If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.

- The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

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

- A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, Donald Miller

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

- Alexander Pope

I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine.

- Bruce Lee

I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations.

- Bill Watterson

Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.

- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, Stephen R. Covey

Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don't expect anything, you don't get disappointed.

- Cut, Patricia McCormick

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus." [The Science of Second-Guessing (New York Times Magazine Interview, December 12, 2004)]

- Stephen Hawking

Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

- Gautama Buddha

Positive expectations are the mark of the superior personality.

- Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills that Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed, Brian Tracy

If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.

- The Insufferable Gaucho, Roberto Bolaño

Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.

- The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson

You can't expect everyone to have the same dedication as you.

- Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney

Know that everything is in perfect order whether you understand it or not.

- Valery Satterwhite

There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations

- Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult

You are your own worst enemy. If you can learn to stop expecting impossible perfection, in yourself and others, you may find the happiness that has always eluded you.

- Love in the Afternoon, Lisa Kleypas

What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave, sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened down to your very bones.

- Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech

That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.

- The Magician King, Lev Grossman

If you expect nothing, you can never be disappointed.

- Homecoming, Tonya Hurley

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect

- Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

He was swimming in a sea of other people's expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.

- New Spring, Robert Jordan

Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. -Laura Ingalls Wilder, author (1867-1957)

- Laura Ingalls Wilder

Set the standard! Stop expecting others to show you love, acceptance, commitment, & respect when you don't even show that to yourself.

- Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience, Steve Maraboli

A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect.

- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed.

- I See You Everywhere, Julia Glass

I wasn't disappointed. My expectations had been met.

- Looking for Alaska, John Green

Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.

- The Woman Destroyed, Simone de Beauvoir

Maybe my expectations for honesty are too high.

- The Calling, Kelley Armstrong

I hope you do not let anyone else's expectations direct the course of your life.

- Edenbrooke, Julianne Donaldson

We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.

- Lev Grossman

Mrs. Lynde says, 'Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.

- L.M. Montgomery

You don't ask nobody to give what they can't give, or be what they can't be. You've learnt that, you got a headstart on heartbreak.

- The Abiding Gospel of Claude Dee Moran, Jack Farris

The secret self knows the anguish of our attachments and assures us that letting go of what we think we must have to be happy is the same as letting go of our unhappiness.

- Guy Finley

Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.

- We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver

You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your perception...you see what is, where most people see what they expect.

- Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarembga

You can't eat straight A's.

- The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston

You see what you expect to see, Severus.

- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling

Life was easier when you stopped caring, when you stopped expecting things to get better.

- Finding It, Cora Carmack

Expect everything so that nothing comes unexpected.

- The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

- The Idler; Poems, Samuel Johnson

It is easier to make our wishes conform to our means than to make our means conform to our wishes.

- Robert E. Lee

Expectations should not always be taken as reality; because you never know when you will be disappointed.

- Samuel P. Huntington

Unhappiness lies in that gap between our talents and our expectations.

- Sebastian Horsley

Men marry women hoping they'll never change. Women marry men hoping they will.

- The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell

She was becoming sad. There is no joy involved in following others' expectations of yourself

- Swing Low, Miriam Toews

No expectations mean there is no risk of disappointment.

- Indiscretion, Jude Morgan

It's probably unfair to expect the world at large, or even most people, to see us for all we are. It is essential, however, that we see ourselves for all we are. (413)

- Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit, Victoria Moran

The fruit of empty hopes is more bitter than the saddest truth.

- Isaac's Torah, Angel Wagenstein

Live your life, sing your song. Not full of expectations. Not for the ovations. But for the joy of it.

- Rasheed Ogunlaru

You can devise all the plans in the world, but if you don't welcome spontaneity; you will just disappoint yourself.

- Abigail Biddinger

It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like but don't. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?

- So Long, Douglas Adams

If it be now, 'tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all.

- Hamlet, William Shakespeare

[T]he experience of mystery comes not from expecting it but through yielding all your programs, because your programs are based on fear and desire. Drop them and the radiance comes. (16)

- Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, Joseph Campbell

I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living--all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents.

- Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain

She was heavier than he expected - women always are.

- Kingdoms of Elfin, Sylvia Townsend Warner

Nowadays, I dont have expectations, and this way she beats them all.

- My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult

N'exigez pas beaucoup et vous ne serez pas decu. Don't expect much, and you won't be disappointed.

- The Wizard Heir, Cinda Williams Chima

If ever it's necessary to ride the bandwagon, it's done with one leg swinging out and eyes scoping the fields.

- Killosophy, Criss Jami

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

- The Thrift Book, India Knight

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

- Sylvester, Georgette Heyer

Expect more get less and feel sadness Or expect less get more and feel happiness

- Vijay Dhameliya

One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.

- The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett

To expect to be kissed having bad breath is the secret of a fool.

- Dejan Stojanovic

I am afraid I shall disappoint people's expectations dreadfully.

- Indiscretion, Jude Morgan

The trouble you're expecting never happens; it's always something that sneaks up the other way.

- Earth Abides, George R. Stewart

A big desire is not enough to meet the expectations of lost dreams.

- Dejan Stojanovic

When you Love.. you Expect.. Once u start Expecting.. u have Hope.. Hopes in return makes you to put Trust.. and Trust makes u prone to Betrayal.. and whn u r Betrayed.. Hell falls over U...!!!

- Abhijeet Sawant

Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.

- If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Brenda Ueland

Many things have been written and will be written for dream. Dreams are nothing but our unclear expectations.

- Santosh Kalwar

He expected too much from people, that was the problem, Ethan thought. He expected too much from life.

- Hush, Anne Frasier

I can't imagine going on when there are no more expectations.

- Edith Evans

Often expecting immediate returns for goodness in this world is a sign of a normal human being

- Adil Adam Memon

It's okay. You're going to save me, Miss Maylene." The girl gave her a genuine look of happiness. "I know it. I knew if I found you everything would be okay.

- Graveminder, Melissa Marr

I tend to avoid people who always have something to say … and those who expect me to always have something to say.

- Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If you expect great things of yourself and demand little of others, you'll keep resentment far away.

- The Analects, Confucius

But that's the paradox of expectations; they are infamous for generally never being fulfilled

- Laiza- Sometimes the end is only a Beginning, Kudrat Dutta Chaudhary

When people starts to enjoy a writer's pen, he becomes a legend even if his stories are neither long nor publicly surrounded by expectations.

- A. Saleh

If he loves you he will meet your effort.

- Shannon L. Alder

The chaos we see in nature are the limitations of our perceptions, when we view the world with the eyes of nature, all we shall see are perfection.

- Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel

I took up space. I was a collection of cells and memories, awkward limbs and clumsy fashion crimes; I was the repository of my parents' expectations and evidence of their disappointments

- Girls on Fire, Robin Wasserman

Start with a cry, end with a smile.

- Master of Maxims, Michael Bassey Johnson

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