#expectations

"Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is... we cannot expect things to be much better in this world... We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity."

"There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations"

"I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations."

"Every time you give away love without any expectations, you become richer."

"Everyone who is educated today wants to sit at a comfortable desk under a fan and live in an air-conditioned house surrounded by a garden, coming and going in an American car as wide as the street. If we do not tear out this disease by the roots we shall have with us a bourgeoisie that is in no way connected with the reality of our life..."

"When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood."

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

"You will face your greatest opposition when you are closest to your biggest miracle."

"Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning."

"A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect."

"My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus."[The Science of Second-Guessing (New York Times Magazine Interview, December 12, 2004)]"

"Expect more get less and feel sadness Or expect less get more and feel happiness"

"An attitude of positive expectation is the mark of the superior personality."

"I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself "When did they live?"I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to live! My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations."

"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."

"It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished."

"I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine."

"You don't seem mad at all,' she said.But I am, although I'm undergoing a cure, because my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. However, while I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being mad, living life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete?"

"The pretty ones are usually unhappy. They expect everyone to be enamored of their beauty. How can a person be content when their happiness lies in someone else's hands, ready to be crushed at any moment? Ordinary-looking people are far superior, because they are forced to actually work hard to achieve their goals, instead of expecting people to fall all over themselves to help them."

"Always expect that something beautiful and wonderful will happen to fill life with beauty."