Samuel Johnson Quotes About Expectations
-
We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
→ -
We ought not to raise expectations which it is not in our power to satisfy.-It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke.
→ -
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
→ -
It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords no matter for narration: but the truth is, that of the most studious life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs shuld not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing-room, or the factions of a camp.
→ -
No cause more frequently produces bashfulness than too high an opinion of our own importance. He that imagines an assembly filled with his merit, panting with expectation, and hushed with attention, easily terrifies himself with the dread of disappointing them, and strains his imagination in pursuit of something that may vindicate the veracity of fame, and show that his reputation was not gained by chance.
→ -
Though the discoveries or acquisitions of man are not always adequate to the expectations of his pride, they are at least sufficient to animate his industry.
→ -
Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted; let me serve Thee with active zeal, humbled confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge.
→ -
They whose activity of imagination is often shifting the scenes of expectation, are frequently subject to such sallies of caprice as make all their actions fortuitous, destroy the value of their friendship, obstruct the efficacy of their virtues, and set them below the meanest of those who persist in their resolutions, execute what they design, and perform what they have promised.
→ -
It is generally allowed, that no man ever found the happiness of possession proportionate to that expectation which incited his desire, and invigorated his pursuit; nor has any man found the evils of life so formidable in reality, as they were described to him by his own imagination; every species of distress brings with it some peculiar supports, some unforeseen means of resisting, or powers of enduring.
→ -
Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.
→ -
The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
→ -
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
→ -
I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
→ -
He who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any other effect than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation.
→ -
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
→ -
Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, or captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing; or that life, when the gifts of nature and of fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall at last be satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent.
→
Related Authors
-
Edmund Burke Statesman -
John Dryden Poet -
Dick Clark Radio personality -
David Hume Philosopher -
Joshua Reynolds Painter -
William Shakespeare Poet -
T. S. Eliot Playwright -
Samuel Pepys Member of Parliament -
Samuel Richardson Writer -
Oliver Goldsmith Novelist -
Ben Jonson Playwright -
James Boswell Lawyer -
Noah Webster Lexicographer -
John Milton Poet -
Henry Fielding Novelist -
Samuel Beckett Novelist -
Jane Austen Novelist -
Jonathan Swift Pamphleteer -
Thomas Gray Poet -
Alexander Pope Poet