footballer) photo
Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend http://www.bartleby.com/122/50.html", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Jay McInerney photo
James MacDonald photo
Kambri Crews photo

“Life is full of disappointments. And by "disappointments" I mean "people."”

Kambri Crews (1971) American storyteller

[11 February 2011, http://www.facebook.com/KambriCrews/posts/162460473805347, Kambri Crews Fan Page]

Ludovico Ariosto photo

“Behold the state of man's unstable mind,
Still prone to change with every changing wind!
All our resolves are weak, but weakest prove
Where sprung from sense of disappointed love.”

O degli uomini inferma e instabil mente!
Come siàn presti a variar disegno!
Tutti i pensier mutamo facilmente,
Più quei che nascon d’amoroso sdegno.
Canto XXIX, stanza 1 (tr. J. Hoole)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Warren Farrell photo
Elaine Paige photo
Miho Mosulishvili photo
Barbara Kingsolver photo
John Edwards photo

“I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs. I think he would be appalled, actually.”

John Edwards (1953) American politician

An interview with the website Beliefnet.com http://www.beliefnet.com/story/213/story_21312_1.html. Reported also by Boston Globe, March 5, 2007. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/03/05/edwards_jesus_would_be_appalled/

Dafydd ap Gwilym photo

“A fine handsome youth rewarded me;
May is a generous, open-handed prince.
He sent me true coins:
Clean green leaves of May's gentle hazels.
Twigs' florins don’t disappoint me,
May's fleur-de-lys wealth.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Harddwas teg a'm anrhegai,
Hylaw ŵr mawr hael yw'r Mai.
Anfones ym iawn fwnai,
Glas defyll glân mwyngyll Mai.
Ffloringod brig ni'm digiai,
Fflŵr-dy-lis gyfoeth mis Mai.
"Mis Mai" (May), line 9; translation by Patrick Sims-Williams, from Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: The European Inheritance (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983) p. 541.

Henry Kirke White photo
Enoch Powell photo

“The nation has been, and is still being, eroded and hollowed out from within by the implantation of large unassimilated and unassimiliable populations—what Lord Radcliffe once in a memorable phrase called "alien wedges"—in the heartland of the state…The disruption of the homogeneous "we", which forms the essential basis of parliamentary democracy and therefore of our liberties, is now approaching the point at which the political mechanics of a "divided community"…take charge and begin to operate autonomously. Let me illustrate this pathology of a society that is being eaten alive…The two active ingredients are grievance and violence. Where a community is divided, grievance is for practical purposes inexhaustible. When violence is injected—and quite a little will suffice for a start—there begins an escalating competition to discover grievance and to remove it. The materials lie ready to hand in a multiplicity of agencies with a vested interest, more or less benevolent, in the process of discovering grievances and demanding their removal. The spiral is easily maintained in upward movement by the repetitions and escalation of violence. At each stage alienation between the various elements of society is increased, and the constant disappointment that the imagined remedies yield a reverse result leads to growing bitterness and despair. Hand in hand with the exploitation of grievance goes the equally counterproductive process which will no doubt, as usual, be called the "search for a political solution"…Indeed, attention has already been drawn publicly to the potentially critical factor of the so-called immigrant vote in an increasing number of worthwhile constituencies. The result is that the political parties of the indigenous population vie with one another for votes by promising remedy of the grievances which are being uncovered and exploited in the context of actual or threatened violence. Thus the legislature finds itself in effect manipulated by minorities instead of responding to majorities, and is watched by the public at large with a bewildering and frustration, not to say cynicism, of which the experience of legislation hitherto in the field of immigration and race relations afford some pale idea…I need not follow the analysis further in order to demonstrate how parliamentary democracy disintegrates when the national homogeneity of the electorate is broken by a large and sharp alteration in the composition of the population. While the institutions and liberties on which British liberty depends are being progressively surrendered to the European superstate, the forces which will sap and destroy them from within are allowed to accumulate unchecked. And all the time we are invited to direct towards Angola or Siberia the anxious attention that the real danger within our power and our borders imperatively demand.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech the Hampshire Monday Club in Southampton (9 April 1976), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 165-166
1970s

Rani Mukerji photo
Robert Mitchum photo

“No. But it was indicated by other people that I should go there—like my wife, my friends, the woman from Alcoholics Anonymous who came around. My wife, Dottie, was the prime mover. It would have been a disappointment to her if I'd rejected her suggestion. I stayed until they were done with me. I don't know if it 'worked.”

Robert Mitchum (1917–1997) American film actor, author, composer and singer

I don't understand that.
When asked if he was "feeling batter" following his previous year's stay at the Betty Ford Center, as quoted in "Roberto Mitchum: After all these years, still one of a kind" by Victor Davis, in The Chicago Tribune (November 23, 1984)

Bono photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo
Daniel Johns photo
Edward Young photo

“In youth, what disappointments of our own making: in age, what disappointments from the nature of things.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

A Vindication of Providence; or, A True Estimate of Human Life (1728).

Susan Cain photo

“Introversion — along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness — is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

"Revenge of the introverts: It's often assumed extroverts do best in life, but a new book reveals quite the opposite... ," The Daily Mail, March 25, 2012.

Stephenie Meyer photo
Ralph Vaughan Williams photo

“In the next world, I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.”

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) English composer

Said to Sylvia Townsend Warner two weeks before his death; published in William Maxwell (ed.) The Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner (1982) p. 168.

Jay Samit photo

“Data is the most rational and productive member of any startup team. Data may disappoint, but it never lies.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p.124

Hung Hsiu-chu photo
Luís de Camões photo

“Who has seen on so small a theatre as my poor bed, such a representation of the disappointments of fortune? And I, as if she could not herself subdue me, I have yielded and become of her party; for it were wild audacity to hope to surmount such accumulated evils.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Quem ouviu dizer que em tão pequeno teatro como o de um pobre leito, quizesse a fortuna representar tão grandes desventuras? E eu, como se elas não bastassem, me ponho ainda da sua parte; porque procurar resistir a tantos males pareceria espécie de desavergonhamento.
Letter "written a little before his death", as quoted in The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India: An Epic Poem (1776) by William Julius Mickle, p. cxvi
Letters

Alfred P. Sloan photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Theodore Dalrymple photo
Kumar Sangakkara photo

“Disappointed we didn't win it for Sanga. We promised him we would play our best cricket, but we didn't. On behalf of the team, we can't thank Sanga enough for his services over the last 15 years.”

Kumar Sangakkara (1977) Sri Lankan cricketer

Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews said that he was disappointed that the team could not gift a farewell win to batting great Kumar Sangakkara, who retired from cricket at the P Sara Oval, quoted on sports.ndtv, "Angelo Mathews Unhappy Sri Lanka Did Not Win it for Kumar Sangakkara" http://sports.ndtv.com/sri-lanka-vs-india-2015/news/247472-angelo-mathews-unhappy-sri-lanka-did-not-win-it-for-kumar-sangakkara, August 24, 2015.
About

Albert Speer photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Mahela Jayawardene photo

“My role with England is to help develop their cricketers, and to help with how they should approach different challenges - like playing spin. The pools hadn't been decided when I agreed to do it. England didn't hire me to give information on the Sri Lankan team. They have analysts and coaches to do that. I'm quite disappointed to see those comments from the board, to be fair.”

Mahela Jayawardene (1977) Former Sri Lankan cricketer

Jayawardene on criticism from SLC president Thilanga Sumathipala, contending that his ten-day consulting role with England is largely geared toward player development and not toward providing specific tactical information, quoted on ESPN Cricket Info, "Jayawardene brushes off SLC president's criticism" http://www.espncricinfo.com/srilanka/content/story/976925.html, February 27, 2016.
Quote

Ben Gibbard photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Lewis Black photo
Michelle Obama photo

“People who work the day shift, kiss their kids goodnight, and head out for the night shift — without disappointment, without regret — that goodnight kiss a reminder of everything they're working for.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2000s, Democratic National Convention speech (2008)

Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Neville Chamberlain photo
Sarah Grimké photo
Zlatan Ibrahimović photo

“I'm not used to winning nothing – it's the first time it's happened to me. I'm disappointed. It's a failure.”

Zlatan Ibrahimović (1981) Swedish association football player

After AC Milan lose the Scudetto to Juventus in 2012 http://www.insideworldsoccer.com/2012/05/zlatan-ibrahimovic-not-used-to-winning.html.
Attributed

S. S. Van Dine photo

“It desolates me to disappoint you, but your brother is not here. Despite two really praiseworthy attempts at rescue.”

dialogue between Vidanric and his prisoner-of-war Meliara.
Crown Duel (Crown & Court #1 - 2, 1997)

Ulysses S. Grant photo
George Boole photo

“I personally was disappointed because I know I'm a lot faster than that. But I was able to do that just coming off knee surgery, so if I look at it that way, I'm happy.”

Javon Ringer (1987) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back

Quoted here http://www.freep.com/article/20090228/SPORTS07/902280363/1048/SPORTS/Ringer+works+out+for+scouts+with++80+++knee

Michael Chabon photo

“A Messiah who actually arrives is no good to anybody. A hope fulfilled is already half a disappointment.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Chapter 39