“Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.”

—  William Shakespeare

Last update Sept. 28, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest, and despair mo…" by William Shakespeare?
William Shakespeare photo
William Shakespeare 699
English playwright and poet 1564–1616

Related quotes

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux photo

“Greatest fools are oft most satisfied.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

Le plus fou souvent est le plus satisfait.
Satire 4, l. 128
Satires (1716)

George Gordon Byron photo

“Despair and Genius are too oft connected”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Source: Byron Poems

John Ogilby photo

“Great Expectations oft to nothing come.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Fab. VIII: Of the Mountain in Labour
The Fables of Aesop (2nd ed. 1668)

William Shakespeare photo

“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and lost without deserving.”

William Shakespeare Othello

Iago, Act II, scene iii.
Source: Othello (1603–4)

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.

Plautus Rudens

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

John Lydgate photo

“For hit ys oft seyde by hem that yet lyues
He must nedys go that the deuell dryues.”

John Lydgate (1370–1450) monk and poet

The Assembly of Gods; or, The Accord of Reason and Sensuality, line 20.
This poem was long attributed to Lydgate, but is now thought to have been written after his death, during the second half of the 15th century. http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/asint.htm#f10
Misattributed

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey photo

“With silver drops the mead yet spread for ruth,
In active games of nimbleness and strength,
Where we did strain, trained with swarms of youth,
Our tender limbs that yet shot up in length.
The secret groves, which oft we made resound
Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies' praise;
Recording oft what grace each one had found,
What hope of speed, what dread of long delays.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

Source: Prisoned in Windsor, He Recounteth his Pleasure there Passed, Line 21

Xi Jinping photo

“Safeguarding the interests of our Taiwan compatriots and expanding their well-being is the mainland's oft-repeated pledge and solemn promise of the new leaders of China's Communist Party central committee.”

Xi Jinping (1953) General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and paramount leader of China

As quoted in "China's Xi to tread peaceful, patient path on Taiwan" http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/25/us-china-taiwan-idUSBRE91O0CC20130225 in Reuters (25 February 2013).
2010s

“Darwinian evolution may be the most truthful and powerful idea ever generated by Western Science, but if we continue to illustrate our conviction with an indefensible, unsupported, entirely speculative, and basically rather silly story, then we are clothing a thing of beauty in rags - and we should be ashamed, "for the apparel oft proclaims the man."”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"The Tallest Tale", p. 318
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Related topics