Wendell Berry Quotes

I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.

I always love to be careful with my expectations so that life has pleasant surprises for me.

My hopes are not always realized, but I always hope.

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

Don't let the good days get to your head, and don't let the bad days get to your heart.

My parents prepared me for the worst, hoped for the best.

You can feel up, you can feel down, and you have to keep your emotions kind of somewhere to be focused on the next ball.

Everybody has seen that I make mistakes. Every single album I have ever made is about love. But I am not going to give up. I have to look at what I do wrong. I rush in, I get swept up, I ignore the signs. But so many of us are guilty of these things. Each time it goes wrong, it's hard. I get really hurt but I have to let myself go: 'What did I do? What can I learn?' And as hard and as hurtful as things get, I want to believe I will be able to go one step higher. I've got to hope that if I keep going I will eventually get it right.

but a sanguine temper, though for ever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. it soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again.

It's the attitude about life, man. Looking at the light instead of the dark. Looking at love instead of fear.

And since we are people of expectation, we are so convinced that another world is coming that we start living as if it were already here.

When you're sad, you're not sad. You are merely oblivious to the good things in your life. There is always a crack of light in the darkness. Find it.

Let the jerks of the world serve as the perfect example of what you don't want to be. You'll be a heck of a lot happier, and in the long run, there's a chance that other person at work will end up asking what your secret is. Why are you the happy one? In other words, don't let your thoughts think you. Besides, if you're really gonna get pissed, don't waste it on your family, friends, or coworkers, save it for something that really matters.

Real optimism is exposed to the worst but expects the best.

We never get upset over what happens. Never. We get upset because of preconceived ideas as to what we think should happen, what we want to happen. When our preference clashes with the reality, we get hurt. Rid yourself of all preconceived ideas as to what should happen. You are then at peace whatever happens.

Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.

Whatever we focus on is bound to expand. Where we see the negative, we call forth more negative. And where we see the positive, we call forth more positive. Having loved and lost, I now love more passionately. Having won and lost, I now win more soberly. Having tasted the bitter, I now savor the sweet.

She believes in love and romance. She believes her life is one day going to be transformed into something wonderful and exciting. She has hopes and fears and worries, just like anyone. Sometimes she feels frightened. Sometimes she feels unloved. Sometimes she feels she will never gain approval from those people who are most important to her. But she’s brave and good-hearted and faces her life head-on.

In time, and as one comes to benefit from experience, one learns that things will turn out neither as well as one hoped nor as badly as one feared.

People who inspire others are those who see invisible bridges at the end of dead-end streets

It is much more sensible to be an optimist instead of a pessimist, for if one is doomed to disappointment, why experience it in advance?

Sometimes the mistake I see people make is thinking that they're always going to be up, and I think that's impossible for anyone.

Sometimes I’d get mad because things didn’t work out so well, I’d spoil a flapjack, or slip in the snowfield while getting water, or one time my shovel went sailing down into the gorge, and I’d be so mad I’d want to bite the mountaintops and would come in the shack and kick the cupboard and hurt my toe. But let the mind beware, though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.

You expect success, you respect failure.

You're young and you're bulletproof and invincible. But never underestimate the power of other people's love and prayer.