Vita Sackville-West Quotes

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

Behavioral psychologists have observed that wanting something has a much stronger emotional impact than the pleasure that comes once you have it, or the memory of having had it.

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.

When I was a kid, the high point of the day was to go to the mailbox and see if any mail came for me, and I'm still stuck in that mode.

Letters are expectation packaged in an envelope.

The half-hour of crowded anticipation, how fully it pays for the sterile hour that follows!

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

I'm actually not a particularly negative person, but I feel like most things are better when they're not actualized. The motivation that comes from wanting something is so much more driving of people than actually getting it.

I do a lot of things, and I'll get excited about them - maybe it'll be a song in a movie - and then it comes out, and you're like, 'Aww, that was cool, but it wasn't quite as big a deal as I thought it would be.'

There are perhaps only one or two things in the world which are not far more charming in desire than they are in possession.

expectation isn't the same as desire

Satisfaction, even after one has dined well, is not so interesting and eager a feeling as hunger.

Expectation ... quickens desire, while possession deadens it.

What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.

When my mother left me waiting for her, [she] established in me the habit of waiting and expectation which makes any present moment most significant for what it does not contain.

She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.

Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.

When you choose a show you really don't know where it's going to go. Sometimes things let you down and sometimes things just surprise you and fulfill you way more than you thought.

The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.

I do not think it worth while to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it.

Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing.

When I see a news story on a site, about a movie that I'm interested in, it's like the mouse going for the pleasure button and I click it. But then, when I see the movie, it's like, "Oh, I would have enjoyed the movie that much more, if I hadn't known that."

Then I thought, boy, isn't that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad.

The events we most desire do not happen; or, if they do, it is neither in the time nor in the circumstances when they would have given us extreme pleasure.

It just wasn't the fairy tale I had hoped for.