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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Expectation

Expectation ends only in heaven.

St. Kentijern.

’T is expectation makes a blessing dear.

Pope.

To-day for thee, and to-morrow for me.

Cervantes.

Everything comes if a man will only wait.

Benj. Disraeli.

  • With what a heavy and retarding weight
  • Does expectation load the wing of time.
  • Mason.

    Every beginning is cheerful; the threshold is the place of expectation.

    Goethe.

    Those who live on expectation are sure to be disappointed.

    Joachim Murat.

    The gratitude of place expectants is a lively sense of future favors.

    Sir Robert Walpole.

    Great expectations are better than a poor possession.

    Cervantes.

    We anticipate our own happiness, and eat out the heart and sweetness of worldly pleasures by delightful forethought of them.

    Tillotson.

    They that marry ancient people merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves in hope that one will come and cut the halter.

    Fuller.

  • Oft Expectation fails, and most oft there
  • Where most it promises.
  • Shakespeare.

  • ’Tis Expectation makes a blessing dear;
  • Heaven were not heaven, if we knew what it were.
  • Sir J. Suckling.

    He who will lose a present good for one in expectation hath some wit, but a small store of wisdom.

    Bias.

  • Expectation whirls me round.
  • The imaginary relish is so sweet
  • That it enchants my sense.
  • Shakespeare.

  • Oh! how impatience gains upon the soul
  • When the long-promis’d hour of joy draws near!
  • How slow the tardy moments seem to roll!
  • What spectres rise of inconsistent fear!
  • Mrs. Tighe.

  • So tedious is this day,
  • As is the night before some festival
  • To an impatient child, that hath new robes,
  • And may not wear them.
  • Shakespeare.

  • How slow
  • This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
  • Like to a stepdame, or a dowager,
  • Long withering out a young man’s revenue.
  • Shakespeare.

  • How the time
  • Loiters in expectation! Then the mind
  • Drags the dead burden of a hundred years
  • In one short moment’s space. The nimble heart
  • Beats with impatient throbs,—sick of delay,
  • And pants to be at ease.
  • Havard.

  • Although I enter not,
  • Yet round about the spot
  • Ofttimes I hover;
  • And near the sacred gate,
  • With longing eyes I wait,
  • Expectant of her.
  • Thackeray.

    The great source of pleasure is variety. Uniformity must tire at last, though it be uniformity of excellence. We love to expect, and when expectation is disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

    Johnson.

    Uncertainty and expectation are joys of life. Security is an insipid thing; and the overtaking and possessing of a wish discovers the folly of the chase.

    Congreve.