Quotes about Expectations

As a 17-year-old kid, people put you on this podium, and it seems like you're just a source of entertainment for people. I felt like I was swimming for other people and they'd never be satisfied.

I think we felt the pressure more at first than this time around. But still you don't want to let anyone down. I never even met Patrick until we had a Christmas party at Ian McKellen's house on the first movie and then I didn't see him again until the premiere.

In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good.

Our institutions and our expectations, including our churches, are almost entirely configured to encourage, support, reward, and validate the tasks of the first half of life.

Don't expect or demand from groups what they usually cannot give. Doing so will make you needlessly angry and reactionary. They must and will be concerned with identity, boundaries, self-maintenance, self-perpetuation, and self-congratulation. This is their nature and purpose.

Two thousand years after Jesus lived here, Christians still have a hard time accepting his upside-down world, in which we are expected to work for justice on behalf of others but not to demand or expect it for ourselves (Matthew 5:6,10-12). This is one of the hardest challenges of Jesus' message. It demands an expanded heart and mind.

We're not completely happy here because we're not supposed to be!

Many people are driven by the need for approval. They allow the expectations of parents or spouses or children or teachers or friends to control their lives. Many adults are still trying to earn the approval of unpleasable parents. Others are driven by peer pressure, always worried by what others might think. Unfortunately, those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it.

When you base your worth and identity on your relationship to Christ, you are freed from the expectations of others, and that allows you to really serve them best.

Henri Nouwen said, "In order to be of service to others we have to die to them; that is, we have to give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others…. thus we become free to be compassionate." When you base your worth and identity on your relationship to Christ, you are freed from the expectations of others, and that allows you to really serve them best.

If your prayers haven't been answered, it doesn't mean they won't be answered. In fact, they may have already been answered, but just not in the way you wanted or expected them to be.

If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.