138 Expectations Quotes

Expectations are an intrinsic part of the human experience, shaping our perceptions, aspirations, and reactions to life’s myriad challenges. Whether you find yourself setting high standards for personal achievement, navigating relationships, or facing the unpredictable nature of the world, the power of expectations cannot be understated. In this collection, we've curated the top 138 quotes that delve into the complexities and nuances of expectations. These insightful words from thinkers, writers, and leaders across various fields offer wisdom and perspective, encouraging reflection on how expectations influence our lives and how we can manage them to foster growth and resilience. Join us as we explore these thought-provoking quotes, each one a small beacon of understanding in the vast landscape of human thought.

1. “On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.” - Charles Babbage

2. “After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they’d actually made some sort of choice.” - Tom Perrotta

3. “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” - Alexander Pope

4. “Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.” - Simone de Beauvoir

5. “I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind. [...] Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person, the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We could prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen.” - Vladimir Nabokov

6. “If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.” - Sylvia Plath

7. “If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?” - Jodi Picoult

8. “It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like but don't. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?” - Douglas Adams

9. “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)]” - Stephen W. Hawking

10. “I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations.” - Bill Watterson

11. “Many things have been written and will be written for dream. Dreams are nothing but our unclear expectations.” - Santosh Kalwar

12. “Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.” - Samuel Johnson

13. “Would you like to know your future?If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator.So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence -- a surprise.” - Vera Nazarian

14. “Mrs. Lynde says, 'Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.” - L. M. Montgomery

15. “You can't eat straight A's.” - Maxine Hong Kingston

16. “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.” - C.S. Lewis

17. “You are most powerful when you are most silent. People never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words hanging leaping from their mouths. Silence? No.” - Alison McGhee

18. “Damned Beaver/Jeremy is the War, he is every assertion the fucking War has ever made--that we are meant for work and government, for austerity: and these shall take priority over love, dreams, the spirit, the senses and the other second-class trivia that are found among the idle and mindless hours of the day....Damn them, they are wrong. They are insane.” - Thomas Pynchon

19. “If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend.” - Charlotte Brontë

20. “Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible.” - Ronnie Oldham

21. “When we pick up the newspaper at breakfast, we expect - we even demand - that it brings us momentous events since the night before...We expect our two-week vacations to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless..We expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical. We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be inspired by mediocre appeals for excellence, to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy...to go to 'a church of our choice' and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God and to be God. Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.” - Daniel Boorstin

22. “Quería eso, pero esperaba más. Sufre uno por aquello que espera, más que por lo que quiere. Aceptamos que los deseos puedan ser imposibles, pero jamás las expectativas, que son como las deudas del destino.” - Xavier Velasco

23. “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” - Bruce Lee

24. “I feel strangely free at such times. To behave properly is to be always courteous, always clever, and subtle and elegant. But now, when I am so alone, I do not have to be any of these things. For this moment, I am wholly myself, unshaped by the needs of others, by their dreams or expectations or sensibilities. But I am also lonely. With no one to shape me, who stands here, watching the moon, or the stars, or the clouds?” - Kij Johnson

25. “It is easier to make our wishes conform to our means than to make our means conform to our wishes.” - Robert E. Lee

26. “She was becoming sad. There is no joy involved in following others' expectations of yourself.” - Miriam Toews

27. “A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect.” - Jonathan Lockwood Huie

28. “I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living--all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents.” - Anthony Bourdain

29. “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.” - Virginia Woolf

30. “What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave, sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened down to your very bones. ” - Sharon Creech

31. “You can't expect everyone to have the same dedication as you.” - Jeff Kinney

32. “We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.” - Lev Grossman

33. “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.” - Fulton J. Sheen

34. “This was our last night. We only had one curtain call, Bree. And I thought they were going to give us a standing ovation, but no-o-o-. Do you know why half the audience stood up?""To get a head start on the traffic," Bree said."To get a head start on the traffic," Antonia agreed in indignation. "I mean, here we are, dancing and singing our little guts out, and all those folks want to do is get to bed early. I ask you, whatever happened to common courtesy? Whatever happened to decent manners? Doesn't anyone care about craft anymore? And on top of that, it's not even nice.” - Mary Stanton

35. “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...” - Tayeb Salih

36. “Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.” - Brenda Ueland

37. “I mean, like most guys, you carry around this girl in your head, who is exactly who you want her to be. The person you think you will love the most. And every girl you are with gets measured against this girl in your head.” - Rachel Cohn

38. “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?” - Paulo Coelho

39. “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.” - Paulo Coelho

40. “Meanwhile she's coldly interrogating me with her eyes. She's definitely in charge of this house and this moment. This must be Chloe.She escorts me to a table full of people and presents me. She introduces them briefly. This one's from Morocco, that one from Italy, he's Persian--I'm not exactly sure what that means--this one's from "the UK." They're all in their twenties, poised and dismissive. They don't know or care who I'm supposed to be at home or where I went to school. They're measuring something else I can't see and don't understand.They nod and turn back to each other. They seem to be waiting for a cue from Chloe to release them from having to feign interest. She introduces herself at substantially more length. Her father is Chinese and her mother is Swiss; she grew up in Hong Kong and "in Europe."I grew up in Michigan and in Michigan. But she didn't ask.” - Kenneth Cain

41. “What's the first sign of a lurking, hidden expectation you didn't know you had? Pain! People don't do what we want, things don't happen quickly enough, the weather doesn't cooperate, our bodies don't cooperate. Why are these moments so painful? Because our minds are focused on a static, unchanging, me-centric picture while the dynamic unfolding of a broader life continues around us. There is nothing wrong with expectations per se, as it's appropriate to set goals and work, properly, towards their fruition. But the instant we feel pain over life not going "my way," our expectations have clearly taken an improper turn. Any moment you feel resistance or pain, look for -- and then let go of -- the hidden expectation. Practice giving yourself over to what "you" don't want. Let the line at the store be long. Let the other person interrupt you. Let the nervousness make you shake. Be where your body is, not where your mind is trying to take you.” - Guy Finley

42. “The secret self knows the anguish of our attachments and assures us that letting go of what we think we must have to be happy is the same as letting go of our unhappiness.” - Guy Finley

43. “Thanks to our artists, we pretend well, living under canopies of painted clouds and painted gods, in halls of marble floors across which the sung Masses paint hope in deep impatsi of echo. We make of the hollow world a fuller, messier, prettier place, but all our inventions can't create the one thing we require: to deserve any fond attention we might accidentally receive, to receive any fond attention we don't in the course of things deserve. We are never enough to ourselves because we can never be enough to another. Any one of us walks into any room and reminds its occupant that we are not the one they most want to see. We are never the one. We are never enough.” - Gregory Maguire

44. “If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.” - Roberto Bolaño

45. “...You don't always get what you expect. I wish someone, sometime when I was growing up, would have told me what expectations would get me. ... Our parents, schools, everyone tells us things will be a certain way when we're adults and if they're not that way, we should make them be; or at least pretend. But after a certain point that just doesn't work.” - Chris Crutcher

46. “I'd proven to the world that maturity, experience, dedication, and ingenuity can make up for a little senescence. Muscle tightening is not the only thing that happens to our bodies over time. We gain knowledge, focus, and understanding, and those things can help us win.” - Dara Torres

47. “Always too eager for the future, wePick up bad habits of expectancy.Something is always approaching; every dayTill then we say,Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear,Sparkling armada of promises draw near.How slow they are! And how much time they waste,Refusing to make haste!Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalksOf disappointment, for, though nothing balksEach big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,Each rope distinct,Flagged, and the figurehead with golden titsArching our way, it never anchors; it'sNo sooner present than it turns to past.Right to the lastWe think each one will heave to and unloadAll good into our lives, all we are owedFor waiting so devoutly and so long.But we are wrong:Only one ship is seeking us, a black-Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her backA huge and birdless silence. In her wakeNo waters breed or break.- Next, Please” - Philip Larkin

48. “If you expect nothing, you can never be disappointed.Apart from a few starry-eyed poets or monks living on a mountaintop somewhere, however, we all have expectations. We not only have them, we need them. They fuel our dreams, our hopes, and our lives like some super-caffeinated energy drink.” - Tonya Hurley

49. “I am afraid I shall disappoint people's expectations dreadfully.” - Jude Morgan

50. “No expectations mean there is no risk of disappointment.” - Jude Morgan

51. “There were times . . . when it occurred to me that I was repeating my mother's life. Usually this thought struck me as funny. But if I happened to be tired, or if there were extra bills to pay and no money to pay them with, it seemed awful. I'd think 'This isn't the way our lives are supposed to be going.' Then I'd think 'Half the world has the same idea.” - Stephen King

52. “When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.” - Donald Miller

53. “One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.” - Alan Bennett

54. “I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed.” - Julia Glass

55. “I wasn't disappointed. My expectations had been met.” - John Green

56. “He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.” - Robert Jordan

57. “It's okay. You're going to save me, Miss Maylene." The girl gave her a genuine look of happiness. "I know it. I knew if I found you everything would be okay.” - Melissa Marr

58. “Fortunately, I read (the books) without knowing what I was in for, and the best thing that can ever happen to a reader happened to me: I loved something that, by conviction (or by my nature) I should not have loved” - Milan Kundera

59. “I've always liked rooms where the party hasn't started yet...I love the feeling that anything could happen. After the party, when anything already has happened, there's usually the inevitable fact to face that anything wasn't all you'd hoped it to be.” - Jillian Lauren

60. “Nowadays, I dont have expectations, and this way she beats them all.” - Jodi Picoult

61. “Positive expectations are the mark of the superior personality.” - Brian Tracy

62. “Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. -Laura Ingalls Wilder, author (1867-1957)” - Laura Ingalls Wilder

63. “The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written.(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)” - Dorothy L. Sayers

64. “Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.” - Brandon Sanderson

65. “You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your perception...you see what is, where most people see what they expect.” - Tsitsi Dangarembga

66. “Expectations should not always be taken as reality; because you never know when you will be disappointed.” - Samuel P Huntington

67. “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

68. “...“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,” exclaimed Anne. “You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs. Lynde says, ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.’ But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.”...” - L.M. Montgomery

69. “You don't ask nobody to give what they can't give, or be what they can't be. You've learnt that, you got a headstart on heartbreak.” - Jack Farris

70. “Press conference [on the movie Carrington] yielded the usual crop of daftness. I've been asked if I related personally to Carrington's tortured relationship with sex and replied that no, not really, I'd had a very pleasant time since I was fifteen. This elicited very disapproving copy from the Brits ... No wonder people think we don't have sex in England.” - Emma Thompson

71. “Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.” - Patricia McCormick

72. “She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the ballad: faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that disaster could not shake; love that, in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer. The words were set to a fine old air -- in themselves they were simple and sweet: perhaps, when read, they wanted force; when well sung, they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well: she breathed into the feeling, softness, she poured round the passion, force: her voice was fine that evening; its expression dramatic: she impressed all, and charmed one.On leaving the instrument, she went to the fire, and sat down on a seat -- semi-stool, semi-cushion: the ladies were round her -- none of them spoke. The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely looked upon her, as quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. What made her sing so? They never sang so. Was it proper to sing with such expression, with such originality -- so unlike a school girl? Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged.” - Charlotte Brontë

73. “There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?""Are you a young lady?""I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated.” - Charlotte Brontë

74. “Your god, sir, is the World. In my eyes, you, too, if not an infidel, are an idolater. I conceive that you ignorantly worship: in all things you appear to me too superstitious. Sir, your god, your great Bel, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon. You, and such as you, have raised him to a throne, put on him a crown, given him a sceptre. Behold how hideously he governs! See him busied at the work he likes best -- making marriages. He binds the young to the old, the strong to the imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius and fetters the dead to the living. In his realm there is hatred -- secret hatred: there is disgust -- unspoken disgust: there is treachery -- family treachery: there is vice -- deep, deadly, domestic vice. In his dominions, children grow unloving between parents who have never loved: infants are nursed on deception from their very birth: they are reared in an atmosphere corrupt with lies ... All that surrounds him hastens to decay: all declines and degenerates under his sceptre. Your god is a masked Death.” - Charlotte Brontë

75. “[J]ust the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men – and learned men among them – have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and their behaviour. Not only one or two ... but, more generally, from the treatises of all philosophers and poets and from all the orators – it would take too long to mention their names – it seems that they all speak from one and the same mouth. Thinking deeply about these matters, I began to examine my character and conduct as a natural woman and, similarly, I considered other women whose company I frequently kept, princesses, great ladies, women of the middle and lower classes, who had graciously told me of their most private and intimate thoughts, hoping that I could judge impartially and in good conscience whether the testimony of so many notable men could be true. To the best of my knowledge, no matter how long I confronted or dissected the problem, I could not see or realise how their claims could be true when compared to the natural behaviour and character of women.” - Christine de Pizan

76. “Set the standard! Stop expecting others to show you love, acceptance, commitment, & respect when you don't even show that to yourself.” - Steve Maraboli

77. “Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.” - Lionel Shriver

78. “She was heavier than he expected - women always are.” - Sylvia Townsend Warner

79. “There is no deception on the part of the woman, where a man bewilders himself: if he deludes his own wits, I can certainly acquit the women. Whatever man allows his mind to dwell upon the imprint his imagination has foolishly taken of women, is fanning the flames within himself -- and, since the woman knows nothing about it, she is not to blame. For if a man incites himself to drown, and will not restrain himself, it is not the water's fault.” - John Gower

80. “Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn’t come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words “bliss,” “passion,” and “rapture” - words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.” - Gustave Flaubert

81. “Eccentricity may be diverting, Mama, but it is out of place in a wife: certainly in my wife!” - Georgette Heyer

82. “I believe we must do things in our lives for the right reasons, because we enjoy doing them, with no expectation of getting something back in return. Otherwise, we are constantly being disappointed." She moved her turquoise bracelet back and forth on her wrist. "So I had two sons, John and Richard, because I wanted to, not because I thought they would rescue me in old age. I got out of all social organizations and clubs in my fifties so I could spend time with my grandchildren, not because they would give something back to Jack and me later on, but because that was what I wanted to do--and I have loved doing it. Believe me, these have been selfish decisions.” - Terry Tempest Williams

83. “Today, I feel stronger, learning to live within the natural cycles of a day and to not expect too much of myself. As women, we hold the moon in our bellies. It is too much to ask to operate on full-moon energy three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I am in a crescent phase.” - Terry Tempest Williams

84. “When people starts to enjoy a writer's pen, he becomes a legend even if his stories are neither long nor publicly surrounded by expectations.” - A. Saleh

85. “Maybe my expectations for honesty are too high.” - Kelley Armstrong

86. “Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.” - Stephen R. Covey

87. “There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations” - Jodi Picoult

88. “I understand it was Derian who spoiled everything. He purposefully tainted your view of me and forced you to go along with him. I know none of what happened was your idea or your desire, Eena.”She didn’t get up, but spoke from her curled position. Her voice was weak, still heavy with despair. “Derian didn’t force me to do anything.”“But if he hadn’t influenced you, we would be enjoying a pleasant dinner again, telling stories and laughing. I’m sure that would be the case. You would be happy……and so would I.”Eena chuckled without amusement.“You have to admit we shared some very enjoyable evenings, didn’t we? There’s really no reason we can’t put this whole mess behind us and start from where we left off.” He sounded genuinely serious.“You forget,” she reminded him, “I heard your conversation with the Ghengats. This isn’t about Derian, it’s about you.”“Alright,” he admitted with an acquiescent sigh, “so I’m not everything you’d hoped for. But really, what man can ever live up to any woman’s terribly high expectations?”This got her attention. She almost stood up to face him, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Leaning forward, she retorted, “Expecting a man to respect you, to be honest with you, and, oh yes, to not be a shameless murderer—I don’t think those are overly high expectations!”He shrugged, casually excusing his faults. “Nobody’s perfect.”“What do you want?” she finally asked, exasperated.He squatted to her level and stated his desire. “I want you.”Eena thought the expression on his face—the look in his weary blue eyes—appeared strangely sincere. But there was one thing she had learned from all this: never trust a master of deceit.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

89. “Expect everything so that nothing comes unexpected.” - Norton Juster

90. “You see what you expect to see, Severus.” - J.K. Rowling

91. “What I mean is that those thoughts, they're human. And just because you turn out differently than everyone's imagined you would doesn't mean that you've failed in some way. A kid who gets teased in one school might move to a different one, and be the most popular girl there, just because no one has any other expectations of her. Or a person who goes to med school because his entire family is full of doctors might find out that what he really wants to be is an artist instead.” - Jodi Picoult

92. “Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.” - Mark Twain

93. “And by the way, if I always tell you the truth, you might start to believe me.” - Victor L. Wooten

94. “Madeline knew how that was. So many people had ideas of what you should and shouldn't do, but in the end you had to decide for yourself.” - Ellen Airgood

95. “Unhappiness lies in that gap between our talents and our expectations.” - Sebastian Horsley

96. “Peace beginsWhen expectation ends.” - Sri Chinmoy

97. “It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.” - George Eliot

98. “Does your reality match your expectations? If not it's time to change either your expectations or your reality.” - Steven Redhead

99. “Water shrinks wool, urgency shrinks time.Shrinkage may be an advantage or the reverse, according to expectation.” - Idries Shah

100. “To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect” - Jane Austen

101. “I hope you do not let anyone else's expectations direct the course of your life.” - Julianne Donaldson

102. “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

103. “I started to discover the meaning of happiness when I started to discover--and practice--the art of acceptance. When I started to accept life for what it was and I started to accept whatever situation I was in as the way things were, I started to see that my happiness depended on my own attitude. When I started focusing on getting the most out of my life the way it was rather than trying to turn it into what I thought it should be, I started to realize that I was, indeed, becoming a much happier person.” - Tom Walsh

104. “When you Love.. you Expect.. Once u start Expecting.. u have Hope.. Hopes in return makes you to put Trust.. and Trust makes u prone to Betrayal.. and whn u r Betrayed.. Hell falls over U...!!!” - Abhijeet Sawant

105. “A successful person expects a clapping hand, an ailing person expects an open hand.” - Anthony Liccione

106. “Freedom is to stand naked at the moment, having no expectations, nothing to lose or to gain. The empty then is fulfilled, just to be emptied again at the next moment. The Absolute Freedom is, to become every path, at any given moment.” - Grigoris Deoudis

107. “When it comes to current attitudes about surgery, the practice of dismissing the cultural context and rationalizing it as individual betterment "flattens the terrain of power relations." In other words, we can talk about doing it for us until our high-end lipstick flakes off, but we should also keep in mind that we probably wouldn't even be thinking about what life would be like with a new nose or perkier breasts or shapelier inner thighs if it weren't for a long-standing cultural ideal that rewards those who adhere to it with power that often doesn't speak its name, but is instantly recognizable to those who don't have it.” - Andi Zeisler

108. “...and to-morrow looked in my face more steadily than I could look at it” - Charles Dickens

109. “Expectation and fact are two different things that people usually cannot differentiate.” - Lionel Suggs

110. “We need to have far less confidence in what man can do and far moreconfidence in what God can do for every believing soul. He longs to haveyou reach after Him by faith. He longs to have you expect great thingsfrom Him. He longs to give you understanding in temporal as well as inspiritual matters. He can sharpen the intellect. He can give tact andskill. Put your talents into the work, ask God for wisdom, and it will begiven you.” - Ellen G. White

111. “When our hopes for performance are not completely met, realistic optimism involves accepting what cannot now be changed, rather than condemning or second-guessing ourselves. Focusing on the successful aspects of performance (even when the success is modest) promotes positive affect, reduces self-doubt, and helps to maintain motivation (e.g., McFarland & Ross, 1982).... Nevertheless, realistic optimism does not include or imply expectations that things will improve on their own. Wishful thinking of this sort typically has no reliable supporting evidence. Instead, the opportunity-seeking component of realistic optimism motivates efforts to improve future performances on the basis of what has been learned from past performances.” - Sandra L. Schneider

112. “A big desire is not enough to meet the expectations of lost dreams.” - Dejan Stojanovic

113. “Toată lumea se așteaptă ca educația să fie un drept fundamental și nu pun mare preț pe ea când o primesc!” - Agatha Christie

114. “To expect to be kissed having bad breath is the secret of a fool.” - Dejan Stojanovic

115. “It's no use going the extra mile if people don't expect it. You will never get extra credit for it. Just invest it on something else.” - Sartika Kurniali

116. “You get what you expect and you deserve what you tolerate.” - Mark Graban

117. “Little girls grow up thinking that knights in shining armor actually exist.  But they don't.  And if those valiant heroes ever did bless this world with their chivalrous deeds, I imagine, just like Christ's apostles, they were destroyed by envy on the battlefront.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

118. “Was it too much to ask that she find someone who wanted the same things in life as she did--a home, someone to lean on when the not-so-perfect times came crashing down?” - Christie Craig

119. “The fruit of empty hopes is more bitter than the saddest truth.” - Angel Wagenstein

120. “Don’t water your testimony with your righteous expectations of church members. Their imperfection will disappoint you every time and cause you to leave every church you try to join.” - Shannon L. Alder

121. “none of my art is based on how others think i should have done it.” - Darnell Lamont Walker

122. “Yet how bored they both looked, and how wearily Ethel regarded Jim sometimes, as if she wondered why she had trained the vines of her affection on such a wind-shaken poplar.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

123. “Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.” - V.S. Naipaul

124. “Writers often torture themselves trying to get the words right. Sometimes you must lower your expectations and just finish it.” - Don Roff

125. “I shall expect my husband to have no pleasures but what he shares with me; and if his greatest pleasure of all is not the enjoyment of my company - why - it will be the worse for him - that's all.''If such are your expectations of matrimony, Esther, you must, indeed, be careful whom you marry - or rather, you must avoid it altogether.” - Anne Brontë

126. “Farid, you are keeping a hawk; don't expect her to lay eggs like a chicken.” - Michael Gruber

127. “At times what you expect and what happens don’t match. The faster you accept and adapt to what happened & work towards creating what you believed, that what you expected gets created in a whole new way..!” - Sujit Lalwani

128. “I think it’s weird how vanilla people just jump into a bed and fuck and don’t ever relish the moment, don’t talk to each other about what works and what doesn’t. So many people just expect sex to happen, but really great sex takes work, like everything in life. You have to talk to your partner.” - Lexi Blake

129. “Maybe she should stop reading those damn romance novels. They were giving her crazy expectations.” - Lexi Blake

130. “We were all made with the potential to be the people we are supposed to be. We all have souls and we all have minds and we all have wills. Many people look at the world and see a beautiful place full of potential and love and beauty those are the people you want as friends. But many people look at the world and see a place that hurts, that causes pain, that destroys and corrupts. Those are the people you don't want to have as friends, for those are the people who will pull you down with them, who will fill your mind with similar thoughts, who will turn you from a positive person to a negative person. God made us all with the potential to be positive people, contributing to the growth of this world, but many people choose to be negative, diminishing the light of those who wish to do good.' 'Why?' Walker asked. 'Because, my friend, it's easier. It's unfortunate, but it's true. It's much easier for a person to think that the world will not let him advance, because then that person won't have many expectations of himself, and it's easier to fulfill low expectations.” - Tom Walsh

131. “Society conspires against her from early infancy. Her brain is steadily filled with plaster until it sets: ‘If you’re not married by the time you’re twenty-five, you’ll have good reason to be ashamed’; ‘if you laugh, you won’t look dignified’ ; ‘if your face betrays your feelings, you’ll look coarse’; ‘if you mention the existence of a single body hair, you’re repulsive’ ; ‘if a boy kisses you on the cheek in public, you’re a whore’; if you enjoy eating, you’re a pig’; ‘if you take pleasure in sleeping, you’re no better than a cow’; and so on.These precepts would be merely anecdotal if they weren’t taken so much to heart.” - Amélie Nothomb

132. “I believe in knowing who you are but without limiting yourself to your own expectation of who you are.” - Charlotte Eriksson

133. “An aspirational diet will have you dreaming of success; but it’s the attachment of expectations and tangible goals that feeds the desire, persistence, and fortitude required to make the win.” - Lorii Myers

134. “Tell yourself often: I am going to tackle my aspirations head on with the passion and dedication necessary to exceed even my expectations.” - Lorii Myers

135. “When you begin to expect that there is always room for improvement, you put yourself in the driver’s seat. Why wait for someone else to figure it out or do it? Expect that you are the one. Expect great outcomes. Expect that you are the best candidate and that you will achieve your goals.” - Lorii Myers

136. “Expectations are made to be exceeded!” - Lorii Myers

137. “Explore, experience, evolve, and exceed your expectations! - No Excuses!” - Lorii Myers

138. “Cultures aren’t so much planned as they evolve from that early set of people.” - Jeff Bezos