Quotes & Sayings About Expectations

It's easy to slip into guardedness and close ourselves off from the world when dealing with the messiness involved in navigating expectations, misunderstandings, and collaborative disagreements. This is especially true when we are busy or feel like we don't have the time or emotional bandwidth to deal with the complexity of relationships. — Todd Henry

The attachment to parental figures I am trying to describe here is an attachment to parents who have inflicted injury on their children. It is an attachment that prevents us from helping ourselves. The unfulfilled natural needs of the child are later transferred to therapists, partners, or our own children. We cannot believe that those needs were really ignored, or possibly even trampled on by our parents in such a way that we were forced to repress them. We hope that the other people we relate to will finally give us what we have been looking for, understand, support, and respect us, and relieve us of the difficult decisions life brings with it. As these expectations are fostered by the denial of childhood reality, we cannot give them up. As I said earlier, they cannot be relinquished by an act of will. But they will disappear in time if we are determined to face up to our own truth. This is not easy. It is almost always painful. But it is possible. In — Alice Miller

The law of self-fulfilling prophecy says that you get what you expect. So why not create great expectations and the highest vision possible of yourself and your world? — Mark Victor Hansen

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

Love's a gift, and can certainly be refused. Refusing doesn't destroy the gift, it simply puts it aside. You're free to do that. I'm not expecting a gift in return. Take what's offered, especially when it's offered so generously and without expectations. — Nora Roberts

How do you know you love someone?" he'd asked his dad when he was kid.
"Huh. That's a tricky one. I suppose you know you love someone when you want to make them happy."
It was as good an answer as any, Cole thought. The word didn't have to come laden with expectations. It didn't have to be difficult. It didn't mean forever, or a commitment. Love could be as ephemeral as a single breath. That didn't make it a lie. — Lisa Henry

Entrepreneurs typically start on a path they do not see as risky at all, then something happens that upsets their expectations and, being too far into their projects to turn back, they are forced to improvise. Those who get over this hump, or mountain, of unexpected trouble are the surviving entrepreneurial successes. — Robert E. Litan

Katherine often teases me that I'm missing the need-a-boyfriend gene, but the truth is I just haven't met anyone who ... well, whom I'm attracted to, even though part of me longs for the fabled trembling knees, heart-in-my-mouth, butterflies-in-my-belly moments. Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with me. Perhaps I've spent too long in the company of my literary romantic heroes, and consequently my ideals and expectations are far too high. But in reality, nobody's ever made me feel like that. — E.L. James

Our mission statement about treating people with respect and dignity is not just words but a creed we live by every day. You can't expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don't exceed the employees' expectations of management. — Howard Schultz

By fantasizing one builds a more predictable world, and then one has no time to notice what is really happening, because of the din made by one's expectations crashing down. — Peter Nadas

For commercial books in a genre, readers' and editors' expectations may be fairly rigid. Some romance lines, for instance, issue fairly detailed writers' guidelines explaining exactly what must happen in a book they publish (and what must not). — Nancy Kress

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man! — Ralph Ellison

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

Besides, what's in a name? Actually, a lot. Whether taken from a parent or grandparent, some saint, or even the late great Elvis, your name insists another person's dream of what you should have been. The portrait of some ancestral ideal lingers through heirloom names. Gender specific names imply all sorts of expectations. More than just a signifier used to summon, instruct, address, accuse, sometimes praise us, our names define and thereby limit us. They put us in a cage. — Brien Piechos

If you are not careful, you will drown in your expectations. — Neale Donald Walsch

You can never meet everyone's expectations. It's hard enough to meet your own. — Andrea Jaeger

A method of child-rearing is not
or should not be
a whim, a fashion or a shibboleth. It should derive from an understanding of the developing child, of his physical and mental equipment at any given stage, and, therefore, his readiness at any given stage to adapt, to learn, to regulate his behavior according to parental expectations. — Selma Fraiberg

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

And the downtrodden found refuge in dilapidation; and were happy there because it was theirs and no one else's; bare of pretences and expectations, this place became a haven of solace and a sanctum for peace. — C.M. Stunich

When auditioning, I try to imagine that I'm the only person that they [directors] are seeing that day because it can be overwhelming, in the same sense that it could be overwhelming if you try to fulfil everyone's expectations rather than the people closest to you in the creative process, be it your director, or fellow actors and the writers. So, that's kind of it - I try to trick myself into believing that no one has ever gone there before. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Reputation is what people expect us to do next. It's their expectation of the quality and character of the next thing we produce or say or do.
We control our actions (even when it feels like we don't) and our actions over time (especially when we think no one is looking) earn our reputation. — Seth Godin

My father took my hand and said, "let's go. What happened next was magical and beyond my wildest expectations. — Stephen Joseph Mitskavich

In life, you often get what you expect. — Michael Hyatt

You get greatness out of people by expecting it. — John Stahl-Wert

Maybe it was time to cut the strings of everyone's expectations and free-fall for once in her life — Miranda Liasson

Don't you know that there's another bubble as well An expectations bubble. Bigger houses private planes yachts ... stupid salaries and bonuses. People come to desire these things and expect them. But the expectations bubble will burst as well as all bubbles do.
Come to my gallery and I will sell you beautiful things at a more reasonable price. But the point is that they will have value. Things of real beauty things of the spirit. — Edward Rutherfurd

The power of great thoughts,timeless possibilities. — Lailah Gifty Akita

All he felt now was envy. These people had expectations. Of the world, of the future, it didn't matter
expectation was such an innovative concept to him that he couldn't help but be a bit moved by what they were saying. Whatever that was. — Colson Whitehead

Invitations not obligations: Our expectations of other people can be a big drain on our emotions. When we ask someone to do something, or, worse, have a belief that someone should do something and insist that he or she comply, it places a great stress on us. And the other person, noting our anxiety and insistence that they conform to our expectations, may actually become less inclined to respond as we like.
Instead, consider everything you want someone else to do to be an invitation that the other person may or may not choose to accept. Of course, if you are an employer or a parent who is trying to ensure a child's safety, you must have parameters and ground rules. Everyone else, however, should be released from the obligation of doing, being, living, and acting as you feel they should. — Will Bowen

Addiction" might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society. Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests in "the distant country," leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled. In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father's home. The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in "a distant country." It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

I know a lot of actors have all these expectations and believe that one thing should lead to another thing, and that's probably the right way to build a career. I don't know what's wrong with me - I just don't think like that! — Melanie Lynskey

She realized how many of her beliefs were either unrealistic or belonged to her deceased parents and her ex-husband. She also realized that her expectations for herself and others were sometimes too rigid. She was trying to live up to what everyone else said was best for her, which made her depressed and hard to be around at times. Once she changed her beliefs about herself and others, she began to smile more and enjoy life. — Salle Merrill Redfield

It's your choice, what you do with the moment. If you're stuck in a traffic jam, you can get angry and honk your horn, or listen to Mozart. But when you have a very specific expectation of how things should be, then, of course, you end up hurting yourself. — Deepak Chopra

The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of your personal world, which represents what is normal in it. The model is constructed by associations that link ideas of circumstances, events, actions, and outcomes that co-occur with some regularity, either at the same time or within a relatively short interval. As these links are formed and strengthened, the pattern of associated ideas comes to represent the structure of events in your life, and it determines your interpretation of the present as well as your expectations of the future. — Daniel Kahneman

My expectations from the university were perhaps too idealistic. I had dreams of learning things about innovation and discovery in the field of technology, but all of it hit the ground hard, when I faced with the pathetic reality of the so-called higher education system. To my surprise, I found myself stuck behind the walls of meaningless facts, figures and rankings. It occurred to me that, it was not actually a place for education, rather it was a place where you go to get your head filled with useless undigested information, that you'd probably never use throughout your entire life. It was not education, and moreover, it was definitely not science. — Abhijit Naskar

It isn't expectations that carry us forward, it's our desire to go on. — Paulo Coelho

The past is never a mistake if you have learnt from it. I have learnt never to trust someone so much that it hurts your expectations. — Sudeep Nagarkar

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

Audiences crave something they've never seen before. That's what they want. They want to be dazzled. They want to go in either to have their expectations blown out of the water, or have no expectations and are dazzled by the decisions that we [filmmakers] made. — Tom Hanks

Other people can't cause us to be impatient unless we let them do so. In other words, others don't make us impatient. We make ourselves impatient, through our expectations and demands, fixated attachments and stuckness. — Lama Surya Das

If you want to change an external part of your life, then you are first required to change the internal beliefs that hold these patterns in place. If you want others to respond to you or your work in different ways and with more appreciation, then examine your expectations for your work and your efforts. When you believe in yourself, chances are others will find your worth also. — Meredith L. Young-Sowers

I try not to have high expectations of people because it just sets you up for disappointment, but it's great to work with actors who are that talented and accomplished. — Famke Janssen

'Great Expectations' has been described as 'Dickens's harshest indictment of society.' Which it is. After all, it's about money. About not having enough money; about the fever of the getting of money; about having too much money; about the taint of money. — Felix Dennis

The good thing is that women have such high expectations of men that it inspires us to live up to them. That's what I learned about male-female relationships. — Neil Strauss

I have high expectations of myself. I always have, always will. That will never waver. I always believe in my talent - always have. — Russell Wilson

Any time you sign a big contract, you get in those later years, the expectations are high to play at a high level. — Johnathan Joseph

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

I think as a filmmaker you try not to have any expectations other than that the film have a fairly substantial beginning, middle and end. — Mark Boal

Maybe my expectations for honesty are too high. — Kelley Armstrong

Your value is based on how much and how deeply you can love others without any expectations of a return. — Debasish Mridha

Thus, we may observe, it is usual with God to smite us in those very comforts which stole away too much of the love and delight of our souls from God; to cross us in those things from which we raised up too great expectations of comfort. — John Flavel

When we overthink, we stop acting boldly and hide behind our endless streams of questions, objections, and insecurities. We drive away people and opportunities that are meant to be in our lives by overwhelming them with our expectations, stipulations, and worries. We shut off our hearts and allow our minds to work overtime, essentially turning ourselves into hamsters in wheels - endlessly grinding but going nowhere. — Mandy Hale

The fear of failure, the fear of being imperfect (perfectionism), and the fear of impossible expectations (being overwhelmed) that prevent us from acting on and attaining humanly possible goals and relationships. — Neil A. Fiore

The actual legacy of Desert Storm was to plunge the United States more deeply into a sea of difficulties for which military power provided no antidote. Yet in post-Cold War Washington, where global leadership and global power projection had become all but interchangeable terms, senior military officers...were less interested in assessing what those difficulties might portend than in claiming a suitably large part of the action. In the buoyant atmosphere of that moment, confidence in the efficiency of American arms left little room for skepticism and doubt. As a result, senior military leaders left unasked questions of fundamental importance. What if the effect of projecting U.S. military power was not to solve problems, but to exacerbate them? What if expectations of doing more with less proved hollow? What consequences would then ensue? Who wear bear them? — Bacevich

Things never come when they are expected. — Agatha Christie

Wisdom means understanding without any doubt that circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they may. People behave as they will. — Epictetus

When you let go of expectations and just dive in, possibilities you couldn't have dreamed of emerge. - L. R. W. Lee — L.R.W. Lee

Eccentricity may be diverting, Mama, but it is out of place in a wife: certainly in my wife! — Georgette Heyer

People come to the Bible with expectations that do not fit the Bible, and this clash becomes one main reason, though not the only one, why people do not find the Bible's claims acceptable. — Vern Sheridan Poythress

La vie est belle ... La vie est loca!
Sometimes up ... Other times down
Big smiles ... Waterfalls
Make the best of it ... As no one knows
It's up to you how it goes — Larissa Qat

I can endure my own despair, but not another's hope. — William Walsh

There are limits on what a president can achieve or do, but the expectations are so great. — Robert Dallek

Cats aren't shirts that you buy at the store and then return if they don't fit. Nor are they a pair of shoes you can give away or toss out when you've outgrown them. While these comparisons may seem ridiculously obvious to you, the sad fact is that too many cat owners actually do view their cats that way. As a result, countless cats end up relinquished to shelters or just abandoned because they didn't meet their owners' expectations of the perfect cat. — Pam Johnson-Bennett

You've got me confused with one of those women who needs a ring on her finger to feel complete. I don't put those kinds of expectations on men. And I'd say I'm sorry things didn't work out between you and Hugh, but based on your current amount of crazy, I'd say he dodged a bullet. — Kristen Painter

It was what Aunty Ifeoma did to my cousins, I realized then, setting higher and higher jumps for them in the way she talked to them, in what she expected of them. She did it all the time believing they would scale the rod. And they did. It was different for Jaja and me. We did not scale the rod because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified that we couldn't. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come. — William Hazlitt

A gift isn't a gift unless it has meaning. Just giving things to people, especially children, create the expectation of more things. — Oprah Winfrey

A lot of people never find the person God created them to be. They're too busy trying to live up to other people's expectations, or they try to create themselves in the image of a person they admire or envy. Just because we respect someone or think their life might be more exciting than ours doesn't mean God created us to be just like them. Sometimes we have to ignore the people in our lives so we can hear the voice of God ... But making a decision to put someone else first out of love isn't the same thing as putting them first out of fear. Because you're afraid they won't love you if you don't act the way they might want you to. — Nancy Mehl

The first time I came to London on my own, I was 15. I was absolutely oblivious to so many things. I had no expectations, no fears. I just came to do a National Youth Theatre season one summer. It was just brilliant. — Gina McKee

Death is a solemn event for everyone. It is the winding up of all earthly plans & expectations. It is a separation from all we have loved and lived with. It is often accompanied by much bodily pain and distress. It opens the door to judgement and eternity - to heaven or to hell. It is an event after which there is no change, or space for repentance — J.C. Ryle

Compromise in your arguments, not in your expectations. — Ron Kaufman

Life delivers far less disappointment when your expectations are low. — Brad Meltzer

We as human being do dream & do expect a lot for what we are not entitled but there comes a phase when we get what we have never expected or dreamt of ... So, Accept every little thing that life offers cause might be this is what we deserve ... — Anonymous

I never expect appreciation. I always set a deadline for the things I have to do to be a successful person, when I complete them, I give myself a piece of candy, a glass of tea and some free time to enjoy- that is how I honor my hardworking and appreciate my struggles. — M.F. Moonzajer

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are. — Donald Miller

I know there are expectations, but I don't let them affect mt game. I just play basketball. — Seimone Augustus

Hi, I have just added my new novel, "Incessant Expectations" for your reading enjoyment. It is about commercial salmon fishing on the Oregon coast circa 1976. It is fiction. The industry doesn't exist anymore. A young farmer from the dry country in Southwestern Colorado visits the wet Northwestern Oregon coast, seeking a summer job after his dad's farm is sold in the spring. He has spent his first 22 years in isolation, doing hard labor on the family farm. He knows hard work but has little social experience. During his summer of 1976 he learns about the ocean, fishing, and women. — Kenneth Fenter

I love a challenge. And I love defying limitation, gender stereotypes, and people's expectations of me as an actress. — Gwendoline Christie

Be realistic with your expectations. I'd really like to cuddle a unicorn, but it aint going to happen. — India Knight

I understood why those who had lived through war or economic disasters, and who had built for themselves a good life and a high standard of living, were rightly proud to be able to provide for their children those things which they themselves had not had. And why their children, inevitably, took those things for granted. It meant that new values and new expectations had crept into our societies along with new standards of living. Hence the materialistic and often greedy and selfish lifestyle of so many young people in the Western world, especially in the United States. — Jane Goodall

It's my experience that people rise to the level of their own expectations and of the competition they seek out. — Pat Summitt

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

The car (FT86) is not only FUN to drive, but in terms of quality and precision of handling, the car has very much surpassed any expectations I had. More easily put, if you had blind folded me and told me this was a new creation by BMW's M department, I would not even hesitate to believe you. It's that good. — Keiichi Tsuchiya

People who expect too much are always disappointed. You would do well to remember that, my boy. — Charmian Hussey

Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker. — Charles Caleb Colton

But spectacular lies don't need to be perfect. They rely less on the liar's skill than on the listener's expectations and wishes. After Mark's dishonesty was exposed, I understood how much I wised that what he had told me had been true. — Siri Hustvedt

Just because the nightmare you expected comes true, it doesn't make it any less terrifying. — Robert Jackson Bennett

I don't want to be someone that you're settling for. I don't want to be someone that anyone settles for. Marriage is hard enough without bringing such low expectations into it, isn't it? — Nora Ephron

You judge very properly," said Mr. Bennet, "and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?"
"They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and thought I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible."
Mr. Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure. — Jane Austen

I built the solenoid and with great expectations late one evening I pressed the switch which sent a current of 40 amperes through the coil. The result was spectacular-a deafening explosion, the apparatus disappeared, all windows were blown in or out, a wall caved in, and thus ended my pioneering experiment on liquid hydrogen cooled coils! — Nicholas Kurti

Stocks are bought on expectations, not facts. — Gerald M. Loeb

Hope reliably triumphs over experience. It's always very tempting to console ourselves with an apparently very reasonable thought: the reason it didn't work out this time was not that the expectations were too high, but that we directed them onto the wrong person. We — The School Of Life

Expectations create and shape reality. — Debasish Mridha

They don't know they have expectations, but I show them by counterexample what their expectations were. — John Darnielle

If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask ... with nothing beneath it? — Jodi Picoult

That power of the Gods which orders for the good things which are not uniform, and which happen contrary to expectation, is commonly called Fortune, and it is for this reason that the Goddess is especially worshipped in public by cities; for every city consists of elements which are not uniform. — Sallust

Because of the generation in which I came into the world, there were expectations. Of course there were expectations. It was something having to do with being a respectable Negro woman who would make the people in Baltimore proud. — Anna Deavere Smith

I have always had an interest in performers who play against the most obvious of expectations and are able to find something secret, something withheld, and some level of restraint. — Todd Haynes

Scientific knowledge has taught [humans] much since the days of the Deluge, and it will increase their power still further. And, as for the great necessities of Fate, against which there is no help, they will learn to endure them with resignation. Of what use to them is the mirage of wide acres in the moon, whose harvest no one has ever yet seen? As honest smallholders on this earth they will know how to cultivate their plot in such a way that it supports them. By withdrawing their expectations from the other world and concentrating all their liberated energies into their life on earth, they will probably succeed in achieving a state of things in which life will become tolerable for everyone and civilization no longer oppressive to anyone. Then, with one of our fellow-unbelievers, they will be able to say without regret: 'We leave Heaven to the angels and the sparrows. — Sigmund Freud

Be honest about who you are and what your bringing to the table and what your expectations are. — Gabrielle Dennis