Quotes & Sayings About Disappointed Parents

They [her parents] still highly encourage me to come home ... but, it's every time I go home I can tell they're disappointed in me, and that for me is kind of hard. — Kate Stoltzfus

I guess I want very much to be recognized for my abilities, for the work I put in, and yet it's still always there - who my parents were. As much as I love my parents, if that was the last thing ever said about me - that I was their daughter - I would be disappointed that my contributions weren't strong enough on their own. — Jamie Lee Curtis

Believe it or not, some of us have piercings and tattoos and dye our hair because we think it looks pretty, not for any deep sociological reason. This isn't an act of protest against cultural or social repression. It's not a grand, deliberately defiant gesture against capitalists or feminists or any other social group. It's not even the fashion equivalent to sticking two fingers up at the world. The boring truth of it, Gabriel, is that I don't dress like this to hurt my parents or draw attention to myself or make a statement. I just do it because I think it looks nice. Disappointed? — Alex Bell

Liked the way Jane smiled at her - as if Jane was looking for and seeing the very best in Chloe. Not like teachers, always correcting you, trying to improve you, and not like parents, just waiting for you to do the next wrong thing, so they could shake their heads and let you know how disappointed they were in you ... — Luanne Rice

Occasionally there are parents who say, "I brought my child so he or she could learn what the career of a writer is like, and you did this long theatrical performance instead, and I'm very disappointed." — Daniel Handler

Parents should learn to stop nagging their children about how well they could do "if you only tried more, or cared more." Trying and caring, in specific areas, is built into people; or else it comes to them later, if they mature properly; or it never comes at all. But it is dead certain that no young person was ever motivated by a querulous, disappointed parent more concerned with his own pride than with the child's ultimate self-actualization. — Sydney J. Harris

Too often she had seen the first indignation of disappointed parents at the marriage of the their children harden into a matter of pride, a matter of doggedness and principle, and finally become ridiculous. If the marriages turned out happy, how absurd to persist in an antiquated disapproval; if they turned out wretched, then how urgent the special need for love. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Until the age of twelve I thought I was gifted with the power to shape the future, but this power was a crushing burden, it manifested itself in the form of threats, I had to take just so many steps before I got to the end of the sidewalk or else my parents would die in a car accident, I had to close the door thinking of some favorable outcome, for example passing a test, or else I'd fail, I had to turn off the light not thinking about my mother getting raped, or that would happen, one day I couldn't stand having to close the door a hundred times before I could think of something good, or to spend fifteen minutes turning off the light the right way, I decided enough was enough, the world could fall apart, I didn't want to spend my life saving other people, that night I went to bed sure the next day would bring the apocalypse, nothing happened, I was relieved but a little bit disappointed to discover I had no power. — Edouard Leve

But anyway, I look around sometimes and I think - this will maybe sound weird - it's like the corporate world's full of ghosts. And actually, let me revise that, my parents are in academia so I've had front row seats for that horror show, I know academia's no different, so maybe a fairer way of putting this would be to say that adulthood's full of ghosts."

"I'm sorry, I'm not sure I quite --"

"I'm talking about these people who've ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed. Do you know what I mean? They've done what's expected of them. They want to do something different but it's impossible now, there's a mortgage, kids, whatever, they're trapped. Dan's like that."

"You don't think he likes his job, then."

"Correct," she said, "but I don't think he even realises it. You probably encounter people like him all the time. High-functioning sleepwalkers, essentially. — Emily St. John Mandel

When the only answer a little girl ever receives is no, from her parents or her teachers or her world, at some point she stops asking for what she wants. She begins to expect nothing, so as not to be disappointed when that exactly what she gets. But, it turns out, I do have wants. — Laura Fitzgerald

Robert Grant, sixth headmaster at Shore, was fond of making one particular remark to the parents of students newly enrolled at the school. He liked to say, "I hope your child will be severely disappointed during his time at this school." The parents were often confused. Why would the headmaster wish for my child to be severely disappointed? Grant would explain that if a student does not experience real disappointment at school, then he will be unprepared for disappointment when it comes in real life. — Leonard Sax

My parents walked around me on tiptoe, afraid of hurting me. But I knew how disappointed they were. All of a sudden the daughter they had been so proud of was a returnee from a mental hospital. — Haruki Murakami

The offspring of two bookish parents, I made up my mind as a boy that I would be as unlike them as I could. I was determined not, as an adult, to look up from a book with that confused, abstracted, disappointed expression that my parents shared when jolted out of book life into real life. — Richard Russo

You know it's when like you parents said "I'm not mad at you, just disappointed" You know that hurts so much more. — Stephen "Steve-O" Glover

If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens, you will end up disappointed. Sometimes there aren't reasons behind the terrible things that go on. I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don't have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me. But when the morning comes, I realize that there's nothing to be done about what has already happened. I can only get up and do my chores and push through the day and find the good in it. — Adriana Trigiani

My parents were disappointed I didn't finish college, and they were really upset when I went to Hollywood to become an actor. I was a big disappointment to them. — George Clooney

I once held a belief that life made sense, that working toward a dream would birth substance. Nothing else mattered. I soon discovered that success is as long-lasting as any of life's novelties.
We've all been happy with new things, only to be disappointed later. Dolls and soldiers our parents toiled to give us found their way to pedestals, then to the back of closets.
I'd always dreamed of marrying a woman I loved and watching my children grow. I wonder if our lives should be filled with the pursuit of such dreams, those magical hopes interwoven into our story. Our stories are decorative shells for the crabs we really are, both protecting and exposing us to the manic outside. — Christopher Hawke

As parents, we must accept that our children are who they are. We can't make them into something we want, or be disappointed in them because they don't meet our artificial expectations. — Lisa Unger

I'm sorry you got dragged into this." He waved a hand to indicate he meant the house, the entire situation. "Having to stay here, with me, when you should be home with your family." A pang of homesickness hit her as she thought of her parents and how disappointed they'd been that her leave had been "cancelled". That wasn't his fault though.
To ease his concern, she put on a smile. "Yeah, but hey, I could've done way worse in terms of roommates." She gave his leg a playful nudge with her hand.
His eyes warmed at her words and touch. The firelight brought out the deep bronze undertones in his hair, flickering in tones of gold and orange. She wanted to run her fingers through it to find out if it was as soft as it looked.
He shook his head slightly at her, looking amused. "Why'd you have to be so sweet?"
She shrugged and countered, "Why'd you have to be so damned good looking? — Kaylea Cross

Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be? — Harold S. Kushner

I remember the day when my seventh-grade teacher called my parents to tell them I'd been crying in the bathrooms at lunchtime after Sukey died - how disappointed Dad was that I was using Sukey's death as an excuse to get attention from my teachers; how delicately Mom suggested that Sukey would have wanted me to be happy; my humiliation at letting them down. — Hilary T. Smith