realistic

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you're a vegetarian.

There are philosophies which are unendurable not because men are cowards but because they are men.

If you expect perfection from other people your whole life is a series of disappointments grumbling and complaints. If on the contrary you pitch your expectations low taking folks as the inefficient creatures which they are you are frequently surprised by having them perform better than you had hoped.

Marriage is not just spiritual communion and passionate embraces marriage is also three meals a day sharing the workload and remembering to carry out the trash.

A pint can't hold a quart-if it holds a pint it is doing all that can be expected of it.

Expect nothing and life will be velvet.

Never let life's hardships disturb you ... no one can avoid problems not even saints or sages.

What had seemed easy in imagination was rather hard in reality.

No one from the beginning of time has had security.

There is no such thing as something for nothing.

He that will have a perfect brother must resign himself to remaining brotherless.

Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence with the certainty of losing it at last.

When nobody around you seems to measure up it's time to check your yardstick.

To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.

We [Americans] cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and that at the eleventh hour something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens.

Truth has rough flavors if we bite it through.

You can't move so fast that you try to change [a situation] faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.