Disappointment quotes
1.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside disappointment — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. [However disappointment can always be removed if we remember it could have turned out worse.]"
"There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side."
"Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment"
"Of all the uses of adversity which are sweet, none are sweeter than those which grow out of disappointed love."
"A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even."
"Young alienation, disappointment and heartache is all a part of the first real growing up that we do."
"I would urge you to give priority to the search for God. Allow his spirit to permeate your being. ... If you do not have a deep and patient faith in God, you will be powerless to face the delays, disappointments, and vicissitudes that inevitably come."
"If we get setbacks and if something happens where the Civil Rights Bill is watered down, for instance, if the Negro feels that he can do nothing but move from one ghetto to another and one slum to another, the despair and the disappointment will be so great that it will be very difficult to keep the struggle disciplined and nonviolent."
"The biggest laughs are based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears."
"Create accomplishment from disappointments. Demoralization and disappointment are two of the surest going stones to achievement."
"After reaching season two on TV series, having done a film, and receiving acknowledgment in America, I feel like now whatever I do will be on me. My choices will be mine; my disappointments will be mine."
"Failure is not always a bad thing. You just have to be smart while you're in the middle of it. You're in the eye of the tornado of like disappointment to know that it's just a storm and it'll pass."
"I have all my ex-girlfriends lumped into one big girlfriend I called M.A.N.D.Y.: My, Another Neurotic Disappointment? Yes."
"Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us. Its appetite grows keener by indulgence and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires."
"When you are an actor, rejection and disappointment are an occupational hazard."
"The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it."
"Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise. Become a stranger to need of pity. Or if compassion be freely given out, take only enough. Stop short of the urge to plead, then purge away the need. Wish for nothing larger than your own small heart or greater than a star. Tame wild disappointment with caress, unmoved and cold. Make of it a parka for your soul. Discover the reason why so tiny human midget exists at all, so scared and so unwise. But expect nothing, live frugally on surprise."
"Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment."
"None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame."
"He who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any other effect than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation."
