c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
When you stop expecting miracles, life is the miracle.
— Marty Rubin
Don’t help anybody’s expectation of you to grow. Don’t even give them a hint that you will fulfill it. Whatsoever suffering you pass through, be ready to pass through it, but don’t allow others to have expectations about you. Otherwise the world will close you in and there will be imprisonment. Once you nod yes to doing something, then you are closed in. You are in the tunnel already, and now with every step, every new act, you will fall into a new misery, new unfulfillment, new lies, new failures. Drop fulfilling others’ expectations, and drop expecting others to fulfill yours. Remember, if you suffer, you suffer because of you; if others suffer, they suffer because of them. Nobody suffers because of others – remember that deeply. Only then will you be able to be really sincere to your inner self; and that sincerity is religiousness.
— Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, When the Shoe Fits: Stories of the Taoist Mystic Chuang Tzu
People will look at the world without seeing anything beyond their unconscious expectation.
— Chuck Klosterman, The Visible Man
You can't beat your own expectations. The latter set the tone, and shape who you've become, and who you would end up becoming...
— Assegid Habtewold, The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For Continued Success in Leadership
It encapsulates so neatly the lesson of expectation and reality that it could serve as a parable. The fact that tomatoes are good is beside the point. If you think you're getting an apple, a tomato will revolt you. That New York should be nicknamed the Big Apple, that an apple is the fruit of humankind's first error and the expulsion from paradise, that America and paradise have been linked and confused ever since Europeans first hit its shores, makes the story reverberate as myth.
— Siri Hustvedt, A Plea for Eros: Essays
If not violently overthrown, expectation can have a power in itself, can invest a place with what literally isn't there.
— Siri Hustvedt, A Plea for Eros: Essays
I used to have all of my ducks in a row. Now I'm happy to just have them in my vicinity.
— Mommy Moo Moo
I had never seen anything like New York, and its newness held the promise of my future: dense with the experience I craved - romantic, urbane, intellectual. Looking back on that moment, I believe I was saved from disappointment by the nature of my "great expectations." I honestly wasn't burdened with conventional notions of finding security and happiness. At that time of my life, even when I was "happy," it wasn't because I expected it. That was for characters less romantic than myself. I didn't expect to be rich, well fed, and kindly treated by all. I wanted to live deeply and fully, to embrace whatever the city held for me.
— Siri Hustvedt, A Plea for Eros: Essays
Don’t expect miracles why you have not done anything.
— Sunday Adelaja
We tend to live down to other people’s expectations, especially the people closest to us. It is more difficult to obtain approval of people who hold us in high regard than to accept the lower standards that other people hold of us.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
we exceeded expectations just by turning up for the exams." - George Weasly
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
You should only expect something from your efforts.
— Sunday Adelaja
Something must be birth out of whatever He has given you.
— Sunday Adelaja
What are you? Do you know? What you are is you're always trying to smooth everything over. What you are is always trying to be moderate. What you are is never telling the truth if you think it's going to hurt somebody's feelings. What you are is you're always compromising. What you are is always complacent. What you are is always trying to find the bright side of things. The one with the manners. The one who abides everything patiently. The one with ultimate decorum. The boy who never breaks the code.
— Philip Roth, American Pastoral
You must be engaged with the process of producing something to expect something.
— Sunday Adelaja
Right expectations, from the right people at the right time, that’s the art of expecting.
— Ashlecka Aumrivani
Zero Expectations? What's that? I believe in Smart Expectations.
— Ashlecka Aumrivani
There are misplaced expectations, once you recognize those, you are only left with smart ones. To "expect yourself" to expect nothing (from others) is going against human psychology. Expectation is the root of all valid transactions and fulfillment.
— Ashlecka Aumrivani
I was sixteen, and I honestly believed I was due a love story.
— Sara  Barnard, Beautiful Broken Things
I do not adjust my standpoint to others expactations.
— Marko Burazor
sometimesmoms are bribes,bludgeoning,with tongues that chase youwhenever you get a chance passed a mirror
— Kay Ulanday Barrett, When the Chant Comes
Expectations are hot air balloons filled with pain, you feel happy to see them going up with time and when they burst, it hell hurts!! Follow my writings on @YourQuote.in #yourquote #quote #stories #ttt #qotd #quoteoftheday #wordporn #quotestagram #wordswag #life #wordsofwisdom #inspirationalquotes #inspiration #writeaway #love #thoughts #poetry #instawriters #writersofinstagram #writersofig #writersofindia #igwriters #igwritersclub
— Himmilicious
What have you done to qualify yourself for the miracles you are expecting.
— Sunday Adelaja
Result won’t come if we don’t provide the reason for it to come.
— Sunday Adelaja
Only crazy people don’t do anything new and they expecting new result.
— Sunday Adelaja
People tend to freak out when something diverges from their expectations.
— Gayle Foreman
She who is even once unjust can not complain if the like is expected of her again.
— George MacDonald, Mary Marston
What is it that causes us to fall in love? We are met with those first, initial glimpses-- a kind of curiosity, a longing for that which is both familiar and unknown in the other. And then comes the surprise of discovery; we share certain aspirations, certain appreciations, and that which is different excites us. Before each other, we are moved to bravery and we come to reveal more and more of ourselves, and when we do, those very traits that caused us some embarrassment or shame become beautiful in ways we did not understand before, and the entire world becomes more beautiful for it. There are, too, those intimate and nearly primitive stirrings, the scent of the neck, the delicious tremble of skin and breath. Yet for all their pleasures, they are as tenuous as light and air, and demand no fidelity.And then there is this: Does not love depend on some belief in the future, some expectation beyond the delight of the moment? We fall in love because we imagine a certain life together. We will marry. We will laugh and dance together. We will have children.When expectation falls to ruins, what is there left for love?
— Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World
I've learned that I have to stop equating saying yes with being a good person. I think I am being good when I say yes to everything, but saying yes to something I cannot live up to leads to bitterness and disappointment.
— Karin Rahbek, Do I Have To Be A Mother?: A Childfree Woman's Struggle with Doubt and Loneliness
Expectations are the shackles that will not permit something to be what it actually is.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Don't let others expectations direct the course of your life.
— Julianne Donaldson, Edenbrooke
To measure a man's happiness only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects to get, is as futile as to try and express a fraction which shall have a numerator but no denominator.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
Don't you wanna be a great baseball player?” He sighed back into the wall. “I want to be a great man, Fielding.” And so we stand, proved of our existence by those who see us. And how did I see Grand, how did any of us, but as the one who would be great at this and that, as long as it was baseball and girls. He always had to be what we wanted him to be first. He existed only by proxy to our dreams of him.
— Tiffany McDaniel, The Summer that Melted Everything
Living is a constant process of debunking our romantic notions of how our personal life will unfold. Reality oftentimes fails to meet a person’s glamorous expectations.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
For nearly four weeks, his family had been walking on eggshells around him, expecting him to fall apart at any moment and he was damn tired of it. He wished he could apart. Maybe it would hurt less if he could just say to hell with everything and find a corner to hide away in.
— Nicola Sinclair, Promise
You can pipe anything to anything else, and usually it'll do something. With most of the standard Linux tools, it'll even do what you expect.
— Scott Simpson
In addition to being statistically unlikely, perfectly fulfilled expectations are boring. We assume that we, in our infinite wisdom, are capable of imagining the best, most optimal outcomes for ourselves. But as it turns out, unfettered reality and unexpected detours are often the very things that force us to come into our own.
— Clara Bensen, No Baggage: A Minimalist Tale of Love and Wandering
When expectations delay for too long, doubt draw nearer in haste and patience goes farther
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
A man must know the expectations of his woman and a woman must know the expectations of her man.
— Girdhar Joshi, Some Mistakes Have No Pardon
Behind every "I don't expect anything from you",there are buried expectations.
— Wordions
If he loves you he will meet your effort.
— Shannon L. Alder
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, Anne of Green Gables
Sometimes my entire life has felt like one long exercise in lowering my expectations.
— Melissa DeCarlo, The Art of Crash Landing
One forgets that part of one's performance is one's history—or sometimes the lack of it. You're playing against what an audience knows, what they expect. This seems to be true of all performers; there's baggage that gets carried into the venue that we can't see.
— David Byrne, How Music Works
Failed expectations ruin marriages and kills love in the process. You and your partner deserve to know what you’re both getting into… and knowing now is better than later. .
— Eeva Lancaster, You're Getting Married Soon... Now What?
That was the trouble with people in general: they were surprisingly unrealistic in their expectations.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Kalahari Typing School for Men
i prefer people see me sit in the corner, shut and look stupid, rather see me look smart and cool..i disgust a high expectations of people on me because I don't want to have to live in this world with their expectations (Ejump, 2016)
— Ejump Schiffler
One must not expect every thing.
— Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
What you think, you see. Your expectations create your reality.
— Kelly Corbet, Already Here: The Matter of Love
Just because the nightmare you expected comes true, it doesn't make it any less terrifying.
— Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs
Susie: Okay, Calvin. But you know what? You can't say, youcan'texpectanythingfrommeI'mbroken! And turn around the next minute and say, ohwoeismeeverybodytreatsmelikeI'mbroken! Which one is it? I can treat you the way I really feel, or I can treat you careful.Me: Real. Just be real.
— Martine Leavitt, Calvin
Messy" is a word we use to explain a conflict with an expectation we had. Eliminate the expectation, and you eliminate the "messy".
— Steve Maraboli
Wake up to a brand new day and realize why you woke up to meet the day! Live to the end of another day and understand why you lived in the day!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
She’d struck Esk once before – the blow a baby gets to introduce it to the world and give it a rough idea of what to expect from life.
— Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
Love doesn't fail us, it's our expectations that fail us. Lovers sometimes forget that the gift is the call to love itself, and not the result. The quickening, the deepening, the merging, the burning bright in love's cosmic kiln. That's the great gift, no matter where it leads.
— Jeff  Brown
When I was in my teens, I made an appraisal of how comfortable my life could turn out when I became the age I am now. Because of a mechanical failure, the prediction was inexact.
— Arthur Nersesian, The Fuck-Up
Charles Williams loved his son with reservations, complaining that "a child is a guest of a somewhat inconsistent temperament, rather difficult to get rid of, almost pushing; a poor relation rather than a pleasant kind.
— Philip Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
Those who show no loyalty give up the right to expect any.
— Dan Groat, A Punctual Paymaster
Collectively, as a people, we have to upgrade our standards and expectations of our political leaders and ourselves, hold them and our own selves accountable for the promises we make, and insist on specifics – projects, deadlines, processes, funds to be committed, and follow-up! Otherwise, we will continue to be dribbled and deceived, and nothing would get done.
— Nana Awere Damoah, Sebitically Speaking
Love assumes expectation and hope. All actors of the hazardous pursuit of love eagerly look forward to passing a significant cape without injuries or aching scratches: "the Cape of good Hope". ( " Those journeys of love" )
— Erik Pevernagie
And certainly both Horses were doing, if not all they could, all they thought they could; which is not quite the same thing.
— C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
It is almost impossible for contemporaries to judge the true value of discoveries, or to give the proper position to the men of their own time who make these discoveries. The Surgeon-General of the Public Health Service expected the greatest results to flow from his commission of medical officers, but the conclusions of the Board turned out to be all wrong, while he did not notice the report from his own subordinate, Dr. H. R. Carter, which turned out to be pure gold and was one of the great steps in establishing the true method of the transmission of Yellow Fever.
— William Crawford Gorgas, Sanitation in Panama
The weight of her expectations crumble me. I've always done the right thing. She expects me to make good choices but I don't even know what good choices look like...
— S.M. Parker
...nowadays, everyone seemed to be dreaming of absolutely everything. Traveling and loving and having a fantastic career and a happy family, all while being thin, beautiful, popular, and in touch with their spiritual side.
— Katarina Bivald, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
Her family was counting on her—to be responsible, to get good grades, to follow the rules, to be the good example. And more important, she expected those things of herself.
— Michelle Madow, Diamonds are Forever
Upholders may struggle in situations where expectations aren't clear or the rules aren't established. They may feel compelled to meet expectations, even ones that seem pointless. They may feel uneasy when they know they're breaking the rules, even unnecessary rules, unless they work out a powerful justification to do so.
— Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives
Audiences = expectations. If he thinks you're not watching, he won't need to rebel against your expectations.
— Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives
Real love when it comes, it doesn't look like anything you'd expect.
— QUEER AS FOLK
Falling in love isn't about expectations or an outcome.It is about the sheer, weightless, joyous terror of falling into the universal embrace.
— Joyce Wycoff
She realized she'd been thinking for years that she would not truly be pleased until she'd checked off this last achievement on her list, but one of the dangers of such thinking is that the event one hopes for never quite lives up to the expectation.
— Robert Jackson Bennett, The Troupe
The end never comes when you think it will. It’s always ten steps past the worst moment, then a weird turn to the left.
— Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
She never wants to get to the point where she looks forward to hearing from someone. Once you look forward to something, you’re inevitably let down and nothing can stay the same so she'd rather expect nothing at all and just be surprised that she was thought of at all.
— Donna Lynn Hope
Thomas felt his spirits lift, but immediately squashed them back down. Getting his hopes up was something he’d sworn never to do again. Not until all this was over.
— James Dashner, The Scorch Trials
Creepy is being attached to an outcome. If you approach someone with the goal of sex, and hten find thins not going in that direction, you may try to steer things back to sex. This is creepy.
— Allison Moon, Girl Sex 101
Life is an art of managing conflicts—conflicts between our expectations and perceptions. It is like a tightrope walk. We load our expectations from life on one end of the bar and our perceptions about life on other, and move on the rope, relying on the balance of the stick. Overload, on any end, can fling us down, ruining the remaining journey. Some might survive such falls through repeated mood swings or with emotional breakdowns, while some might go down, diving deep into the bottom of depression.
— Hari Parameshwar, Chase of Choices
The person who does not meet God’s expectations has no right to expect God’s blessings.
— Sunday Adelaja
How did the Prince Charming of my childhood turn out to be such a crushing disappointment? Maybe he wasn't Prince Charming in the first place.
— Paige Toon
Living up to other people's expectations, limits your potential. You'll either find they are unreasonably high, or set so low you should consider it an insult. Only you should determine how far you're prepared to go and what you'll do to get there. And no one can lay claim when you achieve success. Don't worry about meeting the standard when you are the standard
— Carlos Wallace, Life Is Not Complicated-You Are: Turning Your Biggest Disappointments Into Your Greatest Blessings
People expect what they expect.. They never realize the possibility of surprise beyond expectations..!
— Vaibhav Mehta
I'm shadowboxing in a match the shadow is always going to win. (as a young man battling his deceased brother's heroic legacy)
— John F. Kennedy
I wish if I could fulfill the expectations of others. Life is unpredictable and there is no more humanity
— Avinash Advani
When you get high on something - including "spiritual bliss" - there is always going to be a low. The comedown is your body / mind returning to balance, or the closest thing to balance that it knows. If you desperately crave bliss while your body / mind needs balance, you are bound to label the changeover as "feeling bad," when in fact it's the best thing that can happen.Zen practice is not about getting high on anything and in so doing, getting high on absolutely everything. We then find that everything we encounter - bliss and nonbliss - possesses a tremendous depth and beauty that we usually miss.
— Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist  Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between
He was learning to curse his newly acquired status as resident genius.
— Tom Clancy, Executive Orders
Hardcore groups were singing songs about Ronald Reagan. I wasn't interested in this and preferred to sing about the darkness shimmering beneath the shiny quilt of American pop culture. I suppose you could say that Sonic Youth was always trying to defy people's expectations.
— Kim Gordon, Girl in a Band
The thought of being whoever I want is a terrifying thing, because I have only ever been who everyone has wanted me to be.
— Dianna Hardy, Saving Eve
Daniel: So, how are you?Sophie: Buckling under the weight of a thousand expectations. You?
— Maria Malonzo, Hello, Privet! #1 : Hello/Привет
Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant. It was just so. Janie felt glad of the thought, for then it wouldn't seem so destructive and mouldy. She wouldn't be lonely anymore.
— Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude towards herself which no woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential; which an old woman could take from a young man without loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl––pray Heaven it was none of her daughters!––who did not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones!
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Most of the times reason for unhappiness is, desiring for the things which are far from our expectations.
— Sriveena Dhagavkar
Apply expectations appropriately. Do not assume [all] adults are as grown up and mature as they should be, or appear to be.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
But he did not tell her, for he realised how petty it would appear to her, and how different from what she had expected, less sensational and less touching; he was afraid, too, lest, disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the same time be disillusioned in the greater matter of love.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
Most of the times, reason for unhappiness is desiring for the things which are far from fulfilling our expectations.
— Sriveena Dhagavkar
I promise, when you always expect the worst, you will not be disappointed.
— Charles F. Glassman, Brain Drain   The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life
Most of the time reason for unhappiness is, desiring for the things which are far from our expectations.
— Sriveena Dhagavkar
The lesson here is that high expectations can be counter-productive. We probably can do more to affect the quality of our lives by controlling our expectations than we can by doing virtually anything else. The blessing of modest expectations is that they leave room for many experiences to be a pleasant surprise, a hedonic plus. The challenge is to find a way to keep expectations modest, even as actual experiences keep getting better.
— Barry Schwartz
Every time they saw him, they recognized him and knew him and expected things of him. And every time he came up blank. It was like watching someone digging where they knew they'd buried something precious, digging and digging and realizing that whatever it was--was gone. But they kept digging just the same, because the idea of losing it was so terrible and because maybe.Maybe.He was that lost treasure. He was that maybe. And he hated it. That was the secret he was trying to keep from them, the one he was always fearing he would betray.
— Cassandra Clare, Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy
My life belongs only to me.I let go of all the expectationsthat others have of me.My life doesn’t belongto anybody, except to meand to Life itself.
— Human Angels, 365 Mantras for today
Issues arise not from expecting too much from people, but too little.
— Robert J. Braathe
When we believe that God expects us to try hard to become who Jesus wants us to be, we will live in that blurry, frustrating land of Should Be rather than trust in The One Who Is.
— Emily P. Freeman, Grace for the Good Girl: Letting Go of the Try-Hard Life
We expect miracles from love but love has only itself to give.
— Marty Rubin
Expect nothing and accept everything and you will never be disappointed.
— Laurence Overmire
Change rarely happens in doses large enough to choke you. Everyday you swallow a little more and expect a little less.
— Diane Meier, The Season of Second Chances
Carrying an aggressive attitude is to expect cool shadow under a naked Tree
— Samar Sudha
We are all made good and positive declaration about the year 2015. We are all expecting breakthroughs in our lives, new things to happen to give us life changing. Guess what my friends, nothing is going to happen without action. We can't fold our hands and expect life changing or expect others to do it for us, that's impossible. The Bible says, 'God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to (Deut.15:10). That means whatever we are expecting to happen today has to come out of hands. God promotes hard work and hard work is honourable.
— Euginia Herlihy
Nothing in life or love slipped easily into the tidy little box of his expectations.
— Dan Sofer, A Love and Beyond
Do not lower your expectations in order to avoid hurt. Instead, keep your expectations high and learn to tackle with disappointments.
— Dhaval Gajera, Tomorrow Today
One always expects something else.
— Erich Maria Remarque, Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country
Don’t assume your partner knows about everything you expect in a relationship. Let them know. A relationship should be based on communication, not on assumptions.
— Turcois Ominek
Serving with love, a kind heart, and without expectations is happiness.
— Debasish Mridha
People who think nothing can go wrong are usually disappointed.
— Lemony Snicket, Shouldn't You Be in School?
When you let it go with love, but without expectations, it is forever yours.
— Debasish Mridha
-but what people expect can change you in the end.
— Justin Go, The Steady Running of the Hour
No wonder women don't negotiate as often as men. It's like trying to cross a minefield backward in high heels.
— Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
To avoid being disappointed, avoid placing your expectations on others. Love lets them be who they are and it allows them to react the way they want to react.
— Praying Medic
I climb mountains, while you keep sinking in sand.
— Jenna Karel
You cannot win anymore even if you do your best. Because everyone is doing their best. In order to win, you have to do more than you best.
— M.F. Moonzajer, A moment with God ; Poetry
La vie est belle .....La vie est loca!Sometimes up...Other times downBig smiles....WaterfallsMake the best of it...As no one knows It's up to you how it goes
— Larissa Qat
Disappointment doesn't stem from expectations. It stems from unrealistic or unreasonable expectations.
— Sue Fitzmaurice
Even the ones who love you most will let you down. They are the ones who will disappoint you more because your expectations of them are higher. When you feel like they have let you down, you need to realize that it is not them who have let you down, but it is only your expectations that were not met.
— Pinkie Numa
Our identities are tremendously warped and distorted by yesterday's trauma and tomorrow's expectations.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
The struggle to excavate your true, authentic self from beneath the mountain of conditioning and ridiculous expectation is the epic struggle of your lifetime.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
As it turned out, my greatest fear in life had become expectations.
— Julie   Murphy
Never before in history had societies thought that such a set of high expectations about marriage was either realistic or desirable. Although many Europeans and Americans found tremendous joy in building their relationships around these values, the adoption of these unprecedented goals for marriage had unanticipated and revolutionary consequences that have since come to threaten the stability of the entire institution.
— Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage
We bring to everything we read the expectations we have built up by a lifetime of reading.
— Richard Marius
Free yourself from the expectations of having to be right with the wrong information.
— Linda Deir
People tend to want to live up to their friends’ high regard.
— David Brooks
Life makes fools of us all sooner or later. But keep your sense of humor and you'll at least be able to take your humiliations with some measure of grace. In the end, it's our own expectations that crush us.
— Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
My greatest expectation is that I expect more of myself than anyone could expect.
— Ryan Lilly
If you don't get disappointed when you raise your expectations
—  you don't get appointments from where your mind is not!
Expectation wasn't just about what people expected of you. It was about what you expected of yourself.
— Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance
I don't like to do what people expect. Why should I live up to their expectations instead of my own?
— David Levithan, Ten Things I Hate about You
If I wasn't the same person I had been six years ago, how could I expect her to be?
— Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds
She will outstrip all praise and make it halt behind her.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Life, Tavi reflected, seldom makes a gift of what one expects or plans for.
— Jim Butcher, First Lord's Fury
Expect the unexpected like a chain smoking, hard drinking, monochrome world dwelling Noir Detective
— Dean Cavanagh
I notice you didn’t include a blade with your new attire,” Royce said. “Not even a little jeweled dagger.”“Lords no.” Albert looked appalled. “I don’t fight.”“I thought all nobles learned sword fighting.” Royce looked to Hadrian.“I thought so too.”“Nobles with competent fathers perhaps. I spent my formative years at my aunt’s at Huffington Manor. She held a daily salon, where a dozen noble ladies came to discuss all manner of philosophical topics, like how much they hated their husbands. I’ve never actually held a sword, but I can tie a mean corset and apply face paint like a gold-coin whore.
— Michael J. Sullivan, The Rose and the Thorn
It’s scary when it’s real. When it’s not just thinking about a person, but, like, having a real live person in front of you, with, like, expectations. And wants.
— Jenny Han
But one never finds a cathedral, a wave in a storm, a dancer's leap in the air quite as high as one has been expecting;
— Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
These occasions always took him by surprise. He was shocked anew each time the crisply surveyed, neatly kept world he so cherished rose up to confront him with all its essential sloppiness, irrationality, and bad business sense.
— T.C. Boyle, If the River Was Whiskey
Reality is never what you imagined it would be. Sometimes it’s better. Sometimes it’s worse. And sometimes it’s just different. It’s not worth wasting time and energy trying to predict how things are going to turn out. Just go with the flow and keep your eyes and ears peeled.
— Abby Rosmarin, I'm Just Here for the Free Scrutiny: One Model's Tale of Insanity and Inanity in the Wonderful World of Fashion
I trust you. Those are the last words my father said before he left. That means that every decision I make, I would have to question myself whether it was the right one. I can picture him, expectations in his eyes. Because of that, I can see the same look in others. He could not have damned me more.
— Celia McMahon, Skye
I know for a fact the first UFOs reported in modern times, just before the crash at Roswell, were boomerang shaped and were reported as 'flying saucers' to describe the motion of their flight, like a saucer skipping over water. Yet immediately after, people saw and photographed saucer-shaped objects. Boomerang-shaped objects were rarely seen. Now people mostly report seeing large triangles instead of discs or boomerangs, because that is what they are told to expect to see.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Artificial Gods
The lower your expectation the easier and happier your life will be
— Dee Dee Artner
Sometimes expecting too much lands you nowhere in life..
— Shivam Singh
We expect too much of new buildings, and too little of ourselves.
— Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Shoo. Away with you. It's my fault for expecting the extraordinary from the ordinary.
— Donna Lynn Hope
You can't expect to reap a harvest that you're not willing to plant.
— Yvonne Pierre, The Day My Soul Cried:  A Memoir
The man who said, "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed," put the eulogy quite inadequately and even falsely. The truth "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised." The man who expects nothing sees redder roses than common men can see, and greener grass, and a more startling sun. Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall possess the cities and the mountains; blessed is the meek, for he shall inhereit the earth. Until we realize that things might not be we cannot realize that things are.
— G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Always keep in mind that even your most dreadful expectations, are still nothing more than mere assumptions
— Sherif A. El-Mawardy
I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am me. And if by chance we find each other, it will be beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.
— Frederick Salomon Perls
Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head.
— David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares
I loved this place. You could prop up the bar and watch the world go by
—  no one made you talk or expected anything of you
I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such.
— Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red
Maybe that's why he had started to fear suffocation. It wasn't so much drowning in the earth or sea but the feeling that he was sinking into too many expectations, literally getting in over his head.Wow...when he started having thoughts like that, he knew he'd been spending too much time with Annabeth.
— Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena
To expect punishment is to suffer it
—  and to earn it is to expect it.
It’s true, though, others won’t understand me. I know that. I’m still an alien in the American Christian subculture.Each evening I retreat from it, and I go straight to the Gospels.It's not out of duty that I read about Jesus; it's a respite.
— Brant Hansen
To halve the number of times that other people hurt you: halve the number of expectations that you have from other people.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
When a great team loses through complacency, it will constantly search for new and more intricate explanations to explain away defeat. After a while it becomes more innovative in thinking up how to lose than thinnking up how to win.
— Pat Riley, The Winner Within
My father greeted me with his usual air of mild regret.
— Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
Expectations hinder you from being prepared for the unexpected
— Pen
He's the man we were in search of, that's true, and yet he's not the man we were in search of. For the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted.
— Thomas Hardy, Three Strangers And Other Stories
Our efforts and actions produce results. These results come unlabeled. WE label them as success or failure based on OUR expectations. Don't forget that these labels are interchangeable if we allow ourselves to be free from an unhealthy attachment to our expectations.
— Steve Maraboli
One of the reasons the team on NCIS works so well-is that they live by their leader's rules-which are not a secret .What are your rules/standards? Do the people in your life know what they are? Do you hold grudges/resentments when they don't measure up? Do you pretend that everything is fine-when it's not-and close up a little every day?And most importantly-When was the last time YOU reviewed/upgraded your standards/expectations rules-and took a look at the impact around you/checked in?(Hint-most people live from rules/standards/expectations created from reactions/perceptions formed around the age of six)Might be time for a review/upgrade........
— Dave Rudbarg
Happy are those who expect nothing
—  they won't be disappointed
I want everyone to stop telling me to lower my expectations.
— Tracy Guzeman, The Gravity of Birds
Setting proper expectations from the moment you meet a potential client will reduce stress and enable all parties to work together, rather than struggling contentiously through the process.
— Michelle    Moore, Selling Simplified
It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.
— Guy Gavriel Kay
Love is a choice. That's why love it's one of gods commandments. People love because they trust. People trust because of faith. Love does have expectations. What we expect by love is eternity. We expect eternity because love is a choice, and you can choose to have it forever. The expectation of having love is a purpose to live, and a purpose to die. With out expectations, why would you love. The natural gift of love it's a purpose to live and happiness. That's why love it's worth dying for. With god or with out god in the picture, that's why love it's worth dying for.
— Abraham Ruiz
People aren't always who they seem, Detective. Am I anything like you thought?""No," I admitted. You're a million times better than I could have imagined.
— Dani Alexander, Shattered Glass
It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.
— Thucydides
People who expect too much are always disappointed. You would do well to remember that, my boy.
— Charmian Hussey, The Valley of Secrets
People express their arrogance in their failed expectations.
— Travis Luedke
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, No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book
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, No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book
Expectations are made to be exceeded!
— Lorii Myers, No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book
We freeze up because we expect a certain result or because we want things to be perfect.
— Bernie Glassman, The Dude and the Zen Master
Take a moment and think of something small but significant that you've wanted for decades. Dream about it. Wish for it. Let the dreaming and wishing sink deeply into your being. Add some memories of disappointment just for a little flavor. At some point, over time, a wish can become too important, can become much bigger as a dream than it ever had a right to be.
— Virginia M. Sanders, Kiss Chronicles
She looked around her apartment which seemed to be waiting for something. Lana hated that, when the room was a pregnant pause.
— Laura Jacobs, Women About Town
All this, sadly enough, is truer of the more educated, higher-income, professional families. It is here that the competition is the greatest, the expectations most elevated. If the boy would be happier as a telephone linesman or a forest ranger, he is in a hopeless bind. His goals have been set for him by his milieu, and he cannot be his own man; so he simply refuses to play the game. He "does not try.
— Sydney J. Harris, Best of Sydney Harris
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
Does your reality match your expectations? If not it's time to change either your expectations or your reality.
— Steven Redhead, The Solution
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, A Dom is Forever
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, Shut Up and Kiss Me
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, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
...and to-morrow looked in my face more steadily than I could look at it
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
— Mark Twain
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
none of my art is based on how others think i should have done it.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
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, Bernice Bobs Her Hair
And by the way, if I always tell you the truth, you might start to believe me.
— Victor L. Wooten, The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music
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
Farid, you are keeping a hawk; don't expect her to lay eggs like a chicken.
— Michael Gruber, The Good Son
Water shrinks wool, urgency shrinks time.Shrinkage may be an advantage or the reverse, according to expectation.
— Idries Shah, Reflections
A successful person expects a clapping hand, an ailing person expects an open hand.
— Anthony Liccione
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
Expectation and fact are two different things that people usually cannot differentiate.
— Lionel Suggs
Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.
— Joseph Campbell
Do you know a cure for me?""Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water.""Salt water?" I asked him."Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.
— Karen Blixen, Seven Gothic Tales
If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.
— Viktor E. Frankl
Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.
— Henry Miller
The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
When you don't know what you're living for, you don't care how you live from one day to the next. You're happy the day has passed and the night has come, and in your sleep you bury the tedious question of what you lived for that day and what you're going to live for tomorrow.
— Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov
We’re on this planet for too short a time. And at the end of the day, what’s more important? Knowing that a few meaningless figures balanced—or knowing that you were the person you wanted to be?
— Sophie Kinsella
The purpose of life is to stay alive. Watch any animal in nature--all it tries to do is stay alive. It doesn't care about beliefs or philosophy. Whenever any animal's behavior puts it out of touch with the realities of its existence, it becomes exinct.
— Michael Crichton, Congo
Life is meaningless, when we take a life we take nothing of value.
— Brent Weeks, The Night Angel Trilogy
I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.
— Haruki Murakami, After Dark
Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., The Sirens of Titan
Just tell me why; why the fucking why?" To which the universe would hollowly respond, "My ways cannot be known, oh man." Which is to say, "My ways do not make sense, nor do the ways of those who dwell in me.
— Philip K. Dick, VALIS
You discarded most of the lies along the way but held on to the one that said life mattered.
— Stephen King
The greatest create of power you have on earth, whether you are an angel, a spirit, a man or woman or child is to help others.
— Anne Rice, Servant of the Bones
Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.
— Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
To every thig there is a season,a time for every purpose under the sun.A time to be born,and a time to die.A time to plant,and a time to recap.A time to weep,and I time to laughA time to mourn,and a time to dance.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? But to act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.
— Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die.
— Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
The end is not the reward; the path you take, the emotions that course through you as you grasp life - that is the reward.
— Jamie Magee, Embody
A life of short duration...could be so rich in joy and love that it could contain more meaning than a life lasting eighty years.
— Viktor E. Frankl
Now all my tales are based on the fundemental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.... To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all.
— H.P. Lovecraft
Ye know full well that the meaning of life is to find your gift. To find your gift is happiness. Never tae find it is misery.
— Terry Pratchett
The earth is not just for the clever and the strong.
— Shūsaku Endō
All I wanted and all Neal wanted and all anybody wanted was some kind of penetration into the heart of things where, like in a womb, we could curl up and sleep the ecstatic sleep that Burroughs was experiencing with a good big mainline shot of M. and advertising executives in NY were experiencing with twelve Scotch & Sodas in Stouffers before they made the drunkard's train to Westchester---but without hangovers.
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road: the Original Scroll