#pessimism

I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being me’s no joke. ↗

— John Barth

#paradox #pessimism

But suspense presupposes uncertainty. No matter how nightmarish the situation, real suspense is impossible when we know in advance that the protagonist will prevail (as we would if Woolrich had used series characters) or will be destroyed. This is why, despite his congenital pessimism, Woolrich manages any number of times to squeeze out an upbeat resolution. Precisely because we can never know whether a particular novel or story will be light or dark, allegre or noir, his work remains hauntingly suspenseful. ("Introduction") ↗

— Francis M. Nevins

#noir #noir-fiction #suspense #pessimism

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#humor #optimism #pessimism #funny

The only value of this world lay in its power - at certain times - to suggest another world. ↗

— Thomas Ligotti

#pessimism #vastarien #dreams

Those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#pessimism #skepticism #faith

You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down ↗

— Charles Chaplin

#optimism #pessimism #wonder #inspirational

Y al final dejó el horror de esta vida para entrar en el horror de la muerte. ↗

— Fernando Vallejo

#life #pessimism #death

You can do what you want. You can fly as far as you want, be as determined as you want, but sooner or later you have to ask yourself, or the person with you, ‘will there be everything we have hoped for?’ When you realise there’s so little hope left, it is like seeing an entire shadow all over the world. ↗

— Kyra Gregory

#inspirational #life-lessons #living #love #optimism

‎I was cursed with the pessimism of both the Russians and the Jews two of the gloomiest tribes in the world. Still if there wasn't greatness in me maybe I had the talent to recognize it in others even in the most irritating others. ↗

— David Benioff

#history #inspirational #jewish #jews #pessimism

Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin. ↗

— P.D. James

#pessimism #posterity #the-future #men