I would not anticipate the relish of any happiness, nor feel the weight of any misery, before it actually arrives.
- Unattributed Author, Spectator (no. 7),
an English periodical (1711 - 1712)
By anticipation we sugar misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being. We can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when the heavens and earth shall be no more.
- Joseph Addison
We are apt to rely upon future prospects, and become really expensive while we are only rich in possibility. We live up to our expectations, not to our possessions, and make a figure proportionable to what we may be, not what we are.
- Joseph Addison
The problem is, whether a man constantly and strongly believing, that such a thing shall be, it don't help anything to the effecting of the thing.
- Francis Bacon
With every one, the expectation of a misfortune constitutes a dreadful, punishment. Suffering then assumes the proportions of the unknown, which is the soul's infinite.
- Honore de Balzac
Troubles forereckoned are doubly suffered.
- Christian Nestell Bovee
Nothing is so great an adversary to those who make it their business to please as expectation.
- Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) (often called "Tully" for short)
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other, it is our own.
- Charles Caleb Colton
Experience finds few of the scenes that lively hope designs.
- George Crabbe
The anticipation of evil courts evil.
- Dorothee DeLuzy
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.
- Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.
- George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans Cross)
All earthy delights are sweeter in expectation than enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than expectation.
- Owen Felltham (Feltham)
It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
- Bernard de Bovier de Fontenelle
We can but ill endure, among so many sad realities; to rob anticipation of its pleasant visions.
- Henry Giles
Thou tremblest before anticipated ills, and still bemoanest what thou never losest.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition. In the first instance, we cook the dish to our own appetite; in the latter, Nature cooks it for us.
- Oliver Goldsmith
Whichever way we look the prospect is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and before, we see pleasures which we languish to possess, and are consequently uneasy till we possess them.
- Oliver Goldsmith
The craving for a delicate fruit is pleasanter than the fruit itself.
- Johann Gottfried von Herder
We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment.
- Henry Home, Lord Kames
All fear is in itself painful, and when it conduces not to safety; is painful without use. Every consideration, therefore, by which groundless terrors may be removed adds something: to human happiness.
- Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")
In proportion as our cares are employed upon the future, they are abstracted from the present, from the only time which we can call our own, and of which, if we neglect the apparent duties to make provision against visionary attacks, we shall certainly counteract our own purpose.
- Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")
Such is the uncertainty of human affairs, that security and despair are equal follies; and as it is presumption and arrogance to anticipate triumphs, it is weakness and cowardice to prog-nosticate miscarriages.
- Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")
There would be few enterprises of great labor or hazard undertaken, if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages which we persuade ourselves to expect from them.
- Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")
Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by at nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted.
- Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")
It is worse to apprehend than to suffer.
- Jean de la Bruyere
The events we most desire do not happen; or, if they do, it is neither in the time nor in the circumstances when they would have given us extreme pleasure.
- Jean de la Bruyere
Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.
- Lao-Tzu (Lao-Tsze or Laosi)("The Venerable Philosopher")
A man's desires always disappoint him; for though he meets with something that gives him satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers his expectation.
- Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when to-morrow's burden is added to the burden of to-day that the weight is more than a man can bear.
- George MacDonald
The pilot who is always dreading a rock or a tempest must not complain if he remain a poor fisherman. We must at times trust, something to fortune, for fortune has often some share in what happens.
- Metastasio (pseudonym of Antonio Domenico Bonaventura Trapassi Pietro)
Far off his coming alone.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
(bk. VI, l. 768)
There are many things that are thorns to our hopes until we have attained them, and envenomed arrows to our hearts when we have.
- Marquis de Mirabeau, Victor de Riquetti
He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over.
- Bishop Beilby Porteus
A cathedral, a wave of a storm, a dancer's leap, never turn out to be as high as we had hoped.
- Marcel Proust
Things temporal are sweeter in the expectation, things eternal are sweeter in the fruition; the first shames thy hope, the second crowns it; it is a vain journey, whose end affords less pleasure than the way.
- Francis Quarles
Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the apprehension of suffering.
- Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus)
Anticipation and Hope are born twins.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I know that we often tremble at an empty terror; yet the false fancy brings a real misery.
- Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.
- William Shakespeare
It is expectation makes a blessing dear; heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were.
- Sir John Suckling
We expect everything, and are prepared for nothing.
- Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine (Soimonoff)
To despond is to lie ungrateful beforehand. Be not looking for evil. Often thou drainest the gall of fear while evil is passing by thy dwelling.
- Martin Farquhar Tupper
