1,365 Quotes About Expectations

In none of her lives will she be brilliant or famous or content. Her mediocrity will hound her through a kaleidoscope of futures.

The 20th century, the author observes, fostered the idea that fulfillment is possible on Earth.

What gets scary is when your self-worth is tied up in what strangers think of you.

Sometimes your belief system is really your fears attached to rules.

Depression is what naturally occurs when the conditions of reality do not match our misguided expectations, when the fruition of what we think ought to characterize existence fails to manifest. It’s the ensuing dissonance we feel when what we believe should be falls short of what is.

Expectations are nothing more than the rules we set, in order to maintain our ego and self esteem. What we seek from others is often that fulfillment of what we believe we require for happiness. However, many of us will raise the requirements so high that we can't even reach them or better yet, realize that we could find that expectation met by our own introspection and action.

Primed to expect that our lives will follow a predictable path, we’re thrown when they don’t. We have linear expectations but nonlinear realities... We’re all comparing ourselves to an ideal that no longer exists and beating ourselves up for not achieving it.

Perhaps the reality is in the suffering. But it can't be. Love promises happiness. Art promises happiness. Yet it isn't exactly a promise . . .

An imaginary friend once asked me why Americans can't stand Russia. The answer was cold, deadly, silent, and, well expected. It’s because in Soviet Russia nothing happens anymore, because it doesn’t exist anymore. And Americans are all about happenings. If there isn’t one – they don’t go where it isn’t, because there isn’t anything to happen to them there.