Disappointment

“ But the disappointment which has its seat in the affections is outgrown as the affections themselves are outgrown, as the season of their predominance passes away; and the disappointment which sinks the deepest and lasts the longest of all the disappointments which are fanciful rather than material, is that which reaches a man through his ambition and his self-love,—principles in his nature which outlast the heyday of the heart's supremacy, and which endure to man's latest years. ”

“ How could they continue to cherish expectations that were invariably doomed to disappointment? With what heart persist in playing venerable antics that led to nothing, and mumbling solemn balderdash that remained without effect? ”

“ Then what cries of joy or disappointment broke forth at every instant! There seemed at once to come over that hardened, time-worn group of men all the changing fickleness of childhood,—the wayward vacillations of hope and despair, bright visions of sudden wealth, with gloomy thoughts of disappointment,—when, suddenly, one brought up from the bed of the stream something which he showed to his neighbor, then to another and another, till a knot had gathered close around him, among which I found myself. ”

“ Truly disappointment is the guardian deity of human life; she sits at the threshold of unborn time, and marshals the events as they come forth. Once my heart sat lightly in my bosom; all the beauty of the world was doubly beautiful, irradiated by the sun-light shed from my own soul. ”

“ But the rust of disappointment has dried up his better nature; his heart is wrung with the shafts of ingratitude—all the fierce passions of his nature, hate, scorn and revenge, rise up in the one stormy outburst of his soul. ”

“ A crushing sorrow, disappointment on the heel of disappointment, loneliness, or perhaps only a grey life full of petty cares passed in a scorching, withering climate—one or all of these things had dried the sap out of her, and left of what might have been a gracious creature, radiating pleasure and comfort, only the rags and bones of womanhood. ”

“ Disappointment must attend him, if he speaks without speaking to the purpose, or without describing things with that fire, with that force, and with that energy which present them to the mind as a painting does to the eyes. ”

“ Is your world a small one, made unendurable by a thousand petty cares? Are the heart and soul of you cast down by bitter disappointment? Would you leave it all, if only for an hour, and come back with a new point of view? ”

“ Expectations eagerly indulged and terminated by disappointment are often exquisite misery. But how frequently are expectations raised only to be disappointed, and desires let loose only to terminate in distress! ”

“ Thus life passes away in the feverish irritation of pursuit and the certainty of disappointment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state of feeling satisfies us: and all common pleasures and cheap amusements are sacrificed to the demon of ambition, avarice, or dissipation. ”

“ That was his disappointment. Happy are they who, in this world of trial, meet their disappointments in their youth, not in their old age; then let them come and welcome, not too thick to render us morose, but like Spring mornings, frosty but kindly, the cold of which will kill the vermin, but will let the plant live; and let us rely upon it, that the best men (and women, too) are those who have been early disappointed. ”

“ The darts of envy would be blunted, the cup of disappointment lose its bitterness, the impassioned eagerness of the heart be stilled, tears would fall like holy dew, and blossoms fragrant with celestial May ensue. ”

“ We move, like marionettes, pulled by the strings of our forgotten antenatal deeds, in a magic cage, or Net, of false and hypocritical momentary seemings: and bitter disappointment is the inevitable doom of every soul, that with passion for its guide in the gloom, thinks to find in the shadows that surround it any substance, any solid satisfaction ”

“ And accordingly, we find the poets constantly recurring to this thirst of the gazelle, as an emblem of the treacherous and bewildering fascination of the fleeting shadows of this lower life (ihaloka;) the beauty that is hollow, the Bubble of the World. And thus, Disappointment is of the essence of Existence: disappointment, which can only come about, when hopes and expectations have been founded on a want of understanding (awiweka;) a blindness, born of Desire, that sets and keeps its unhappy victims hunting, in vain, for what is not to be found. ”

“ How am I altered by disappointment!—When going to ——, ten years ago, the elasticity of my mind was sufficient to ward off weariness—and the imagination still could dip her brush in the rainbow of fancy, and sketch futurity in smiling colours. Now I am going towards the North in search of sunbeams!—Will any ever warm this desolated heart? All nature seems to frown—or rather mourn with me.—Every thing is cold—cold as my expectations! ”

“ I even imagined that I intruded on you, because you never called on me—though you perceived that I was not well.—I have nourished a sickly kind of delicacy, which gives me many unnecessary pangs.—I acknowledge that life is but a jest—and often a frightful dream—yet catch myself every day searching for something serious—and feel real misery from the disappointment. ”

“ No greater misfortune could be met with than disappointment in such expectations, which we have been by the strongest possible motives encouraged to conceive. To be disappointed in hopes we have justly relied on, would be beyond all imagination terrible in its consequences. I shudder at the very idea of the boundless woes it could not fail to be attended with, not for myself—I attach not much value to my own life,—but for thousands, nay for millions of men. ”

“ I pray so fervently that we may never add to the mountain of disappointment which life has already brought to you; another just as fervent prayer, do not think us beautiful; it cannot be otherwise, some day you will be disappointed, and that would cause us bitter grief. ”

“ It would be difficult to imagine a person more unhappy. Undisciplined and unfortified by the knowledge that disappointment is an integral part of all lives, there had suddenly come upon me a disappointment the most total. It covered everything; there was not a flicker of hope or palliation. And I had no idea where to go to make myself another hope, or in what course lay palliation. As we have prepared ourselves or have been prepared, so is the issue of our temptations. ”

“ He runs backwards and forwards, up and down the room, while she follows him with her large, suffering eyes, which have an unnatural look in them, follows him backwards and forwards in unutterable surprise,—a surprise which seems to have fallen from heaven, and which changes little by little into an unutterable, inconceivable disappointment, and that again into an indescribably bitter, sickening contempt. ”

“ How fast the years glide by, beginning in hope and ending in disappointment! Strange that we gain so little of true wisdom amid the sharp disappointments that meet us at almost every turn! How keenly the writer has suffered with the rest, need not be told. ”

“ And although I know that this feeling is much deepened in my own mind by disappointment, which, by chance, has attended the greater number of my cherished purposes, I do not for that reason distrust the feeling itself, though I am on my guard against an exaggerated degree of it: nay, I rather believe that in periods of new effort and violent change, disappointment is a wholesome medicine ”

“ 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. ”

“ The second property I shall observe in the human mind is a like association of impressions. All resembling impressions are connected together, and no sooner one arises than the rest immediately follow. Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be compleated. ”

“ Thus the crisis of disappointment which breaks up the hope and effort of so many men who start well, or else throws them into poor and sterile courses, proved in this grave, fervent, and most reasonable spirit only the beginning of more serious endeavours in a new and more arduous vein. ”

“ Disappointment alone could not eradicate the lovely memories spanning three years.
After suffering a substantial loss, it sometimes seems impossible that a replacement of equal or greater value could ever be found, and attempts to compare the incomparable often end in frustration. ”

“ That is not merely the time of disappointment, it is in itself disappointment; it is not what it expected to be; and it finds nothing which confronts it quite, if at all, responsive to the inward vision. ”

“ Taking into consideration what has been said above, we conclude that the source of disappointment lies, in many cases, if not in most, in our own fault, because of loss of foresight or some slight omission, which, indeed, is so often apt to overthrow all our most beautiful plans. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These people meet with disappointment, of course; and it is sad to think how many lives have come to absolutely nothing, and are all strewn over, from boyhood to the grave, with the fragments of splendid schemes. ”

“ But delusions, illusions, and the like are the salt of life. Only the illusions do not pall; only the illusions do not pass away. True disappointment lies in complete success. One thing, at any rate, we were not deceived about. ”

“ Thus oppressed at once by love, jealousy, and disappointment, her spirits sunk, a settled melancholy preyed upon her heart, which with a natural tendency to a decay, impaired her health to such a degree, as to give the most alarming symptoms of an approaching dissolution. ”

“ Disappointment will bring out her demand to know why she is disappointed—naturally. But how am I to tell on the threshold of marriage that it is all due to a misunderstanding about a handful of ferns! ”

“ He comes here at the peril of his life, for the realization of his fixed idea. In the moment of realization, after all his toil and waiting, you cut the ground from under his feet, destroy his idea, and make his gains worthless to him. Do you see nothing that he might do, under the disappointment?” ”

“ You come from the scene of as bitter a disappointment as can befall a man, and you are a little touched by the contrasting warmth of your reception here, a little moved by my evident interest, and perhaps a little influenced by my good looks, though they are nothing much. ”

“ It is a world of disappointment: often to the hopes we most cherish, and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour. ”

“ Yet, dear L., I had time, on the top of my mule for musing upon how melancholy a thing is success. Whilst failure inspirits a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that all our glories "Are shadows, not substantial things." Truly said the sayer, "disappointment is the salt of life"--a salutary bitter which strengthens the mind for fresh exertion, and gives a double value to the prize. ”

“ Is it not part, at least, of some men's pleasure in gaining some object which has been generally sought for, to think of the mortification of the poor fellows that failed?
Disappointment, in short, may come and must come wherever man can set his wishes and his hopes. The only way not to be disappointed when a thing turns out against you, is not to have really cared how the thing went. ”

“ When a rainy day stops a pic-nic, or mars the enjoyment of it, although the disappointment is hardly a serious one, still it is sure to cause so much real suffering, that only rancorous old ladies will rejoice in the fact. It is curious how men who have known disappointment themselves, and who describe it well, seem to like to paint lives which in the meantime are all hope and success. ”

“ Disappointment follows disappointment, and Hope seems given me merely to prevent my becoming callous to Misery. Now I know not where to turn myself. I was on my way to the City Library, and wrote an answer to it there. Since I have returned I have been poring into a book, as a shew for not looking at my wife and the baby. By God, I dare not look at them. Acton! ”

“ Evidently there can be no surprise and no disappointment unless there is expectation and most rhythms perhaps are made up as much of disappointments and postponements and surprises and betrayals as of simple, straightforward satisfactions. ”

“ THOU art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end? ”

“ As I come towards the end of this task which I had set myself, I wish, of course, that I could have performed it more to my own satisfaction and that of my readers. This is a feeling which almost every one must have at the conclusion of any work he has undertaken. A common and very simple reason for this disappointment is that most of us overrate our capacity. ”

“ It has been said that disappointment is responsible for all the hope in the world, but I'd like to say right here that that's just a sort of weak play on words which don't do justice to the meanest intelligence. ”

“ And she must recollect too that the very pain of disappointment, which she is obliged to inflict and to witness from day to day, in her unfortunate lovers, is of itself calculated to weaken and obtund her feelings and sympathies, and to generate coldness and hardness of heart. ”