Character Quote by Charles Dickens

From the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair.

— Andre Gide

“At the same time, a faint sense of disappointment superimposed on an otherwise absorbing inner experience was in its way suitably Proustian too: a…

— Anthony Powell

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. [However disappointment…

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Just as there was a first instant when someone rubbed two sticks together to make a spark, there was a first time joy was…

— Nicole Krauss

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

— Samuel Johnson

I gather that the dopaminergic system in the reward centres of the brain respond even more vigorously to the expectation of reward than to…

— Semir Zeki

“On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly—a dejected disposition to…

— Charles Dickens

A lonely impulse of delight

— Anonymous

My desire was no less than before, you understand, but I no longer identified with the desire. Perhaps that is why taking them too…

— Tom Robbins

Desire and determination must overcome disappointment.

— Walter Alston

“I call it Joy. 'Animal-Land' was not imaginative. But certain other experiences were... The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I…

— C.S. Lewis

All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming…

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery