Other related topics at: All In Your Mind 12. Disappointment; Experience; Learning; Reality "I know not any thing 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." Johnson: Letter to Bennet Langton Link 20. Disappointment; Reality "The excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation raised as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectations raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken." Johnson: Letter to Baretti (June 10, 1761) Link 440. Diligence; Disappointment; Perseverance "A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected." Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac] Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from Rasselas. Link 638. Disappointment "It is generally known, that he who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any effect other than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation." Johnson: Idler #2 (April 22, 1758) Link 1,167. Disappointment; Perseverance; Vision "Some hindrances will be found in every road of life, but he that fixes his eyes upon any thing at a distance necessarily loses sight of all that fills up the intermediate space, and therefore sets forward with alacrity and confidence, nor suspects a thousand obstacles by which he afterwards finds his passage embarrassed and obstructed. Some are, indeed, stopped at once in their career by a sudden shock of calamity, or diverted to a different direction by the cross impulse of some violent passion; but far the greater part languish by slow degrees, deviate at first into slight obliquities, and themselves scarcely perceive at what time their ardour forsook them, or when they lost sight of their original design." Johnson: Rambler #127 (June 4, 1751) Link 1,168. Disappointment; Vanity "It is the state of industry to be equally endangered by miscarriages and success, by confidence and despondency. He that engages in a great undertaking with a false opinion of its facility, or too high conceptions of his own strength, is easily discouraged by the first hinderance of his advances, because he had promised himself an equal and perpetual progression without impediment or disturbance; when unexpected interruptions break in upon him, he is in the state of a man surprised by a tempest, where he purposed only to bask in the calm, or sport in the shallows." Johnson: Rambler #127 (June 4, 1751) Link 1,169. Disappointment "It is not only common to find the difficulty of an enterprise greater, but the profit less, than hope had pictured it." Johnson: Rambler #127 (June 4, 1751) Link 1,544. Disappointment; Hope I am afraid, every man that recollects his hopes must confess his disappointment; and own that day has glided unprofitably after day, and that he is still at the distance from the point of happiness. Johnson: Adventurer #69 (July 3, 1753) Link 1,823. Disappointment; Evaluation; Expectations; Old Age; Satisfaction "He that in the latter part of his life too strictly inquires what he has done, can very seldom receive from his own heart such an account as will give him satisfaction." Johnson: Idler #88 (December 22, 1759) Link 1,824. Disappointment; Expectations "We do not indeed so often disappoint others as ourselves. We not only think more highly than others of our own abilities, but allow ourselves to form hopes which we never communicate, and please our thoughts with employments which none will ever allot us, and with elevations to which we are never expected to rise; and when our days and years have passed away in common business or common amusements, and we find at last that we have suffered our purposes to sleep till the time of action is past, we are reproached only by our own reflections; neither our friends nor our enemies wonder that we live and die like the rest of mankind; that we live without notice, and die without memorial; they know not what task we had proposed, and therefore cannot discern whether it is finished." Johnson: Idler #88 (December 22, 1759) Link