Martha Beck Quotes

I'm not by nature a cynical person. But sometimes your expectations are different from reality.

I wouldn't say that I relax and enjoy anything. But I think my pessimism helps. I never really expect anything good to happen, so when it does, it's a nice surprise.

Hope is the raw material of losers.

I assume everything I do in life is gonna be a failure, and then if it turns up roses, then I'm psyched.

Anything that happens that's good, they think, Oh, it's an accident, when is the roof caving in? You've got to get them out of that mental framework.

I'm very realistic in my outlook on everything in life. When I look ahead in my mind to see what's going to happen next, I see the good and I see the bad.

I don't always expect good from people. I always expect the bad and I am pleasantly surprised when they are nice.

Most of us...are naturally more sanguine and hopeful than logic would justify. We seem to be so constituted that in the absence of any facts to go upon we are happy and self-satisfied; so that the effect of experience is continually to contract our hopes and aspirations

If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope.

You know the old adage: Plant an expectation, reap a disappointment.

Your life will follow your expectations. What you expect is what you will get. If you dwell on positive thoughts, you will move in that direction; if you continually think negative thoughts, you will live a negative life.

Better to be an optimist who gets disappointed than a pessimist who has no hope.

I think I probably hoped for it a little bit, but I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist... or maybe even a pessimist.

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

The way you remember the past depends upon your hope for the future. And if what you see in your future has no hope, it has no potential, then you view the past that brought you to here as not very good.

No matter what happens to us in life, we tend to think of it as 'good' or 'bad.' And most of us tend to use the 'bad' label three to 10 times as often as the 'good' label. And when we say something is bad, the odds grow overwhelming that we will experience it as such.

That was just my own personal program: I didn't want to get too high over the good moments because I didn't want to be saddened and depressed when things didn't go as I had planned.

I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago.

I don't have expectations. Expectations in your life just lead to giant disappointments.

If we're stuck with having expectations, there's a very good reason to embrace positive ones: It's that we often create what we anticipate.

At my core, the glass isn't half-empty - it's not even what I ordered in the first place.

My worst expectations never happened.

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

I guess it's easier to think badly and then be pleasantly surprised.