Realistic Quotes - Page 4

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.

Bernard de Fontenelle

We cannot all be masters.

William Shakespeare

To do all that one is able to do is to be a man to do all that one would like to do is to be a god.

Napoléon Bonaparte

No one is expected to achieve the impossible.

It is only fools who keep straining at high C all their lives.

Charles Dudley Warner

May God ... let me strive for attainable things.

Pindar

Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.

There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.

I hope to work support my children and die quietly without pain.

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

Striving for excellence motivates you striving for perfection is demoralizing.

Dr. Harriet Braiker

It is enough that I am of value to somebody today.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

Alexander the Great

To wish to act like angels while we are still in this world is nothing but folly.

Teresa of Avila.

It isn't important to come out on top what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.

I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something I can do.

Edward Everett Hale

Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections.

Saint Francis de Sales

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

Johann von Goethe

Life is a perilous voyage.

Palladas

One must not hope to be more than one can be.

Nicolas de Chamfort

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

Lady Stella Reading

We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

Try as hard as we may for perfection the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.

Samuel McChord Crothers

We set up harsh and unkind rules against ourselves. No one is born without faults. That man is best who has fewest.

Horace

I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare but I can write a book by me.

Sir Walter Raleigh

I have done what I could do in life and if I could not do better I did not deserve it. In vain I have tried to step beyond what bound me.

Maurice Maeterlinck

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

Margaret Fontey

Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness.

To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.

Anonymous

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

At thirty a man should know himself like the palm of his hand know the exact number of his defects and qualities. ... And above all accept these things.

No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character.

You can't make the Duchess of Windsor into Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The facts of life are very stubborn things.

Cleveland Amory

Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do than what one can do.

Learn to ... be what you are and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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.

If you want a place in the sun you've got to put up with a few blisters.

Abigail Van Buren

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

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