Quotes about expectation
page 6

“The gods that we've made are exactly the gods you'd expect to be made by a species that's about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Christopher Hitchens vs. Barry Brummett, 04/06/2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjSMmRFHaJM&t=13m50s <br class="br">2010s, 2011

God

“We tried it again and it didn't work out. Sour milk is always sour milk. When something goes bad it stays bad. You don't put sour milk in the refrigerator one day, and take it out the next and expect it to taste sweet.”

Eric Jerome Dickey (1961) American author

Source: Thieves' Paradise

“Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead.”

Tom Stoppard book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Life, Lie, Thinking, Chance

“Hope for the best, expect the worst.”

Angela Carter book Wise Children

Source: Wise Children

Hope

“Loyalty is weird, it kicks in when you dont expect it and the people who deserve loyalty least seem to get it the most.”

Russell Banks (1940) American author

People, Loyalty

“I followed you.'

I saw no one.'

That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventure of the Devil's Foot

Source: The Adventure of the Devil's Foot

“As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1783, p. 519
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“You know what I think? Fate! That's what it is fate! There's a thing that comes after a fellow:got a name, but I forgot what it is. Creeps up behind him, and puts him in the basket when he ain't expecting it.”

Georgette Heyer book Friday's Child

Source: Friday's Child

Fate, Thinking

“One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.”

Paulo Freire book Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Source: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

People, World, Education

“We are not expecting Utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

On Pilgrimage (1948)
Context: We are not expecting Utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them. A man has a natural right to food, clothing, and shelter. A certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life. A family needs work as well as bread. Property is proper to man. We must keep repeating these things. Eternal life begins now. "All the way to heaven is heaven, because He said, "I am the Way." The cross is there, of course, but "in the cross is joy of spirit." And love makes all things easy.

God

“Honesty is a very expensive gift, Don't expect it from cheap people.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

People

“Oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Understanding

“Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it's exactly like love in three ways: it's pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love, Way, Optimism, Sense

“Jace threw himself against the door. It didn't budge. He cursed. "My shoulder will never be the same. I expect you to nurse me back to health."
-Jace to Clary, pg.284-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Variant: My shoulder will never be the same. I expect you to nurse me back to health.'-Jace
'Just break the door down, will you?'-Clary
Source: City of Bones

Health

“"I can't make sense out of that girl," he said to the bard. "Can you?"
"Never mind," Fflewddur said. "We aren't really expected to."”

Lloyd Alexander book The Book of Three

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book I: The Book of Three (1964), Chapter 12

Girl, Sense

“When life doesn't meet your expectations, it was important to take it with grace.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: When Demons Walk

Life

“You can not entertain weak, harmful, negative thoughts ten hours a day and expect to bring about beautiful, strong and harmonious conditions by ten minutes of strong, positive, creative thought.”

Charles F. Haanel book The Master Key System

Source: The Master Key System

Beauty, Strong

“You just don’t expect to meet dead people.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Invisible Monsters

People, Dead

“Plant seeds of expectation in your mind; cultivate thoughts that anticipate achievement. Believe in yourself as being capable of overcoming all obstacles and weaknesses.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

“Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars
for you? That I would take you there? The splash
of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube?”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

Star

“Don't expect much and you won't be disappointed.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Variant: Don't expect much, and you won't be disappointed.
Source: The Wizard Heir

Disappointment

“The most content people are those who expect nothing, who have ceased to dream.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

People, Dreams

“We're taught to expect unconditional love from our parents, but I think it is more the gift our children give us. It's they who love us helplessly, no matter what or who we are.”

Kathryn Harrison book The Kiss

Source: The Kiss

Love, Children, Thinking, Parent

“Really now: If you can't get me my newspaper on time, how can you expect me to refrain from killing people?”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

People, Time

“I poke around in the pile, about to settle on some cod chowder, when Peeta holds out a can to me. “Here.”
I take it, not knowing what to expect. The label reads LAMB STEW.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Reading

“See, when you mess something up, you learn for the next time. It's when people compliment you that you're in trouble. That means they expect you to keep it up.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

People, Learning, Time

“I can't be expected to produce deathless prose in an atmosphere of gloom and eucalyptus.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

Source: My Family and Other Animals

“When you showed someone how you felt, it was fresh and honest. When you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Variant: When you showed someone how you felt, it was fesh and honest. Whe you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation.
Source: Handle with Care

“Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you invert the equation - expectation divided by reality - you didn't get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Happiness, Hope, Reality

“It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

Change

“The world expected girls to pluck and primp and put on heels. Meanwhile, boys dressed in rumpled T-shirts and baggy pants and misplace their combs, and yet you were suppose to fall at their feet? Unacceptable.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

World, Girl, Boy

“Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Pain, Pleasure, World, Feeling

“Expectations are resentments under construction.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

“It's hard to close the door on optimistic expectations when you love someone.”

Dennis Lehane book A Drink Before the War

Source: A Drink Before the War

Love

“We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“I was having coffee with my bodyguard. I didn't expect to be hunting bad guys until later. Leather before sundown is tacky.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: A Perfect Blood

Guy, Coffee

“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

Source: The Magician King

World, Way

“Anybody who has the courage to raise his eyes and look sanely at the awful human condition… must realize finally that tiny periods of temporary release from intolerable suffering is the most that any individual has the right to expect.”

Flann O'Brien (1911–1966) Irish writer

Courage, Suffering

“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has
been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed
there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”

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

Faith, Spring

“To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Life

“Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Truth

“Don't expect to make a difference unless you speak up for yourself.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

“If you expect the worst, you'll never be disappointed.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Disappointment

“I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.”

Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer

Source: Captain Newman, M. D (1962), p. 328; this is also sometimes attributed to Leo Buscaglia, who often quoted it in his addresses and in his book Living, Loving and Learning (1982).

Strong, Learning

“It’s probably unfair to expect the world at large, or even most people, to see us for all we are. It is essential, however, that we see ourselves for all we are. (413)”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Source: Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit

People, World

“On my way here I passed a local cinema and it turns out you were expecting me after all, for the billboards read: The Mummy Returns.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Election Rally in Plymouth (22 May, 2001) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=108389 <br class="br">Post-Prime Ministerial

Way, Reading

“The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it's going to be a lot better and a lot bigger.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

God

“I don't know why it's called "getting lost." Even when you turn down the wrong street, when you find yourself at the dead end of a chain-link fence or a road that turnd to sand, you are somewhere. It just isn't where you expected to be.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Dead

“That which we expect of life is indeed all that it ever can be.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Locket

Life

“If you want it and expect it, it will be yours very soon.”

Esther Hicks (1948) American writer

Source: The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham

“No one rises to low expectations”

Les Brown (1945) American politician

“Trusting God completely means having faith that He knows what is best for your life. You expect Him to keep His promises, help you with problems, and do the impossible when necessary.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, God, Faith, Problem

“The human mind had a remarkable ability both to discount what it sees and make reality conform to expectation.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Warrior Heir

Reality

“But maybe as I get older, I begin to see beauty where I least expected it before.”

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1956) novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist

Beauty

“When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you.”

Norman Vincent Peale book The Power of Positive Thinking

Source: The Power of Positive Thinking

Law

“What is trust, sidhe-seer, but expectation that another will behave in a certain fashion, consistent with prior actions?”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

Fashion

“Assumptions and expectations will kill any relationship, so let’s you and me not go there, okay?”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

“You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Dead

“Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Variant: the people you love can surprise you every day... maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.
Source: My Sister's Keeper (2004)

“People don't expect too much from literature. They just want to know they're not alone with being confused.”

Jonathan Ames (1964) American novelist, memoirist

People, Literature

“Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Hate, War, World

“In the blink of an eye, something happens by chance - when you least expect it - sets you on a course that you never planned, into a future you never imagined.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Imagination, Chance, Future

“When we can do nothing else, we can still love, without expecting any reward or change or gratitude.”

Paulo Coelho book Like the Flowing River

Source: Like the Flowing River

Love, Change, Gratitude

“I learned you pay for your happiness. That's why I don't expect to be happy all the time. I'd rather be surprised by one moment every so often to remind me that joy is possible, even if I have to pay for it later.”

Esmeralda Santiago (1948) Puerto Rican writer and actor

Source: Conquistadora

Happiness, Learning, Time, Joy

“Your fey cousin here has the miraculous ability to hold his liquor--and mine, and yours, and the king's, and half the country's, I expect.”

Alethea Kontis (1976) American writer

Source: Enchanted

Country

“It's when people compliment you that you're in trouble. That means they expect you to keep it up.”

Ned Vizzini (1981–2013) American writer

People

“I don't think you tell someone you love them because you expect something. I think you tell them because you have something to give.”

Nora Roberts book Bed of Roses

Source: Bed of Roses

Love, Thinking

“Happiness often comes when least expected.”

François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness

Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Happiness

“I don't know what I expected from my first meeting with Peeta after the announcement. A few hugs and kisses. A little comfort maybe. Not this. I turn to Haymitch. "Don't worry, I'll get you more liquor.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Kiss

“Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Life, Understanding, Business, Thinking

“Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds-- all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.”

Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909) American author and Unitarian clergyman

People, Time

“I'll scream!"
"Likely. If not before, certainly during. I expect they'll hear ye at the next farm; you've got good lungs.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

“I welcome each new day with a hopeful expectancy that I, too, will rise above the ordinary. For I am not content to live a merely "normal" life or settle for an average existence. No, I am destined for more--much, much more.”

Melody Carlson (1956) American writer

Source: Finding Alice

Life, Hope

“I don’t expect perfection, I expect excellence.” I expect 100 percent effort in all you do.”

Steven D. Levitt (1967) American economist

When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants

Effort, Perfection

“Hope for the best. Expect the worst.
The world's a stage. We're unrehearsed.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

Chorus
12 Chairs

World, Hope

“Watching them, I thought again of how we can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Variant: We can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.
Source: Lock and Key

“Anyone who loves in the expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Love, Time, Powerful

“Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Life, Marriage, Happiness, Personality

“Gather up In the arms of your love—Those who expect No love from above.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Source: The Collected Poems

Love

“Clearly she was expected to say something, but panic at having to speak stole the thoughts from her head.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

“I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this: "Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you."”

Linus Pauling (1901–1994) American scientist

… The twenty-five percent is for error.
Pauling's reply to an audience question about his ethical system, following his lecture circa 1961 at Monterey Peninsula College, in Monterey, California.
1990s

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