Famous Expectation Quotes

"Yet doth he live!" exclaims th' impatient heir, And sighs for sables which he must not wear.
-- Lord Byron

'Tis expectation makes a blessing dear; Heaven were not Heaven, if we knew what it were.
-- Sir John Suckling

'Tis silence all, And pleasing expectation.
-- James Thomson

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.
-- William Makepeace Thackeray

Blessed are those that nought expect, For they shall not be disappointed.
-- John Walcot

Blessed is he who expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed.
-- Alexander Pope

Everything comes if a man will only wait.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion. He hath indeed bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how.
-- William Shakespeare

He was fash and full of faith that "something would turn up."
-- Benjamin Disraeli

I am giddy; expectation whirls me round. Th' imaginary relish is so sweet That it enchants my sense.
-- William Shakespeare

I have known him come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a declaration that nothing was now left but a jail; and go to bed making a calculation of the expense of putting bow-windows to the house, "in case anything turned up," which was his favorite expression.
-- Charles Dickens

I suppose, to use our national motto, something will turn up.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
-- Archbishop Richard Whately

Many a time and oft Have you climbed up to walls and battlements, To tow'rs and windows, yea, to chimney tops, Your infants in your arms, and there have sat The livelong day, with patient expectation, To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome.
-- William Shakespeare

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there Where most it promises; and oft it hits Where hope is coldest and despair most fits.
-- William Shakespeare

Promising is the very air o' th' time; it opens the eyes of expectation. Performance is ever duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable; performance is a kind of will or testament which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it.
-- William Shakespeare

Serene I told my hands and wait, Nor care for wind or tide nor sea; I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me.
-- John Burroughs

Since yesterday I have been in Alcala. Erelong the time will come, sweet Preciosa, When that dull distance shall no more divide us; And I no more shall scale thy wall by night To steal a kiss from thee, as I do now.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What else remains for me? Youth, hope and love; To build a new life on a ruined life.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow