Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.

When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.

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.

There is one illusion that has much to do with most of our happiness, and still more to do with most of our unhappiness. It may be told in a word. We expect too much.

Men have a trick of coming up to what is expected of them, good or bad.

What a wonderful world this would be if we all did as well today as we expect to do tomorrow.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

I believe you rarely achieve more than you expect.

Occasionally necessity takes its jackhammer to our expectations to make way for what the chief architect really wants.