Anticipation

“ How little the days bring, that really touches the heart! Oftentimes this void is not at all oppressive. A mist seems to enfold me, which is already beginning to grow less dense and be gilded by the first rays of the sun, which I cannot yet see. A soft, delightful expectation pervades my soul, like the anticipation of very pleasant events, experiences, and enlightenments, which will undoubtedly soon take place. ”

“ There are no drawbacks, no disappointments, in that picture, but in the reality they are sure to appear. The anticipation of a pleasure may have lasted for weeks in the mind, and have been dwelt on in all the endless variety of possibilities, while the reality lasts but a short time. Hence the feeling of disappointment ensues. Hope immediately rallies the powers. ”

“ Now it was a living, vibrating possibility to be awaited with anticipation, a something to await with joy or with sorrow; a something which forced into his life an object and made living worth his while.... ”

“ The last word to be said is, Live in frequent anticipation of that perfect future. If that anticipation is built on memory of the past and experience of the present, it cannot be too confident. That hope maketh not ashamed. ”

“ The body felt only the sensation of the present instant, whereas the mind felt also the past and the future, the one by remembrance, the other by anticipation, and consequently both suffered and enjoyed much more. ”

“ True, the pleasures it bestowed were evanescent, but which of our joys are permanent? and who so inexperienced as not to know that anticipation is always of higher relish than reality, which strikes a balance both in our sufferings and enjoyments. "The fear of ill exceeds the ill we fear," and fruition, in the same proportion, invariably falls short of hope. ”

“ It was the old, old experience, at that time still new to me, that we seldom are blessed with success or joy without some bitter admixture, and that the fulfillment of a wish usually looks very different from anticipation ”

“ The truth is that no mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. ”

“ Anticipation is the greatest quickener of mortal spirits. There is something so lively in the expectation of things upon which the heart is fixed, that even time passes quickly by during the period in which hope is so vivid. ”

“ An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but the precursors of the things which we are capable of performing. ”

“ No doubt it is well, for many reasons, that we cannot read the future. Trials and sorrows, which no skill or forethought could have turned aside, would have been doubled by anticipation and foreknowledge. ”

“ There is a valuable paragraph on anticipation and its uses—there is a power and desire of the mind to project itself from the known into the unknown, in the expectation of finding what it is in search of. ”

“ We must expect that, in the afternoon, when anticipation shall have faded through the stages of its fulfilment, if no longer entranced by the pleasures of Hope, he will solace himself with those of Memory. ”

“ Anticipation is therefore more primary than recollection; projection than summoning of the past; the prospective than the retrospective. Given a world like that in which we live, a world in which environing changes are partly favorable and partly callously indifferent, and experience is bound to be prospective in import; for any control attainable by the living creature depends upon what is done to alter the state of things. ”

“ But after a week or two, when we received no further tidings, we began absolutely to expect him, and with a stronger anticipation—infatuation—than ever, built upon a future which no man may dare to call his own, either for good or evil. ”

“ We expect, and we anticipate, and how often, during the flow of buoyant thought, we map out the way to future greatness. My feelings are so fluctuating, my anticipations so frequently unrealized, that no result can be very unexpected. ”

“ Even supposing the expectation to have originated from some rational source, as from a conscious inference from past experience, or from the acceptance of somebody's statement, the very habit of cherishing the anticipation tends to invest it with an automatic self-sufficient character. To all intents and purposes the prevision becomes intuitive, by which I mean that the mind is at the time immediately certain that something is going to happen, without needing to fall back on memory or reflection. ”

“ She lived for food, yet, like most passions which have become exaggerated by concentration out of all proportion to the fact upon which they depend, the moment of fulfilment seemed always brief and unsatisfactory after the intensity of anticipation. ”

“ Be alert, receptive, ready. Seize the small joy of the now, and you will find it far more delightful than all the anticipations, and even the realizations of what seem to be the large joys of the to-morrow. ”

“ Even in looking forward to a single day, the spirit may sometimes faint from an anticipation of the duties, the labours, the trials to temper and patience that may be expected. Now, this is unjustly laying the burthen of many thousand moments upon one. Let any one resolve always to do right now, leaving then to do as it can ”

“ The best psychological theory of the experience of volition makes it the imaging of a movement or action, followed by feelings of strain, and then of the movement carried out. The anticipation is the essential. ”

“ To prevent children from acquiring a taste for reverie, let them have various occupations both of mind and body. Let us not direct their imagination to extraordinary future pleasures, but let us suffer them to enjoy the present. Anticipation is a species of reverie; and children, who have promises of future pleasures frequently made to them, live in a continual state of anticipation. ”

“ Sure, beyond a peradventure, is it that our most cherished anticipations shall be far exceeded in that rapturous moment; for we can but reason from experience, whilst here the sweetest communion has ever been marred by that which there shall not be. ”

“ All in vain I strove to control the workings of my morbidly excited imagination—I could not shut out the fearful thoughts and anticipations which the occurrences of the day so naturally and obviously suggested. The lapse of twenty-four hours might find us all reduced to the same helpless state, deprived of consciousness and reason. ”

“ But the change between his ardent anticipations and his calm resignation, and between his foolish dream and the stern reality, may well teach us that, whether our wishes be fulfilled or disappointed, they all need to be purified, and that the disappointment of them on earth is often God's way of fulfilling them for us in higher fashion than we dreamed or asked. ”

“ In the anticipations we may form of the day of judgment, there are combined two perfectly distinct classes of ideas; on the one side there are those images of physical grandeur and of dramatic effect which offer themselves to the imaginative orator as the proper materials of his art, and which, if skillfully managed, will not fail to produce the kind of excitement that is desired by both speaker and hearer. On the other side there are, in these anticipations, the forensic proceedings which form the very substance of the fearful scene ”

“ Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not turn out well. ”

“ A realization of the shifting scenes of human happiness, and of the frailty of mortal anticipations, — such as first led me to the feet of Christian Science, — seems to be requisite at every stage of advancement. ”

“ The final attainment of this great synthesis, like the social deliquescence and reconstruction dealt with in the earlier of these anticipations, has an air of being a process independent of any collective or conscious will in man, as being the expression of a greater Will ”

“ Why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure,—worldly, social, amorous, ambitious, or even avaricious,—does there mingle a certain sense of doubt and sorrow—a fear of what is to come—a doubt of what is—a retrospect to the past, leading to a prognostication of the future? ”

“ THE CONSENT.
It is the past that maketh my despair;
The dark, the sad, the irrevocable past.
Alas! why should our lot in life be made,
Before we know that life? Experience comes,
But comes too late. ”

“ How can I wait? The morning breaks the spell
A pitying night has flung upon my soul.
You are not near me, and I know full well
My heart has need of patience and control;
Before we meet, hours, days, and weeks must roll.
How can I wait?
How can I wait? Oh, love, how can I wait
Until the sunlight of your eyes shall shine
Upon my world that seems so desolate?
Until your hand-clasp warms my blood like wine ”

“ Does any one press on me the thought that, say what you will of the future, death to each of us is near, and no ulterior hope can quell the nearer anxiety as to what is to become of us, and how we are to prepare for that fast-approaching, inevitable hour? ”

“ The frightful state of things in the land, unparalleled even in those evil times, joined with the feeling of expectation which always attends any marked note of time, be it a fresh week or a fresh millennium—​all worked together to bring about a looking for something to come, partly perhaps in fear, but far more largely in hope. ”

“ Events so strikingly opposite in their character and influences succeed so rapidly one upon another that the mind is kept in one whirl of excitement, and at length accustoms itself to change with every phase of circumstances; and between joy and grief, hope and despondency, enthusiasm and depression, there is neither breadth nor interval,—they follow each other as naturally as morning succeeds to night. ”

“ Connected by no link with the ever active Present, a monotonous Future stretched before them, made more dreary by its contrast with the keen excitement and ever-shifting variety of their past life of peril and pleasure. ”

“ To me the most momentous episodes of life appear to resolve themselves naturally into first occasions. Those times at which we first feel, think, act, or experience in any given way, form the true stepping-stones of life. ”

“ We despair of the future, for one reason, because we attribute to the future our own growing sense of fatigue, the feelings of evening. But the future will, for those to whom it belongs, be morning, with the vigour and buoyancy of the awakening. ”

“ They shorten in passing whenever we are so fully occupied with their content as not to note the actual time itself. A day full of excitement, with no pause, is said to pass 'ere we know it.' On the contrary, a day full of waiting, of unsatisfied desire for change, will seem a small eternity. ”

“ I have not known myself what to expect; one day has perpetually reversed the prospect of another, and my mind has been in a state of uncertainty and disorder, that has kept it—that still keeps it from comfort and from rest! ”

“ Perhaps it is only the uneasiness of those who have not yet found their places in the ranks. You go about with an expectant air, as if imagining that some ineffable thought or experience will tell you the next minute all there is to know. ”

“ Can we wonder then, if we ourselves feel so strongly concerning events which are hull down upon the horizon of time, that those who lived in the very thick of them should have been possessed with an all absorbing ecstasy or even frenzy of excitement? ”

“ I cheered her with saying that the dark day, at the end, would be for the like of me; inasmuch as, going in our small way by experience and observation, we depended not on a revelation, but on a little tiresome process. Observation depended on opportunity, and where should we be when opportunity failed? ”

“ Such a certainty, under some circumstances, might have so mingled hope and expectation with all the anxieties and apprehensions which follow every strong passion, that the whole would still have remained a pleasant dream to cheer me on upon the path of exertion and enterprise; but, situated as I was, the tardy discovery alone exposed to my sight a prospect of disappointment and despair. ”

“ While we behold these scenes, we feel that we have all the comforts, and, in comparison, even the luxuries, of life. We feel that our temporal cup of blessings is full, and runneth over. But is our temporal lot so much superior to theirs? ”

“ He said that inasmuch as we are disposed to do right, we may learn from the past year's experience, that those things which we are called to suffer, produce a very different effect upon the mind from what we should anticipate if they were presented before us in prospect; producing pleasure and satisfaction where we would look for misery. While we reflect with astonishment on the past, we may be instructed to set our hearts at rest with regard to the future ”