“There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations”

“The pretty ones are usually unhappy. They expect everyone to be enamored of their beauty. How can a person be content when their happiness lies in someone else’s hands, ready to be crushed at any moment? Ordinary-looking people are far superior, because they are forced to actually work hard to achieve their goals, instead of expecting people to fall all over themselves to help them.”

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”

“I hope I don’t write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself “When did they live?” I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don’t want to write in order to live! My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations.”

“Kuwa na kiasi katika matarajio yako. Hatuna uwezo wa kuona mambo kama Mungu anavyoyaona.”

“I feel strangely free at such times. To behave properly is to be always courteous, always clever, and subtle and elegant. But now, when I am so alone, I do not have to be any of these things. For this moment, I am wholly myself, unshaped by the needs of others, by their dreams or expectations or sensibilities. But I am also lonely. With no one to shape me, who stands here, watching the moon, or the stars, or the clouds?”

“Yes, sex is troublesome and beautiful. And only when we drop our expectations, and know that we’ll have moments of great sex and moments when our sexuality confounds, pains, or infuriates us, will we be liberated to enjoy it in a way that’s true to ourselves.”

“The fruit of empty hopes is more bitter than the saddest truth.”

“A raindrop carries hopes & expectations, but a teardrop carries happiness & sadness.”

“Naive people tend to generalize people as—-good, bad, kind, or evil based on their actions. However, even the smartest person in the world is not the wisest or the most spiritual, in all matters. We are all flawed. Maybe, you didn’t know a few of these things about Einstein, but it puts the notion of perfection to rest. Perfection doesn’t exist in anyone. Nor, does a person’s mistakes make them less valuable to the world. 1. He divorced the mother of his children, which caused Mileva, his wife, to have a break down and be hospitalized.2.He was a ladies man and was known to have had several affairs; infidelity was listed as a reason for his divorce.3.He married his cousin.4.He had an estranged relationship with his son.5. He had his first child out of wedlock.6. He urged the FDR to build the Atom bomb, which killed thousands of people.7. He was Jewish, yet he made many arguments for the possibility of God. Yet, hypocritically he did not believe in the Jewish God or Christianity. He stated, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”

“You don’t seem mad at all,’ she said.But I am, although I’m undergoing a cure, because my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. However, while I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being mad, living life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete?”

“If only you would realize some day, how much have you hurt me,If only your heart ever, craves for me or my presence…If only you feel that love again someday for me,If only you are affected someday by my absence…Only you can end all my suffering and this unbearable pain,If only you would know what you could never procure…If only you go through the memories of past once again,Since the day you left my heart has bled, no one has its cure…If only you would bring that love, those showers and that rain…If only you would come back and see what damage you create,I’ve been waiting for your return since forever more…If only you would see the woman that you have made,You said we cannot sail through, how were you so sure?If only you can feel the old things that can never fade,You may have moved on, but a piece of my heart is still with you…I know how I’ve come so far alone; I know how I’m able to wade,People say that I’m insane and you won’t ever come back again…Maybe you would have never made your separate way,Maybe you would have stayed with me and proved everyone wrong…If only you would know the pain of dying every day,If only you would feel the burden of smiling and being strong…”

“It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished.”

“I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations.”

“A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect.”