#cynicism

We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs. ↗

— Kenneth Clark

#cynicism #destroy #disillusion #effectively #just

Our sole concern with the long dead is aesthetic ↗

— James Branch Cabell

#cynicism #dead #death #death

Life is serious but art is fun! ↗

— John Irving

#humour #real-life #art

Everyone else felt the need to assure me that Mother's death was part of God's plan. Exactly, I wanted to shout after reading this sentiment half a dozen times--- his plan is to kill us all, and if an innocent child dies in agony and a wicked man breathes his last at an advanced age in his sleep, who are we to call it injustice? ↗

— Valerie Martin

#death #god #grief #injustice #religion

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust. ↗

— Kingsley Amis

#history #love #pessimism #truth #art

A thousand years from now nobody is going to know that you or I ever lived. The cynic is right, but lazy. He says ‘You live, you die and nothing you do will ever make a difference.’ But as long as I live, I’m going to be like Beethoven and shake my fist at fate and try to do something for those who live here now and who knows how far into the future that will go. If I accomplish nothing more than making my arm sore, at least I will be satisfied that I have lived. ↗

— Jackson Burnett

#cynicism #determination #fate #future #life-and-living

Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn't the faintest idea what the heck is really going on. ↗

— Mike Royko

#humor #humor

The real inferiority of women to men is shown by their hate of paederasty, which they regard as unfair competition. Men on the other hand rather approve of Sapphism, as saving them trouble & expense. —Aleister Crowley. 1929-03-09 diary entry. ↗

— Lawrence Sutin

#cynicism #sex #life

Obviously, there’s no way of making money that doesn’t hurt somebody somewhere, but there are degrees of scale and immediacy. A merchant prince or a banker or a wealthy landowner isn’t generally required to take responsibility for the people he cheats, screws and starves; society couldn’t function if that were the case. ↗

— K.J. Parker

#economy #money #money

There was something in her eyes that made me trust her. Maybe it was because they held the same cynicism, the same world-weariness I saw in my own every morning when I looked at myself in the mirror. ↗

— Melika Dannese Lux

#kindred-spirits #olga-belododia #partners #realization #recognition