Realistic Quotes - Page 2

Better is the enemy of the good.

Voltaire

If you aspire to the highest place it is no disgrace to stop at the second or even the third place.

Cicero

Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Results are what you expect consequences are what you get.

Anonymous

The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.

Ram Dass

To expect life to be tailored to our specifications is to invite frustration.

Anonymous

Each of us does in effect strike a series of "deals " or compromises between the wants and longings of the inner self and an outer environment that offers certain possibilities and sets certain limitations.

Life is a perilous voyage.

Palladas

The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.

Lady Stella Reading

Don't fool yourself that you are going to have it all. You are not. Psychologically having it all is not even a valid concept. The marvelous thing about human beings is that we are perpetually reaching for the stars. The more we have the more we want. And for this reason we never have it all.

Dr. Joyce Brothers

Of all the young men in America only a few hundred can get into major league baseball and of these only a handful in a decade can get into the Hall of Fame. So it goes in all human activity. ... Some become multimillionaires and chairmen of the board and some of us must be content to play baseball at company picnics or manage a credit union without pay.

William Feather

Vex not thy spirit at the course of things they heed not thy vexation. How ludicrous and outlandish is astonishment at anything that may happen in life.

Marcus Aurelius

There are philosophies which are unendurable not because men are cowards but because they are men.

Ludwig Lewisohn

When I decided to go into politics I weighed the cost: I would get criticism. But I went ahead. So when the virulent criticism came I wasn't surprised. I was better able to handle it.

Never let life's hardships disturb you ... no one can avoid problems not even saints or sages.

Nichiren Daishonen

Life is made up of sobs sniffles and smiles with sniffles predominating.

o.henry

The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you're a vegetarian.

When nobody around you seems to measure up it's time to check your yardstick.

Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence with the certainty of losing it at last.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Marriage is not just spiritual communion and passionate embraces marriage is also three meals a day sharing the workload and remembering to carry out the trash.

Dr. Joyce Brothers

We [Americans] cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and that at the eleventh hour something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens.

Brooks Atkinson

There is no such thing as something for nothing.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau

Free man is by necessity insecure thinking man is by necessity uncertain.

It is arrogance to expect that life will always be music.... Harmony like a following breeze at sea is the exception. In a world where most things wind up broken or lost our lot is to tack and tune.

Harvey Oxenhorn

Being unready and ill-equipped is what you have to expect in life. It is the universal predicament. It is your lot as a human being to lack what it takes. Circumstances are seldom right. You never have the capacities the strength the wisdom the virtue you ought to have. You must always do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen as appropriate for your special endowments.

Charlton Ogburn

In nature there are neither rewards or punishments-there are consequences.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Hope for a miracle. But don't depend on one.

Talmud

Life guarantees a chance-not a fair shake.

Anonymous

Friendships aren't perfect and yet they are very precious. For me not expecting perfection all in one place was a great release.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Expect nothing and life will be velvet.

What is destructive is impatience haste expecting too much too fast.

No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.

Mignon McLaughlin

If you expect perfection from other people your whole life is a series of disappointments grumbling and complaints. If on the contrary you pitch your expectations low taking folks as the inefficient creatures which they are you are frequently surprised by having them perform better than you had hoped.

A pint can't hold a quart-if it holds a pint it is doing all that can be expected of it.

Margaret Deland

Truth has rough flavors if we bite it through.

What had seemed easy in imagination was rather hard in reality.

L.M. Montgomery

You can't move so fast that you try to change [a situation] faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.

Eleanor Roosevelt

He that will have a perfect brother must resign himself to remaining brotherless.

Italian proverb

Who ever is adequate? We all create situations which others can't live up to then break our hearts at them because they don't.

Elizabeth Bowen

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The way to achieve happiness is to have a high standard for yourself and a medium one for everyone else.

Life is not a spectacle or a feast it is a predicament.

George Santayana

To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

Flannery O'Connor

Because you're not what I would have you be I blind myself to who in truth you are.

Madeleine L'Engle

No one from the beginning of time has had security.

Eleanor Roosevelt

No one is happy all his life long.

Euripides

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.

Bernard M. Baruch

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

Life didn't promise to be wonderful.

Teddy Pendergrass

We never enjoy perfect happiness our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.

Pierre Corneille

Do not commit the error common among the young of assuming that if you cannot save the whole of mankind you have failed.

If one considered life as a simple loan one would perhaps be less exacting.

Eugène Delacroix

Why are we surprised when fig trees bear figs?

Margaret Titzel

Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.

Plutarch

I have nothing to offer but blood toil tears and sweat.

Winston Churchill

There's no map there's no master plan there's just people.

Stingray

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

Men expect too much do too little.

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