The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attach...ment to life in the hour of difficulty. But the man who has always pinned all his hopes on the future and lived with his eyes fixed upon it, has nothing in the past as a comfort against the present's afflictions, for the past was nothing to him but a series of hastily experienced stages. What blinded him to himself was his expectation always to find further on the happiness he had so far missed. Now he is stopped in his tracks; from now on nothing remains behind or ahead of him to fix his gaze upon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune; an expectation which the child, if j...ustice is done him, will nobly disappoint. By working on the theory that this resemblance exists, we shall do what in us lies to defeat his proper promise and produce the ordinary and mediocre. I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another man you. One's enough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the white frock is laid aside, the bigger miss seats herself in public at a ball, expecting every moment to be chosen by some... man for a partner for that evening. If she is balked, what galling disappointment doth she feel within! Her heart is ready to burst with envy at all those who are so happy as to be taken out.... The same expectation of being chosen out as a partner for life continues from miss of fifteen to miss of _____ ... but the woman who is continually expecting great offers of marriage, which may never happen, knows not when to give up her expectations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman's belief that the neuroses ...are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... it is the greatest of all mistakes to begin life with the expectation that it is going to be easy, or with the wish to have it... so.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Near the lake, which we were approaching with as much expectation as if it had been a university,--for it is not often that the st...ream of our life opens into such expansions,--were islands, and a low and meadowy shore with scattered trees, birches, white and yellow, slanted over the water, and maples,--many of the white birches killed, apparently by inundations. There was considerable native grass; and even a few cattle--whose movements we heard, though we did not see them, mistaking them at first for moose--were pastured there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I believe a good many conversations with you were left in an unfinished state, and now indeed I don't know where ...to take them up. But I will resume some of the unfinished silence. I shall not hesitate to know you. I think of you as some elder sister of mine, whom I could not have avoided,--a sort of lunar influence,--only of such age as the moon, whose time is measured by her light. You must know that you represent to me woman, for I have not traveled very far or wide,--and what if I had?... You have helped to keep my life "on loft," as Chaucer says of Griselda, and in a better sense. You always seemed to look down on me as from some elevation,--some of your high humilities,--and I was the better for having to look up. I felt taxed not to disappoint your expectation; for could there be any accident so sad as to be respected for something better than we are? It was a pleasure even to go away from you, as it is not to meet some, as it apprised me of my high relations; and such a departure is a sort of further introduction and meeting. Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be ...organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I always get back to the question, is it really necessary that men should consume so much of their bodily and mental energies in t...he machinery of civilised life? The world seems to me to do much of its toil for that which is not in any sense bread. Again, does not the latent feeling that much of their striving is to no purpose tend to infuse large quantities of sham into men's work?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the great thing to learn about life is, first, not to do what you don't want to do, and, second, to do what you do want to do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »