"If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

"Get used to disappointment."
— William Goldman (The Princess Bride)

"I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations.
–Calvin"
— Bill Watterson

"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. No matter how many times we reopen "King Lear," never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert's father's timely tear. 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 (Lolita)

"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

"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 (Walk Two Moons)

"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 (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish)

"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

""The pessimist complains about the wind; the optomist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."
"
— William Arthur Ward college administrator writer 1921-1994

"I should not have minded that, if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn't leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me."
— Charles Dickens

"'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 (Veronika Decides to Die: A Novel of Redemption)

"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 (The Alchemist)

"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

"Know that everything is in perfect order whether you understand it or not."
— Valery Satterwhite

"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

"I try to never wear to colorful a tie, mainly because it creates expectations that I'm not sure I can fulfill "
— Daniel Caleb Bussey

"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 (If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit)

"Here my sister, after a fit of clappings and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees, and threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down - which were the last stages on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect fury and a complete success, she made a dash to the door"
— Charles Dickens

"...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.
(Sandy, in THE CRAZY HORSE ELECTRIC GAME)"
— Chris Crutcher

"...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 (Age is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams At Any Stage In Your Life)

"So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed ofr the sake of the people whom we most despise."
— Charles Dickens

"Mrs. Pocket was at home, and was in a little difficulty, on account of the baby's having been accommodated with a needle case to keep him quiet during the unaccountable absence (with a relative in the Foot Guards) of Millers. And more needles were missing than it could be regarded as quite wholesome for a patient of such tender years either to apply externally or to take as a tonic."
— Charles Dickens

"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 (Season of Migration to the North)

"If you expect to reach the goal of perfection, never look at the cup as being half empty, see it as being half full."
— Barbara Hart

"How do you know that my dimwitted inexperience isn't merely a subtle form of manipulation, used to lower people's expectations, thereby enhancing my ability to effectively manuever within any given situation?"
— Scream 2 1997 movie (Dewey)