Expected Quotes - Page 22

• These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Religion, Morality

  "The Illustrated London News" Magazine, August 11, 1928.

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• Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.

  Milan Kundera

  Messages, Chance, Speak

  "A Message for Ján Mančuška" by Rachel Mason, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 28, 2013.

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• She felt detached from her family, and thought it strange how they had lavished so much attention on her, as a child, and then at some appointed, prearranged time they seemed to stop the flow of affection and being the expectations - as if, for a brief phrase, you were expected to absorb love (and get enough), and then, for a much longer and more serious phase, you were expected to fulfill certain obligations.

  John Irving

  Children, Expectations, Attention

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• In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.

  E. B. White

  Country, Design, Attention

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.139, Cornell University Press

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• They shall not be expected to acknowledge us until we have acknowledged ourselves.

  John Adams

  Acknowledge

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• It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.

  Stephen King

  Dog, Fate, Boys

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• There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Stars, Home, Moon

  Barbara KingSolver (1988). “The Bean Trees: A Novel”, Harpercollins

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• To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story.

  Sarah Addison Allen

  Book, Years, Attention

  Sarah Addison Allen (2007). “Garden Spells”, p.197, Bantam

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• After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they’d actually made some sort of choice.

  Tom Perrotta

  Children, People, Choices

  Tom Perrotta (2007). “Little Children: A Novel”, p.8, Macmillan

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• Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.

  Paul Fussell

  War, Mean, Ironic

  Paul Fussell (2013). “The Great War and Modern Memory”, p.23, Oxford University Press

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• It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Life, Mean, Responsibility

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.63, Beacon Press

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• Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Stars, Cutting, Roots

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• What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?

  Ralph Ellison

  Trying, Lost

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.277, Vintage

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• Mr. Robinson was a polished sort of person. He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone - which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney.

  Susanna Clarke

  Angel, Healthy, Fairy

  Susanna Clarke (2009). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.27, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• But there are people who take salt with their coffee. They say it gives a tang, a savour, which is peculiar and fascinating. In the same way there are certain places, surrounded by a halo of romance, to which the inevitable disillusionment you experience on seeing them gives a singular spice. You had expected something wholly beautiful and you get an impression which is infinitely more complicated than any that beauty can give you. It is the weakness in the character of a great man which may make him less admirable but certainly more interesting. Nothing had prepared me for Honolulu.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Beautiful, Coffee, Character

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• It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.

  John Steinbeck

  Life, Motivational, Positive

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• You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Spring, Rain, Fall

  Ernest Hemingway, Robert E. Gajdusek (1978). “Hemingway's Paris”, Scribner Book Company

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• How could I do it, how could a person go that low? And I understand your question, to which I reply, Are you kidding? That's nothing. I'd been much lower than that. And I expected to see myself do worse.

  Denis Johnson

  Lows, Persons

  Denis Johnson (2009). “Jesus' Son: Stories”, p.83, Macmillan

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• The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.

  Mary Roach

  Lying, Brain, Cadavers

  "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers". Book by Mary Roach, 2003.

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• It's hard to believe. Where does the times go?' Betty sighs. 'I've always hated that phrase. It makes it would like time went on a holiday, and is expected back any day now. Time flies is another one I hate. Apparently, time does quite a bit of traveling, though.

  Gabrielle Zevin

  Hate, Believe, Holiday

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• The stars remind us every night that we have the opportunity to create heaven on earth. from The Expected One

  Kathleen McGowan

  Stars, Opportunity, Night

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• Laboring through a world every day more stultified, which expected salvation in codes and governments, ever more willing to settle for suburban narratives and diminished payoffs--what were the chances of finding anyone else seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?

  Thomas Pynchon

  Government, World, Narrative

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• She had just realized there were two things that prevent us from achieving our dreams: believing them to be impossible or seeing those dreams made possible by some sudden turn of the wheel of fortune, when you least expected it. For at that moment, all our fears suddenly surface: the fear of setting off along a road heading who knows where, the fear of a life full of new challenges, the fear of losing forever everything that is familiar.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Change, Dream

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• If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there.

  Billy Joel

  Missing, Heaven, Three

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• For within livin structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.

  Audre Lorde

  Men, Feelings, Poet

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.39, Crossing Press

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