Daily Inspiration Quote by Mary Wesley

Wesley’s line has the calm, mischievous poise of someone who’s seen enough lives go sideways to stop pretending outcomes are moral rewards. The pivot from “great disappointment” to “enchanting surprises” isn’t just balance; it’s a worldview built on resisting certainty. “They may” does heavy lifting: it refuses prophecy, refuses the comforting lie that experience makes you clairvoyant. Instead, it frames anticipation as a risk you take voluntarily, not a mistake you get punished for.

The pronoun “They” is the slyest part. Wesley leaves the subject open - people, lovers, children, marriages, even whole phases of life - which makes the sentence portable across her fiction’s favorite terrain: intimate relationships where desire collides with social rules, class habits, and private eccentricities. That vagueness is also tactical. By not naming the object, she avoids sentimentality and keeps the reader complicit, forced to supply their own “they” from memory.

“Great disappointment” is blunt, almost adult-to-adult. No melodrama, just the frank scale of letdown that comes when you invest in a story about how things should go. Then “enchanting surprises” arrives with a faintly ironic sweetness. “Enchanting” hints at spellcraft: surprise as something that happens when control loosens, when you stop managing the narrative.

In context of Wesley’s sensibility - late-blooming literary success, sharp observations of domestic life, and a skepticism toward respectable facades - the line reads like permission. Not to hope blindly, but to stay porous. Disappointment is likely. Surprise is possible. The mature stance is keeping both in the frame without pretending you can choose which one you get.