Ellen Glasgow Quotes

Whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed . . . perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don't always come up to your expectations either . . . they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think.

It's a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations.

The zest for life of those unusual men and women who make a great zealous success of living is due more often in good part to the craftiness and pertinacity with which they manage to overlook the misery of others. You can watch them watch life beat the stuffing out of the faces of their friends and acquaintances, although they themselves seem to outwit the dense delays of social custom, the tedious tick-tock of bureaucratic obfuscation, accepting loss and age and change and disappointment without suffering punctures in their stomach lining.

Let the disappointments pass, let the laughter fill your glass.

Optimism....is neither weak nor naive. It can be tough and pure and earned just as clearly as any brooding existential despair.

We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you.

It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.

Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

Finding temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope: Temporary causes limit helplessness in time, and specific causes limit helplessness to the original situation.

I have hope. I have no expectations.

I don't have expectations. Expectations in your life just lead to giant disappointments.

I don't have any expectations.

Look, even bad years are pretty good years I think.

My version, of course, is not this flag-waving, let's all get on the Jesus train and ride out of hell. I'm not that kind of guy. It's an embrace that life is good, worth living and yeah, it's not easy, but there are more pluses than minuses.

I try not to be too realistic. It's better to be over-positive.

My parents prepared me for the worst, hoped for the best.

I try to look at things in a positive light, but not everything ends up turning out positive or perfect.

There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

If we want to cultivate hopefulness, we have to be willing to be flexible and demonstrate perseverance. Not every goal will look and feel the same. Tolerance for disappointment, determination, and a belief in self are the heart of hope.

Some of my cronies call me a pessimist and a decadent, but there is always a background of faith behind resignation.

The sooner you learn that life is not fair, the better off you'll be, because you'll spend less time railing against life's unfairness and feeling aggrieved and entitled, and more time figuring out how to maximize your assets, and your talents and how to deal with things that you're not very good at.

So always look for the silver lining And try to find the sunny side of life.

Hope does not disappoint.

Be positive, be positive. It's rough out there, but don't succumb. Don't succumb to the cynicism in the world.