When we put down ideas of what life should be like, we are free to wholeheartedly say yes to our life as it is.

- Tara Brach

No one can look at a pine tree in winter without knowing that spring will come again in due time.

- Frank Bolles

- Theodore Rubin

Flops are a part of life's menu and I'm never a girl to miss out on any of the courses.

- Rosalind Russell

If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome.

- Michael Jordan

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do -- or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so.

- Stanley Crawford

When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result.

- Byron Katie

To explore what it would mean to live fully, sensually alive and passionately on purpose, I have to drop my preconceived ideas of who and what I am.

- Dawna Markova

When people come to you for help, do not turn them off with pious words, saying, "Have faith and take your troubles to God." Act instead as though there were no God, as though there were only one person in the world who could help -- only yourself.

- Martin Buber

People are disturbed not by things, but by the view they take of them.

- Epictetus

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

- Jonathan Swift

You are what you think ... geez, that's frightening.

- Lily Tomlin

Even after all this time,
The sun never says to the earth,
"You owe me."
Look what happens with
A love like that.
It lights the whole sky.

- Hafiz of Persia

Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.

- David Ogilvy



You must not expect anything from others. It's you, of yourself, of whom you must ask a lot. Only from oneself has one the right to ask everything and anything. This way it's up to you -- your own choices -- what you get from others remains a present, a gift.

- Albert Schweitzer



To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

- Mark Nepo



If we did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.

- Thomas Alva Edison



Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.

- Charlotte Bronte



A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

- Victor Frankl



I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

- Thomas Jefferson



If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right. also attributed to Mary Kay Ash

- Henry Ford



Those who will play with cats must expect to be scratched.

- Miguel de Cervantes



You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.

- Yogi Berra



It's important to remember that feminism is no longer a group of organizations or leaders. It's the expectations that parents have for their daughters, and their sons, too. It's the way we talk about and treat one another. It's who makes the money and who makes the compromises and who makes the dinner. It's a state of mind. It's the way we live now.

- Anna Quindlen



Reexamine all that you have been told in school, or in church or in any book. Dismiss whatever insults your soul.

- Walt Whitman



Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.

- Dennis Wholey



People see you as an object, not as a person, and they project a set of expectations onto you. People who don't have it think beauty is a blessing, but actually it sets you apart.

- Candace Bergen



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

- Dame Edith Evans



Our circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures.

- Henry David Thoreau



We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

- Henry David Thoreau



Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise.

- Alice Walker



Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations.

- Leo Buscaglia



A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug.

- Patricia Neal



Treat a man as he is, he will remain so. Treat a man the way he can be and ought to be, and he will become as he can be and should be."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway.

- Mary Kay Ash



A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though awakens your own expectations.

- Patricia Neal



I've always got such high expectations for myself. I'm aware of them, but I can't relax them.

athlete

- Mary Decker Stanley



Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.

- Edward de Bono



'Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed' was the ninth beatitude.

- Alexander Pope



As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.

- Samuel Johnson



A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes.

- Mark Twain



To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves -- there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

- Joan Didion



Cultural expectations shade and color the images that parents-to-be form. The baby product ads, showing a woman serenely holding her child, looking blissfully and mysteriously contented, or the television parents, wisely and humorously solving problems, influence parents-to-be.

- Ellen Galinsky