A Disappointed Bridge Quotes

A pier is a disappointed bridge. ~ Julian Barnes

Stephen picks up on Armstrong's pier, and calls Kingstown pier "a disappointed bridge" (2.22). He's joking about the fact that Ireland wanted to be connected to continental Europe but ended up being extremely isolated. ~ James Joyce

I'm not particularly good at coping with it. I just cope. I just leave my brain at the door and just stand there. I can get the screaming more than I get the photo things. That's the worst, when you have this wall of photographers. I've never understood the logic in how they do it. Everybody shouts at the same time, and you're trying to do a logical thing, looking from the left to the right. And they almost always end up looking disappointed with you afterwards. ~ Robert Pattinson

The third day, he wasn't on the road. I wanted to feel relieved. Instead, I was disappointed. Until I got home. Mom had had the day off, the first in a long while. So, of course, she was home when I got there. And so was Joe. Sitting at our kitchen table. Wearing dress pants, a dress shirt. And a bow tie. Which, unbeknownst to me, turned out to be one of my greatest weaknesses. I ~ T.J. Klune

Wednesday, November 8th, 1893

Here I sit in the still winter night on the drifting ice-floe, and see only stars above me. Far off I see the threads of life twisting themselves into the intricate web which stretches unbroken from life's sweet morning dawn to the eternal death-stillness of ice. Thought follows thought - you pick the whole to pieces, and it seems so small - but high above all towers one form … Why did you take this voyage? … Could I do otherwise? Can the river arrest its course and run up hill? My plan has come to nothing. That palace of theory which I reared, in pride and self-confidence, high above all silly objections has fallen like a house of cards at the first breath of wind. Build up the most ingenious theories and you may be sure of one thing - that fact will defy them all. Was I so very sure? Yes, at times; but that was self-deception, intoxication. A secret doubt lurked behind all the reasoning. It seemed as though the longer I defended my theory, the nearer I came to doubting it. But no, there is not getting over the evidence of that Siberian drift-wood. But if, after all, we are on the wrong track, what then? Only disappointed human hopes, nothing more. And even if we perish, what will it matter in the endless cycles of eternity? ~ Fridtjof Nansen

breath,
life after seven decades plus three years
is a lot of breathing. seventy three years on this
earth is a lot of taking in and giving out, is a
life of coming from somewhere and for many a bunch
of going nowhere.

how do we celebrate a poet who has created
music with words for over fifty years, who has
showered magic on her people, who has redefined
poetry into a black world exactness
thereby giving the universe an insight into
darkroads?

just say she interprets beauty and wants to
give life, say she is patient with phoniness
and doesn't mind people calling her gwen or sister.
say she sees the genius in our children, is visionary
about possibilities, sees as clearly as ray charles and
stevie wonder, hears like determined elephants looking
for food. say that her touch is fine wood, her memory
is like an african roadmap detailing adventure and
clarity, yet returning to chicago's south evans
to record the journey. say her voice is majestic
and magnetic as she speaks in poetry, rhythms, song
and spirited trumpets, say she is dark skinned,
melanin rich, small-boned, hurricane-willed,
with a mind like a tornado redefining the landscape.

life after seven decades plus three years
is a lot of breathing.
gwendolyn, gwen, sister g has
not disappointed our expectations.
in the middle
Haki R. Madhubuti

I am never disappointed in Jobe Watson ... (who) is a man of the highest integrity, highest character and a great person for our footy club ... I have no concern for Jobe. ~ James Hird

Dad followed his I'm-So-Disappointed speech with a lecture on career opportunities.
"You're going to study literature and get a job doing what?" he said. "Literaturizing? ~ David Sedaris

So Dad was cured?" I don't know why I feel so disappointed. I didn't even remember him; he died of cancer when I was one.
"He was." A muscle twitches in my mom's jaw. "But there were times I felt ... There were times it seemed as though he could still feel it, just for a second. Maybe I only imagined it. It doesn't matter. I loved him anyway. He was very good to me."
reminds me that she is not just my mother, but a woman who has fought her whole life for something she has never truly experienced.
My dad was cured. And you can't love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.
It makes me ache for her, a feeling I hate and am somehow ashamed of. ~ Lauren Oliver

The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression that the two sovereigns were identical. It was described with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any art. But although its pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, its pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable. The stranger who looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to them. Nor when he met the people was he disappointed in this respect. The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard it not as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were not "artists," the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face -- that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with the wild, white beard and the wild, white hat -- that venerable humbug was not really a philosopher; but at least he was the cause of philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real ~ G.K. Chesterton

Her mother admonished through closed lips, the sound a mother can make mean anything from "pick up your socks" to "we are very disappointed you have murdered those orphans. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I played some shows, but I'm disappointed it didn't do better. I wish all my shows sold out, I wish I had sold more copies, I wish that a song was picked up to be in a TV show - whatever these little benchmarks are. You always want something more. ~ Eleanor Friedberger

Looks like everybody's asleep. Don't they keep a light on for you?"
"They probably figured I wouldn't be needing it."
"Sorry to disappoint your cousins."
"Not to mention me.I'm gravely disappointed at the way this evening has ended.You're going to ruin my reputation as a lady-killer." He flashed her one of his famous smiles.
He opened the door and climbed down.When he rounded the front of the truck, he paused beside her open window. "Good night,Marilee. I appreciate the ride home. I just wish you didn't have to make that long drive back to town all alone."
"I'll be fine.I've got my radio to keep me company."
"You could always coe inside and bunk in my room."
"What a generous offer.But once again, I'm afraid I'll have to decline,though I have to admit that I've had more fun in a few hours with you than I've had in years."
The minute the words were out of her mouth,she wanted to call them back. What was it about Wyatt that had her trusting him enough to reveal such a thing?
Though she barely knew him,he'd uncovered an inherent goodness in him that was rare and wonderful.
This had been one of the best nights of her life.
Still,he'd gone very quiet.As though digesting her words and searching for hidden meanings.
As he turned away she called boldly, "What? No kiss good night? Just because I refused to spend the night with you?"
He turned back with a smile, but it wasn't his usual silly grin.Instead, she noted,there w ~ R.C. Ryan

I'm not a prince. God, never hold me in that light. You'll only be disappointed." His touch gentles, even his gaze goes hard with intensity. "I'm not a good man, Avery. But I am the one who loves you. ~ Lara Adrian

You must not count much upon what I can do or learn in New York ... Everything there disappoints me but the crowd; rather, I was disappointed with the rest before I came. I have no eyes for their churches, and what else they find to brag of. Though I know but little about Boston, yet what attracts me, in a quiet way, seems much meaner and more pretending than there,
libraries, pictures, and faces in the street. You don't know where any respectability inhabits. ~ Henry David Thoreau

A pale, bored woman in white ankle-socks and a white tasselled beret was sitting on a bentwood chair at the corner entrance to the verandah of the writer's club, where there was an opening in the creeper-grown trellis. In front of her on a plain kitchen table lay a large book like a ledger, in which for no known reason the woman wrote the names of the people entering the restaurant. She stopped Koroviev and Behemoth.

'Your membership cards?' she said, staring in surprise at Koroviev's pince-nez, at Behemoth's Primus and grazed elbow.

'A thousand apologies, madam, but what membership cards?' asked Koroviev in astonishment.

'Are you writers?' asked the woman in return.

'Indubitably,' replied Koroviev with dignity.

'Where are your membership cards?' the woman repeated.

'Dear lady...' Koroviev began tenderly.

'I'm not a dear lady,' interrupted the woman.

'Oh, what a shame,' said Koroviev in a disappointed voice and went on: 'Well, if you don't want to be a dear lady, which would have been delightful, you have every right not to be. But look here - if you wanted to make sure that Dostoyevsky was a writer, would you really ask him for his membership card? Why, you only have to take any five pages of one of his novels and you won't need a membership card to convince you that the man's a writer. I don't suppose he ever had a membership card, anyway! What do you think?' said Koroviev, turning to ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist. ~ George Carlin

We don't all have Duracell Bunnies, you know?" he said, practically growling in her ear and making her core muscles clench, disappointed to have nothing to grip onto. "Some of us have to work out our...frustration...in other ways. ~ Allie A. Burrow

He's better-looking then the last vagabond I had to take in," Eddie said, standing and carrying empty bowls to the sink. "I'll give him that."
The insult slid off of Bobby like water. "So, you know, kid, according to thief culture, if you're going to court Kat, you now owe me two dozen goats."
"It's a dozen," Eddie corrected.
"Yeah, but Kat's worth two," Hamish said with a wink.
Through it all, Hale said nothing. Then, finally, he smiled. "I'm afraid I'm all out of goats at the moment, but I've got some ruby cuff links you can have."
"No." Bobby shook his head. "It's goats or nothing."
"Sorry, Kat." Hale shrugged, disappointed. "It was fun while it lasted."
"Don't look at me." Kat threw up her hands. "I'm officially ignoring all of you. ~ Ally Carter

He grunted and stirred, withdrawing from her. She only had a moment to be disappointed and then he flipped her to her back and rose over her, powerful and male. He casually parted her legs with his knees and thrust into her again, hot and hard.
She gasped at the swift invasion, the lovely feeling, and then his face was next to hers, his big palms cradling her cheeks.
"What I want," he drawled, "is ye. Nothin' else. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

I turn the water temperature up to a tiny bit hotter than is comfortable and stand there with it raining down over my head. I'm so achingly disappointed with myself. It's not that I don't love Oscar or that I don't want to marry him. It's nothing like that. It's just crushing to know that it's still there, like a muscle reflex.

That when someone says 'the man you've always dreamed of,' I think of Jack O'Mara. ~ Josie Silver

In our whole life melody the music is broken off here and there by rests, and we foolishly think we have come to the end of time. God sends a time of forced leisure, a time of sickness and disappointed plans, and makes a sudden pause in the hymns of our lives, and we lament that our voice must be silent and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of our Creator. Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the time and not be dismayed at the rests. If we look up, God will beat the time for us. ~ John Ruskin

I was pleasantly disappointed on entering Bohemia. Instead of a dull, uninteresting country, as I expected, it is a land full of the most lovely scenery. There is every thing which can gratify the eye - high blue mountains, valleys of the sweetest pastoral look and romantic old ruins. ~ Bayard Taylor

The human voice often shatters the beauty of the most tender passions; and when we left Simla next day, and Maureen and Sunil used all the stock cliches to express their love, I was a little disappointed. But the poetry of life was in their bodies, not in their tongues. ~ Ruskin Bond

Sorry, old girl," I said to [my bicycle] Gladys in the gray dishwater light of early morning, "but I have to leave you at home."
I could see that she was disappointed, even though she managed to put on a brave face.
"I need you to stay here as a decoy," I whispered. "When they see you leaning against the greenhouse, they'll think I'm still in bed."
Gladys brightened considerably at the thought of a conspiracy. [ ... ]
At the corner of the garden, I turned, and mouthed the words, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," and Gladys signaled that she wouldn't.
I was off like a shot. ~ Alan Bradley

An atheist is a disappointed true believer; he is an angry and hungry soul who has failed to find a real god to whom he can anchor his hope ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Well, The Year Is Finally Wrapped up, Looking Back, I Made Mistakes Along Just like The Next Man, As a Matter of Fact, I Have Wronged, Disappointed, Been Inpatient a Little Insecure, Been Out of Control and at Times Hard to Bare With.
My Prayer Dear Family and Friend is That You Forgive Me and Continue to Bare With Me as I Look Upon Myself and Work on Myself on The Next Coming Years, I Haven't Been The Best of Friends But Sure I Will As I Continue To Seek God's Enlightenment and Wisdom. I Love You All and Bless You In God's Name. ~ William Nsubuga

I'm disappointed, depressed, and demoralized. [ ... ] It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president. ~ William Kristol

Come on. I know you're not a stupid man.'
'I'm quite stupid. Ask anyone.'
'Finbar, are there superheroes living among us?'
Finbar snorted with laughter and Kenny started to feel a little thick. 'Superheroes? In tights and capes, flying around? If there were superheroes, Mr. Journalist, don't you think they'd be in New York or somewhere like that? There's not that many tall buildings for Spiderman to swing from in Dublin, you know? He'd have maybe two good swings and then hang there looking disappointed.'
'These people don't wear tights and capes, Finbar.'
'So they're naked superheroes? That's grand for now, but when the good weather is over they're going to regret it.'
'They look like us. They dress like us. But they're not like us. They're different.'
'You,' Finbar said. 'Are sounding very racist right now. ~ Derek Landy

Only those who do not expect anything are never disappointed. Only those who never try, never fail. Anyone who is currently achieving anything in life is simultaneously risking failure. It is always better to fail in doing something than to excel in doing nothing. A flawed diamond is more valuable than a perfect brick. People who have no failures also have few victories. ~ John Landis Mason

What kind of woman tells all her secrets?" my mother continued, flabbergasted and disappointed in me. "Especially anything that has to do with your body making babies! I know a woman who had no ovaries when she got married. Her husband found out only years later that they couldn't have children. The two of them are happy together still; they live in a big house, and have a cute dog. ~ Inna Swinton

What does this mean, then – I'm afraid? Scared of physical intimacy? No. I crave it, I dream about it. But for me there's no one. No one. Any guy, even imaginary, would just feel like second best. Second best to what? I don't even have an image of the perfect boyfriend. I just know he must exist. Because I have all these feelings – of love, longing, wanting to be touched, dreaming of being kissed – yet no one to focus them on. It makes me want to scream in frustration. It makes me feel like a freak. But worse than that, I feel so desperately disappointed. ~ Tabitha Suzuma

Get up! There is an old Japanese Proverb that says, "Fall seven times, stand up eight." In Proverbs 24:16 it says "Though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again". No matter your struggle today; find the courage to get up again. When you've disappointed others and yourself, take heart! There is forgiveness. God can and will restore you ...once more. When all you have left is Him; you have everything you need to start over again. ~ Jason Versey

My main disappointment was always that a book had to end. And then what? But I don't think I was ever disappointed by the books. I must have been what any author would consider an ideal reader. I felt every pain and pleasure suffered or enjoyed by all the characters. Oh, but I identified! ~ Eudora Welty

Man's happiness today consists in "having fun." Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and "taking in" commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies - all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones - and the eternally disappointed ones. ~ Erich Fromm

The human heart was created in the context of the perfection of the garden of Eden. But we don't live there now.
This is why our instincts keep firing off the lie that perfection is possible. We have pictures of perfection etched into the very DNA of our souls.
We chase it. We angle our cameras trying to catch it. We take twenty shots hoping to find it. And then even our good photos have to be color corrected, filtered, and cropped.
We do our very best to make others think this posted picture is the real deal. But we all know the truth. We all see the charade. We all know the emperor is naked. But there we are, clapping on the sidelines, following along, playing the game. Trying to believe that maybe, just maybe, if we get close to something that looks like perfection it will help us snag a little of its shine for ourselves.
But we know even the shiniest of things is headed in the direction of becoming dull. New will always eventually become old. Followers unfollow. People who lift us up will let us down. The most tightly knit aspects of life snag, unravel, and disintegrate before our very eyes.
And we are epically disappointed.
But we aren't talking about it. ~ Lysa TerKeurst

Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked his reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence. I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own great merit with steady consciousness, and waiting, without impatience, the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation. ~ Samuel Johnson

George W. Bush was a very bad president. The Iraq war was a big mistake. The U.S.A. needed a political change. I hoped Barack Obama could be a good president, but I'm disappointed. He hasn't done well. ~ Marc Rich

Don't start right off writing the 'Great American Novel', that's too much pressure and you'll get disappointed; start with porn, it's fun and a good way to get your feet wet. ~ Scavola