DISAPPOINTMENT

Related Subjects: Contentment, Expectation, Failure, Loss, Regret

1. We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes.—BRONSON ALCOTT
   

2. There is no disappointment we endure
   One half so great as that we are to ourselves.—PHILIP J. BAILEY, Festus
   

3. It is sometimes of God's mercy that men in the eager pursuit of worldly aggrandizement are baffled; for they are very like a train going down an inclined plane—putting on the brake is not pleasant, but it keeps the car on the track and from ruin.—H. W. BEECHER
   

4. Man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before he can comprehend the full value of the greater.—BULWER-LYTTON
   

5. And still they dream that they shall still succeed,
   And still are disappointed.—COWPER, The Task
   

6. As for disappointing them, I should not so much mind; but I can't abide to disappoint myself.—GOLDSMITH, She Stoops to Conquer
   

7. He who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappoint­ment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any other effect than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation.—SAMUEL JOHNSON
   

8. Disappointment, parent of Despair.—KEATS, To Hope
   

9. How disappointment tracks the steps of hope.—L. E. LANDON
   

10. But O! as to embrace me she inclin'd,
    I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.—MILTON, On his Deceased Wife

11. It is a bitter disappointment when you have sown benefits, to reap
    injuries.—PLAUTUS, Epidicus
    

12. Mean spirits under disappointment, like small beer in a thunderstorm, always turn sour.—JOHN RANDOLPH
    

13. Two sisters by the goal are set,
    Cold Disappointment and Regret;
    One disenchants the winner's eyes,
    And strips of all its worth the prize,
    While one augments its gaudy show,
    More to enhance the loser's woe.—SCOTT, Rokeby
    

14. All is but toys; renown and grace is dead;
    The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
    Is left this vault to brag of.—SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth
    

15. My cake is dough.—SHAKESPEARE, The Taming of the Shrew
    

16. Life often seems like a long shipwreck of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love. The shores of existence are strewn with them.—MME. DE STAEL
    

17. For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
    The saddest are these: "It might have been!"—WHITTIER, Maud Muller