Best 276 quotes in «anticipation quotes» category

... fearing the worst is worse than knowing the worst. So you eventually start wanting the worst possible thing to happen—finding your wife in bed with another man, or watching the worm finally come into the light. Until the worst happens, it always might happen. When it actually does happen? Now, at least, you know.

First, the wind would rumble in the distance like an approaching river, then he would see grass bend, pressed by a great invisible hand. The dull rumble would rise in pitch to a swishing, lashing exultation, causing stalks to lie flat against the ground while the tougher branches of shrubs held themselves up and shrieked their defiance in the gusts. Then the first drops, cold and heavy, would plummet from the sky and burst on the ground.

For wasn't it just a matter of time before we crossed each other's path? Despite all the hoopla, wasn't Manhattan just ten miles long and a mile or two wide? So in the days that followed, I kept an eye out, I looked for his figure on the street corners and in the coffee shops. I imagined coming home and having him emerge once more from the doorway across the street. But as the weeks turned into months, and the months into years, this sense of anticipation waned, and slowly but surely, I stopped expecting to see him in a crowd.

For wasn't it just a matter of time before we crossed each other's path? Despite all the hoopla, wasn't Manhattan just ten miles long and a mile or two wide? So in the days that followed, I kept en eye out, I looked for his figure on the street corners and in the coffee shops. I imagined coming home and having him emerge once more from the doorway across the street. But as the weeks turned into months, and the months into years, this sense of anticipation waned, and slowly but surely, I stopped expecting to see him in a crowd.

He'd passed "ready" about three exits back.

He took the necklace out of the box and carefully fastened it around her neck. Just like he'd imagined himself doing when he bought it. That might even be why he bought it - so he'd have this moment, under her hair. He ran his fingertips along the chain and settled the pendant on her throat.

Her fingertips reached to trace the damage, but he grasped her hand with his own. He leaned down, far enough that the dark ends of his hair brushed feather-light against her face, caught in her lashes.

He dropped his towel. He showed me what I had gotten myself into, what wanted to get into me.

I am often guilty of expecting the worst so as to avoid disappointment and welcome surprise.

Hope meets a dead end when the only chance in sight comes to naught.

I felt like I was an arrow, pulled back and ready to be launched into something big.

I found it impossible to tear myself away from my station and plunge into Hungary. I feel the same disability now; a momentary reluctance to lay hands on this particular fragment of the future; not out of fear, but because, within arm's reach and still intact, this future seemed, and still seems, so full of promised marvels.

If you come at four in the afternoon, I'll begin to be happy by three.

I never assume anything. I anticipate the possibilities and allow my imagination to create the future.

I love clean sheets. It's the simultaneous reminiscence of how they got dirtied to begin with, and hopeful anticipation of what stories they will live to tell next time you are standing fatefully in front of the washing machine.

I just hope — if he does come — it won't be some sort of horror show.

I knew how when you really liked a boy, all the little daily incidents shrank and slipped away. You carried around you anticipation of seeing him again and retrieved it when you felt bored or anxious, like a memory of something good.

I reached maturity under the impression that I was gathering the experience to order my life for happiness. Indeed, I accomplished the not unusual feat of solving each question in my mind long before it presented itself to me in life – and of being beaten and bewildered just the same.

It's as if I've stepped off the edge of a cliff, and even though my heart's in my mouth and my stomach is in knots, I'm the most excited I've ever been in my life. I'm totally enthralled by him. I want him, every part of him, and I desperately want him to feel the same way about me.

Ironically, just when she needed to get as much sleep as possible to prepare her for the next few days, her excited anticipation kept her awake long into the night.

It is sometimes but the mere hope for enjoyment that allows one to enjoy something, even when he is not really enjoying it at the moment.

I wait for this rare and fleeting event because I can't think of anything else worth waiting for.

I've never met a woman with divine sweetness in her eyes, or a delicacy in her smile that was so glorious, that it made my heart ascend to grace.

I wanted to preserve this moment, this slice of time when the night was cool and bright with reflected moonlight and the possibility of a kiss hung between us, full of unspent promise. Every event in my life after this would be different because I would have been kissed.

Most men are more interested in their erection, and what they will get afterwards to be focused enough to stay in tune with their woman’s needs while pleasuring them,” I explained. “Because women are stimulated so differently, and because their arousal and release begins at a different place to a man’s, the man needs to be totally committed and patient. This is not a miracle solution for millions of frustrated women – it’s just common sense. But with the right attitude a man who knows this technique has within him the ability to sexual enslave a woman. It’s been my experience that once a woman has enjoyed this kind of an orgasm, they become desperate for more of the same.

I was like a child leaving a gift unwrapped, the anticipation more exciting than the reality.

I wish the enemy would hesitate to shoot when they see me, but you can't expect humanitarianism on the battlefield.

I wish to go down under the waters— the cool, crystalline waters that I knew, where all that is, here, existing, is is only to be lost within the susurrations and the rumours of water and the evening star we wait for...

On this diet of expectation, he had fairly frenzied himself by the time he arrived.

One can talk good and shower down roses, but it's the receiver that has to walk through the thorns, and all its false expectations.

She understood perfectly that when the object of anticipation becomes paramount, trouble begins to lurk like a panther.

Our worst fears lie in anticipation.

People do this a lot. They don't seem to realise that the future is just like now, but in a little while, so they say they're going to do things in anticipation of some kind of seismic shift in their worldview that never actually materialises. But everything's not going to be made of leather, the world won't stink of sherbet. Tomorrow is not some mythical kingdom where you'll grow butterfly wings and be able to talk to animals - you'll basically feel pretty much the same way you do at the moment.

Talking is great, but don't ignore the value of listening. Pay attention to the words being spoken. Some people just love the sound of their own voice. And, when another person speaks, they are only anticipating to compete, challenge, or question what is being said. You can miss out on some important wisdom always running your mouth.

... since I was still, and must for long remain, in that period of life when one has not yet separated the fact of this sensual pleasure from the various women in whose company one has tasted it, when one has not reduced it to a general idea which makes one regard them thenceforward as the variable instruments of a pleasure that is always the same. Indeed, that pleasure does not exist, isolated and formulated in the consciousness, as the ultimate object with which one seeks a woman's company, or as the cause of the uneasiness which, in anticipation, one then feels. Hardly even does one think of oneself, but only how to escape from oneself.

So long awaited that its coming was a shock.

Sometimes what we lack is the thrill of anticipation or the delay of gratification. We enjoy things far more when we've really desired them but had to wait for them. The real value is found in our self control and patience, which allows us to delay gratification and build anticipation. Letting desire build is an abstract way to achieve balance and moderation in your life... Moderation just may be the answer to boredom - go figure! -- pg 145-146

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

Thank the past for all the lessons it taught you; anticipate the future for all the blessings it has in store for you.

The cherries on the ends of our cigarettes burned a bright orange against the surrounding shadows, like the stirring of embers, waiting for the phoenix to rise.

The lion crouches in the tall grass. The gazelle sniffs the air. The awful stillness before the strike.

The days passed in a dream. I pictured our reunion again and again, played it out in my mind over and over until I’d almost worn a groove in my thoughts, so deep that it seemed the only thing I could think of was our reunion. Anticipation is a gift. Perhaps there is none greater. Anticipation is born of hope. Indeed it is hope’s finest expression. In hope’s loss, however, is the greatest despair.

The history of the failure of war can almost be summed up in two words: too late.

There is a lot I could have anticipated but I live in present & there is no anticipation to it, I wish I had a time machine

The natural world is built upon common motifs and patterns. Recognizing patterns in nature creates a map for locating yourself in change, and anticipation what is yet to come.

The moment seemed endless, but it was probably only half that.

The space between fear and anticipation is a waking nightmare of recrimination and doubt. I'm perpetually trapped in the knowledge of my own inferiority.

What does the anticipation feel like? The sensation of staring into the void, the awareness of an end’s impending arrival? Burning and being extinguished simultaneously?

The trick here is, while the actual pleasure begins to recede and blur, we simultaneously bring the imagined pleasure more fully into focus. And when we do, even the memory of the pleasure becomes more and more heightened and imagined, thus anticipation is increased. This kind of anticipation is the spiritual equivalent of a Cheeto and we want them to eat the whole bag.

Thrills are much more about anticipation than action. An unfired bullet is more dangerous than one that has already met its target.