#expectations

If you expect nothing, you can never be disappointed. ↗

— Tonya Hurley

#expectations #ghostgirl #disappointment

Maybe my expectations for honesty are too high. ↗

— Kelley Armstrong

#honesty #honesty

Know that everything is in perfect order whether you understand it or not. ↗

— Valery Satterwhite

#expectations #letting-go #acceptance

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

#friendship #betrayal

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. ↗

— M.E. Thomas

#feminism #feminist #gender #gender-roles #gender-stereotypes

I never had any real expectations about what sort of success I would have or all the publicity. ↗

— Joshua Bell

#any #expectations #had #i #never

My worst expectations never happened. ↗

— Barbara Bush

#happened #never #worst

Once you feel like you're being dictated by other people's expectations, it usually backfires. ↗

— Rob Zombie

#dictated #expectations #feel #like #once

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools. ↗

— Confucius

#diligence #expectations #first #his #life

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

#attitude #expectations #happiness #life #living