Topic

Disappointment

Disappointment in this collection is always in conversation with expectation, because the two are inseparable. Wilde's two-tragedies formulation is the structural statement: not getting what you want is one tragedy; getting it is the other — which means disappointment is built into the system regardless of outcome. Bierce's year as three hundred and sixty-five disappointments is the calendar view. Aristotle on misfortune revealing false friends turns disappointment into diagnostic information: what we discover when things go wrong is more reliable than what we discover when they go right. Bacon on dying as often as we lose our friends gives disappointment a cumulative character — it is not a single event but a repeated attrition. Einstein on mutual marital expectations — men hoping women won't change, women hoping men will, both wrong — is the most structurally neat entry: disappointment in marriage has been engineered in advance by the assumptions both parties brought to it.

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Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments

Source: The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

A man dies as often as he loses his friends.

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love

The woman cries before the wedding and the man after.

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation

The most deadly fruit is borne by the hatred which one grafts on an extinguished friendship

It is a bitter disappointment when you have sown benefits, to reap injuries

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and, when got, the repose is insupportable

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invaribly they are both disappointed

There are only two tragedies in life. one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

Pleasure disappoints, possibility never

It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar