Disappointment quotes

Disappointment

1.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

1.2K quotes

Explore further

Browse quotes that often appear alongside disappointment — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

Quote collection

Disappointment quotes (page 16 of 61)

Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.

Oprah Winfrey Television host, producer, philanthropist
Disappointment

"Have a similar outlook as a monarch. A ruler is not reluctant to come up short. Disappointment is an alternate steppingstone to significance."

Read quote 3 likes
Napoleon Hill Author, Motivational Speaker
Disappointment

"Napoleon Hill saw this law of transmutation as the seed of equivalent benefit: With every disappointment, heartbreak, or failure, there exists an equal (usually greater) positive benefit."

Read quote 3 likes
Jack Nicholson Actor, Filmmaker
Disappointment

"In the real world there's an after-effect of disappointment if you lose an argument. But if, to begin with, you're set up not to have this particular autonomy, then you're not disappointed."

Read quote 3 likes
Neil deGrasse Tyson Astrophysicist, Science Communicator
Disappointment

"If your ego starts out, "I am important, I am big, I am special," you're in for some disappointments when you look around at what we've discovered about the universe. No, you're not big. No, you're not. You're small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that's limited on Earth."

Read quote 3 likes
Marcel Proust Novelist
Disappointment

"Poets claim that we recapture for a moment the self that we were long ago when we enter some house or garden in which we used to live in our youth. But these are most hazardous pilgrimages, which end as often in disappointment as in success. It is in ourselves that we should rather seek to find those fixed places, contemporaneous with different years."

Read quote 3 likes
Lauren Graham Actress
Disappointment

"It's core to my beliefs now: Sometimes in being given a challenge, you're actually being given a real opportunity, and a lot of that is how you handle it. Do you feel sorry for yourself or do you think, All right! I'll see what I can make out of this? I've had that over and over. If I hang out in the disappointment, I'll just be disappointed all the time."

Read quote 3 likes
Italo Calvino Writer
Disappointment

"What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious."

Read quote 3 likes
Nick Frost Actor
Disappointment

"One of my biggest disappointments is watching the trailer for the second Lord of the Rings film and having Gandalf in it. Why? He died in the first one, why give it away in the trailer just to try and sell 1000 more seats? It's daft."

Read quote 3 likes
Margaret Thatcher Politician
Disappointment

"It is sometimes said that because of our past we, as a people, expect too much and set our sights too high. That is not the way I see it. Rather it seems to me that throughout my life in politics our ambitions have steadily shrunk. Our response to disappointment has not been to lengthen our stride but to shorten the distance to be covered. But with confidence in ourselves and in our future what a nation we could be!"

Read quote 3 likes
Helen Keller Author, Activist
Disappointment

"To keep on trying in spite of disappointment and failure is the only way to keep young and brave. Failures become victories if they make us wise-hearted."

Read quote 3 likes
George Orwell Writer, Journalist
Disappointment

"Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse--hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life."

Read quote 3 likes
George R. R. Martin Novelist, Screenwriter
Disappointment

"In my 10 years that I spent out in TV and film, I had my shares of frustrations and annoyances and disappointments, but also I think it was, in the long run, it was very good for me in a whole bunch of ways."

Read quote 3 likes
Henry David Thoreau Writer, Philosopher
Disappointment

"If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. [Like they say, 'Every cloud has a silver lining'...so if you are patient, expect, anticipate, look and work for some good to come from the cloud, you will be rewarded eventually!]"

Read quote 3 likes