Friends Expect Too Much Quotes & Sayings

No man can expect to find a friend without faults; nor can he propose himself to be so to another. Without reciprocal mildness and temperance there can be no continuance of friendship. Every man will have something to do for his friend, and something to bear with in him. The sober man only can do the first; and for the latter, patience is requisite. It is better for a man to depend on himself, than to be annoyed with either a madman or a fool. — Owen Feltham

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 would 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 ever seen. — Vladimir Nabokov

Really, seeing the amount we give in charity, the wonder is there are any poor left. It is a comfort that there are. What should we do without them? Our fur-clad little girls! our jolly, red-faced squires! we should never know how good they were, but for the poor? Without the poor how could we be virtuous? We should have to go about giving to each other. And friends expect such expensive presents, while a shilling here and there among the poor brings to us all the sensations of a good Samaritan. Providence has been very thoughtful in providing us with poor. — Jerome K. Jerome

Friendship is not enjoyable unless we take up its expressive challenges. If a person surrounds himself with "friends" who simply reaffirm his public persona, who never question his dreams and desires, who never force him to try out new ways of being, he misses out on the opportunities friendship presents. A true friend is someone we can occasionally be crazy with, someone who does not expect us to be always true to form. It is someone who shares our goal of self-realization, and therefore is willing to share the risks that any increase in complexity entails. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It is tempting to call for better leadership, but we probably expect too much from the leaders of the nations. Those nations are too big, the connections not strong enough, the commitment to the future not long enough. It is better to look smaller, to our now-smaller organisations, to local communities and cities, to families and clusters of friends, to small networks of portfolio people with time to give to something bigger than themselves. We have to fashion our own directions in our own places. — Charles Handy

Switch on the television or glance at the newspaper: You will see death everywhere. Yet, did the victims of those plane crashes and car accidents expect to die? They took life for granted, as we do. How often do we hear stories of people whom we know, or even friends, who died unexpectedly? We don't even have to be ill to die: Our bodies can suddenly break down and go out of order, just like our cars. We can be quite well one day, then fall sick and die the next. — Sogyal Rinpoche

When I was little, my friends would get so excited when I told them that my parents did most of their scientific work at home, and they'd come in for the first time looking around for bubbling beakers or dynamos or whatever devices sci-fi shows had taught them to expect. What it mostly means is papers piled on every flat surface. Sure, lately we've had a few gadgets, but only a few. Nobody wants to hear that theoretical physics has less to do with shiny lasery stuff and more to do with numbers. — Claudia Gray

Life's gonna kick you in the butt.
That's what it does.
But if you gotta put up with this crap, the least you can expect is that your friends will stand by you. I mean, for crying in the night, what else are friends for but to help you make right what isn't in life? (Kira, The Mishmorat) — Richelle E. Goodrich

Most of my records are never going to be commercial successes, and I don't expect that. It's just all a learning process to me. If something appears as a failure, fine. If there's success, fine. I like the record, and my friends like the record, and that's kind of all I can really care about. — Kathleen Hanna

Me and my dad are friends. We're cool. I'll never be disappointed again, because I don't expect anything anymore from him. I just let him exist, and that's how we get along. — Drake

Assume you will make enemies. Work to make allies. Don't expect to make friends. Friends are a gift that happens over time. — Thea Harrison

Friendship is a special kind of love. More than endless, more than true. When friends parted ways no matter the distance, expect them to keep coming back to you. — John K.

If hatred strikes you, if you get accused, thrown to the lions, you can expect one of two reactions from people who know you: some of them will join in the kill, the others will discreetly pretend to know nothing, hear nothing, so you can go right on seeing them and talking to them. That second category, discreet and tactful, those are your friends. 'Friends' in the modern sense of the term. Listen, Jean-Marc, I've known that forever. — Milan Kundera

I prefer to 'exceed' my own expectations of me...I feel 'liberated' when I know it is only ME that can ACT and DO..!! Expect good things from you, expect the unusual, expect some madness, expect good friends, expect everything that you want..it is only you who should expect and only you who should do! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

My attitude toward friendship has remained the same. I will support and encourage you with all the love in my heart, but if it's not reciprocal, I gotta go [ ... ] If your friends are bitter about your success to the extent that they act out, don't expect them to change [ ... ] Move on. — RuPaul

In theory, you're supposed to get
everyone's names and become lifelong friends. I literally had contact with half the kids
here last night, but how in hell do they expect me to differentiate one of my butt-to-butt
dancing partners from another? Am I supposed to randomly rub my buttocks up against
people to see if we've bonded booties before? "Yes, the particular musculature of your
ass does feel familiar. 1 remember you now!" Duh. — Megan McCafferty

I thank you for my friends, for those who understand me better than I understand myself. For those who know me at my worst, and still like me. For those who have forgiven me when I had no right to expect to be forgiven. Help me to be as true to my friends as I would wish them to be to me. — William Barclay

There may be a point in your life in which you are drowning so fast and fighting it so furiously that you don't have the strength left to call out for help. At that point don't expect one of your friends to jump into the water, if you've spent most of your life instructing them to mind their own business. — Perry Brass

We all have direct experience with things that do or don't make us happy, we all have friends, therapists, cabdrivers, and talk-show hosts who tell us about things that will or won't make us happy, and yet, despite all this practice and all this coaching, our search for happiness often culminates in a stinky mess. We expect the next car, the next house, or the next promotion to make us happy even though the last ones didn't and even though others keep telling us that the next ones won't. — Daniel Gilbert

He that openly tells, his friends all that he thinks of them, must expect that they will secretly tell his enemies much that they do not think of him. — Charles Caleb Colton

Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reaches us that they have done so. It is hardly too much to say that we all of us occasionally speak of our dearest friends in a manner in which those dearest friends would very little like to hear themselves mentioned, and that we nevertheless expect that our dearest friends shall invariably speak of us as though they were blind to all our faults, but keenly alive to every shade of our virtues. — Anthony Trollope

Playing the good guy is tough because you know as well as I do, in real life, you have to watch your P's and Q's and conduct yourself in a respectable manner if you expect to have friends. — R. Lee Ermey

If one stays too long with friends They will soon tire of him; Living in such closeness leads to dislike and hate. It is but human to expect and demand too much When one dwells too long in companionship. — Milarepa

One might expect that the families of murder victims would be showered with sympathy and support, embraced by their communities. But in reality they are far more likely to feel isolated, fearful, and ashamed, overwhelmed by grief and guilt, angry at the criminal-justice system, and shunned by their old friends. — Eric Schlosser

The truth is, success often occurs for reasons we don't expect, under circumstances over which we have little control and sometimes unrelated to our own efforts. There is only one other lesson that success should teach us: Be as amazed by your own success as your friends are. If you truly are, you stand the best chance to repeat it. — Harvey MacKay

You haven't any right to expect your friends to be larger than yourself, larger than life. Just take them as they are, cut down to average size, and be glad you have them. To drink with, laugh with, borrow money from, lend money to, stay away from their special girls as you want them to stay away from yours, and above all, never break your word to, once it's been given.
And that is all the obligation you have, all you have the right to expect.
("New York Blues") — Cornell Woolrich

I didn't expect to love being online as much as I do. I've met some wonderful people and discovered that however arcane some of my interests that there are people out there who are interested too. — Sara Sheridan

We are all made good and positive declaration about the year 2015. We are all expecting breakthroughs in our lives, new things to happen to give us life changing. Guess what my friends, nothing is going to happen without action. We can't fold our hands and expect life changing or expect others to do it for us, that's impossible. The Bible says, 'God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to (Deut.15:10). That means whatever we are expecting to happen today has to come out of hands. God promotes hard work and hard work is honourable. — Euginia Herlihy

Friend," replied Michael Strogoff, "Heaven reward thee for all thou hast done for me!"
"Only fools expect reward on earth," replied the mujik. — Jules Verne

People automatically assume and expect that every moment and every bit of personal data should be broadcasted on social media, especially as it relates to them - and thats just not cuttin' it for me. If you can make it through the age of social media and come out with the same friends and lover, kudos! — Aeriel Miranda

We talk about social service, service to the people, service to humanity, service to others who are far away, helping to bring peace to the world - but often we forget that it is the very people around us that we must live for first of all. If you cannot serve your wife or husband or child or parent - how are you going to serve society? If you cannot make your own child happy, how do you expect to be able to make anyone else happy? If all our friends in the peace movement or of service communities of any kind do not love and help each other, whom can we love and help? — Thich Nhat Hanh

I had come to expect that Chinese friends would make financial decisions that I found uncomfortably risky: launching businesses with their savings, moving across the country without the assurance of a job. One explanation, which Weber and Hsee call "the cushion hypothesis," is that traditionally large Chinese family networks afford people confidence that they can turn to others for help if their risk-taking does not succeed. Another theory is more specific to the boom years. "The economic reforms undertaken by Deng Xiaoping were a gamble in themselves," Ricardo Siu, a business professor at the University of Macau, told me. "So people got the idea that taking a risk is not just okay; it has utility." For those who have come from poverty to the middle class, he added, "the thinking may be, If I lose half my money, well, I've lived through that. I won't be poor again. And in several years I can earn it back. But if I win? I'm a millionaire! — Evan Osnos

I didn't expect 'Scott Pilgrim' to be successful. I just made this weird comic to entertain my friends. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

My Internet friends who I play games with say, 'This guy's a fighter?' I'm the last person they expect to be a fighter. — Nonito Donaire

A lot of these gadgets and pieces of technology we use become almost like friends to us, and we expect our friends to have voices, — Randy Thom

They spoke to each other in strange, strangulated voices, and lost the knack of making each other laugh, jeering at each other instead in a spiteful, mocking tone.
Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water.
Why not let it die instead?
It was unrealistic to expect a friendship to last forever, she had lots of other friends: the old college crowd, her friends from school, and Ian of course.
But whom to could she confide about Ian? Not Dexter, not anymore — David Nicholls

Never expect too much from a friend and you will never want for one. — Sophie Irene Loeb

I had a cup of tea, thought about my day and mostly about the horse whom, though I'd only known him a short time, I called my friend. I have few friends and am glad to have a horse for a friend. After the meal I smoked a cigarette and mused on the luxury it would be to go out, instead of talking to myself and boring myself to death with the same endless stories I'm forever telling myself. I am a very boring person, despite my enormous intelligence and distinguished appearance, and nobody knows this better than I. I've often told myself that if only I were given the opportunity, I'd perhaps become the centre of intellectual society. But by dint of talking to myself so much, I tend to repeat the same things all the time. But what can you expect? I'm a recluse. — Leonora Carrington

Folks who thrive in God's grace give grace easily, but the self-critical person becomes others-critical. We "love" people the way we "love" ourselves, and if we are not good enough, then no one is. We keep ourselves brutally on the hook, plus our husbands, our kids, our friends, our churches, our leaders, anyone "other." When we impose unrealistic expectations on ourselves, it's natural to force them on everyone else. If we're going to fail, at least we can expect others to fail; and misery loves company, right? — Jen Hatmaker

Everyone contributed to this legend except Phineas. At the outset, with the attempt on Hitler's life, Finny had said, "If someone gave Leper a loaded gun and put it at Hitler's temple, he'd miss." There was a general shout of outrage, and then we recommended the building of Leper's triumphal arch around Brinker's keystone. Phineas took no part in it, and since little else was talked about in the Butt Room he soon stopped going there and stopped me from going as well - "How do you expect to be an athlete if you smoke like a forest fire?" He drew me increasingly away from the Butt Room crowd, away from Brinker and Chet and all other friends, into a world inhabited by just himself and me, where there was no war at all, just Phineas and me alone among all the people of the world, training for the Olympics of 1944. — John Knowles