Realistic Quotes

We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves.

~ William Styron

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.

~ Bernard De Fontenelle

There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.

~ May Sarton

I hope to work support my children and die quietly without pain.

~ Sean Connery

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

~ J. A. Froude

Striving for excellence motivates you striving for perfection is demoralizing.

~ Dr. Harriet Braiker

It is enough that I am of value to somebody today.

~ Hugh Prather

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

~ Alexander The Great

To wish to act like angels while we are still in this world is nothing but folly.

~ Teresa Of Ávila

It isn't important to come out on top what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.

~ Bertolt Brecht

I long to accomplish a great and noble task but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

~ Helen Keller

I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something I can do.

~ Edward Everett Hale

Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections.

~ Saint Francis De Sales

Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers.

~ Johann Von Goethe

[Being a parent] is tough. If you just want a wonderful little creature to love you can get a puppy.

~ Barbara Walters

You never conquer a mountain. You stand on the summit a few moments then the wind blows your footprints away.

~ Arlene Blum

If we are to survive on this planet there must be compromises.

~ Storm Jameson

Real life is to most men ... a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.

~ Bertrand Russell

He who cannot do what he wants must make do with what he can.

~ Terence

What has always made a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven.

~ Friedrich Hölderlin

Good is not good where better is expected.

~ Thomas Fuller

Nobody has things just as he would like them. The thing to do is to make a success with what material I have. It is a sheer waste of time and soul-power to imagine what I would do if things were different. They are not different.

~ Dr. Frank Crane

People are lucky and unlucky ... according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

~ Samuel Butler

We must like what we have when we don't have what we like.

~ Roger De Rabutin

Better is the enemy of the good.

~ Voltaire

If you aspire to the highest place it is no disgrace to stop at the second or even the third place.

~ Cicero

Genius does what it must talent does what it can.

~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

A hero is a man who does what he can.

~ Romain Rolland

Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Results are what you expect consequences are what you get.

~ Anonymous

The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.

~ Ram Dass

To expect life to be tailored to our specifications is to invite frustration.

~ Anonymous

Each of us does in effect strike a series of deals or compromises between the wants and longings of the inner self and an outer environment that offers certain possibilities and sets certain limitations.

~ Maggie Scarf

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they might have been.

~ William Hazlitt

We do not write as we want but as we can.

~ W. Somerset Maugham

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction perhaps illusory that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.

~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

A body shouldn't heed what might be. He's got to do with what is.

~ Louis L'amour

The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it.

~ Jean Nicholas Grou

The greatest and most important problems in life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

~ Carl Jung

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.

~ Bernard M. Baruch