quotations about disappointment
In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory, or fear, or disappointment -- we are all defined by something we can't change.
SIMON VAN BOOY
The Illusion of Separateness
There is a certain sort of man whose doom in the world is disappointment, who excels in it, and whose luckless triumphs in his meek career of life, I have often thought, must be regarded by the kind eyes above with as much favor as the splendid successes and achievements of coarser and more prosperous men.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo
For disappointments, that come not by our own folly, they are the trials or corrections of Heaven: and it is our own fault, if they prove not our advantage.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Toddlers who don’t learn gradually about disappointment lose their resilience through lack of practice in give-and-take with other people’s needs. They can become self-centered, demanding, and difficult to like or to be with.
ALICIA F. LIEBERMAN
The Emotional Life of the Toddler
He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.
P. G. WODEHOUSE
attributed, Love Stinks
He looked so profoundly disappointed in me that I wondered for a moment if he was someone I knew.
MICHAEL CHABON
Wonder Boys
Frequent disappointments teach us to mistrust our own inclinations, and shrink even from the vows our hearts may prompt.
JUNIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Admonition never sinks so deeply on the heart as in the hour of trial; young, amiable as you are, life teems, I doubt not, with various blessings for you--blessings which you will know how to value properly, for early disappointment is the nurse of wisdom.
REGINA MARIA ROCHE
The Children of the Abbey
No dreams = No dreams crushed
No hope = No hope is false
No expectations = No disappointment
No reason to go on
CORROSION OF CONFORMITY
"Negative Outlook", Eye for an Eye
My hopes were all dead --- struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Jane Eyre
Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.
JODI PICOULT
My Sister's Keeper
All that weak people learn from disappointment, is less confidence in future enterprise.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
WHAT is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much and see so little; whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed; that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession, deified by those who cannot enjoy her, and despised by those who can. Anticipation is her herald, but Disappointment is her companion; the first addresses itself to our imagination, that would believe, but the latter to our experience, that must.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon: Or
It's precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life.
MAX FRISCH
"First Notebook", I'm Not Stiller
Disappointment is the nurse of wisdom.
SIR BAYLE ROCHE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Rigid beliefs make disappointments seem unbearable, whereas realistic beliefs help us to accept disappointment and go on from there.
EILEEN KENNEDY-MOORE
The Unwritten Rules of Friendship
Disappointment is to a noble soul what cold water is to burning metal; it strengthens, tempers, intensifies, but never destroys.
ELIZA STEPHENSON
St. Olave's
And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.
FRED ROGERS
The World According to Mister Rogers
Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Letter to Hester Thrale, Jun. 26, 1775
Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Letter, Jun. 8, 1762