Seneca the Younger Quotes

We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears.

He who awaits much can expect little.

Words can't describe how one would feel in that moment after doing a test for something you really want but in your heart you don't think you have a chance of getting.

Do we not all spend the greater part of our lives under the shadow of an event that has not yet come to pass?

Would it be possible that I should not in any degree succeed? I can scarcely think so. Ah delusive hope, how much further wilt thou lead me?

Suspense is worse than disappointment.

We promise according to our hopes; we fulfill according to our fears.

Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.

One of the best lessons I've ever gotten in my life is to anticipate nothing because it's always worse in your head than it really is.

I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected — an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows.

What is there so fearful as the expectation of evil tidings delayed? ... Misery is a more welcome visitant when she comes in her darkest guise and wraps us in perpetual black, for then the heart no longer sickens with disappointed hope.

Expectations destroy our peace of mind. They are future disappointments, planned out in advance.

Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

Whatever you think this is going to be like," she whispers, "it's going to be worse.

of all the foolish Fears of Humankind, Fear of the Future is by far the most foolish.

no hour arrives so soon as the one we dread.

An expectation was there, mixed in with so many other emotions - excitement, resignation, hesitation, confusion, fear - that would well up then wither on the vine. You're optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does.

The night before the Nobel announcement every year, I've gone to bed feeling quite anxious. I was optimistic, and also I knew it might never happen.

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

When people get disillusioned and get insecure and content about the future, they tend to brood about what might have been.

The misfortunes hardest to bear are these which never came.

There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.

I don't know if I can prepare for what's to come because I don't know what will.

There's always a bit of nerves that come with expectations and new situations.

The joys we expect are not so bright, nor the troubles so dark as we fancy they will be.