Top 25 Disappointment Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”

— Maya Angelou

Also featured in: Courage Quotes, Life Quotes, Failure Quotes, Positive Motivational Quotes

2. “The world is not a wish-granting factory.”

— John Green

Also featured in: Deep Quotes About Life, Fiction Quotes, Expectations Quotes, Quotes About Reality

3. “Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”

— Oscar Wilde

Also featured in: Witty Quotes

4. “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

— Randy Pausch

Also featured in: Experience Quotes, Clever Quotes, Investing Quotes

5. “Disappointment is the gap that exists between expectation and reality.”

— John C. Maxwell

Also featured in: Expectations Quotes, Quotes About Reality

6. “Expect nothing and accept everything and you will never be disappointed.”

— Laurence Overmire

Also featured in: Short Positive Quotes, Acceptance Quotes, Expectations Quotes

7. “That’s why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

— George Carlin

Also featured in: Funny Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Sarcastic Quotes, Witty Quotes

8. “No one knows my Struggle, they only see the Trouble. Not knowing it’s hard to carry on when, No one loves you.”

— Tupac Shakur

Also featured in: Struggle Quotes, Love You Quotes, Depression Quotes, Pain Quotes

9. “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

— Oscar Wilde

Also featured in: Desire Quotes, Different Quotes

10. “To the people I forgot, you weren’t on my mind for some reason and you probably don’t deserve any thanks anyway.”

— Eminem

Also featured in: Sarcastic Quotes, Haters Quotes, Toxic People Quotes

11. “If you expect nothing, you can never be disappointed.”

— Tonya Hurley

Also featured in: Expectations Quotes

12. “I can't set my hopes too high, because every hello ends with a goodbye.”

— Demi Lovato

Also featured in: Depressing Quotes, Loss Quotes, Sadness Quotes, Heartbreak Quotes

13. “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”

— L.M. Montgomery

Also featured in: Depressing Quotes, Loss Quotes, Sadness Quotes

14. “You may have failed, but you are not a failure. That’s what you did. That’s not who you are.”

— Joel Osteen

Also featured in: Self-Love Quotes, Sunday Quotes, Recovery Quotes

15. “The loneliest moment in life is when you have just experienced that which you thought would deliver the ultimate, and it has just let you down.”

— Ravi Zacharias

Also featured in: Depressing Quotes, Loneliness Quotes

16. “How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Also featured in: Romantic Quotes, Sorrow Quotes, Broken Heart Quotes, Rejection Quotes

17. “Politicians promise you heaven before an election and give you hell after.”

— Emma Goldman

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Liars Quotes, Corruption Quotes, Heaven Quotes

18. “I’m not crying because of you; you’re not worth it. I’m crying because my delusion of who you were was shattered by the truth of who you are.”

— Steve Maraboli

Also featured in: Sorrow Quotes, Broken Heart Quotes, Toxic People Quotes, Liars Quotes

19. “I’ve tried so hard and got so far but in the end, it doesn’t even matter.”

— Chester Bennington

Also featured in: Life is Hard Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life, Depression Quotes, Demotivational Quotes

20. “Life is a useless passion.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Sad Quotes About Life, Existentialism Quotes

21. “Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.”

— Victor Hugo

Also featured in: Life is Hard Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life, Sorrow Quotes

22. “Human life must be some form of mistake.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Also featured in: Depressing Quotes, Sad Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life, Depression Quotes

23. “I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.”

— Victor Hugo

Also featured in: Life is Hard Quotes, Different Quotes, Depression Quotes, Longing Quotes

24. “You must learn to discipline your disappointment.”

— Jim Rohn

25. “You can’t always get what you want.”

— Mick Jagger

26. “No expectations mean there is no risk of disappointment.”

— Jude Morgan

Also featured in: Expectations Quotes

27. “I can’t get any satisfaction.”

— Mick Jagger

Also featured in: Longing Quotes, Quotes About Songs