#pessimism

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: … But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays. MRS CHEVELEY: Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses. SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: You prefer to be natural? MRS CHEVELEY: Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up. (Act I., lines 132-140) ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#pessimism #poses #nature

Stop moping, sule," galladon said with a grunt."It doesn't suit you-it takes a fine sense of pessimism to brood with any sort of respectability. ↗

— Brandon Sanderson

#elantris #pessimism #respect

And as we should all know by now, anytime you predict failure you have an excellent chance of being right. ↗

— Jeff Lindsay

#dexter #dexter-morgan #failure #morgan #pessimism

In securing the future of the planet, we secure happiness for ourselves. One of the aims of the Greens is to turn around the tide of pessimism amongst the young people of the world. ↗

— Bob Brown

#amongst #around #future #greens #happiness

When things are at their blackest, I say to myself, 'Cheer up, things could be worse.' And sure enough, they get worse. ↗

— Robert Lynn Asprin

#pessimism #humor

People who are too optimistic seem annoying. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what an optimist really is. An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that’s out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist. An idealist focuses only on the best aspects of all things (sometimes in detriment to reality); an optimist strives to find an effective solution. A pessimist sees limited or no choices in dark times; an optimist makes choices. When bobbing for apples, an idealist endlessly reaches for the best apple, a pessimist settles for the first one within reach, while an optimist drains the barrel, fishes out all the apples and makes pie. Annoying? Yes. But, oh-so tasty! ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#apple #apples #bobbing #choices #energetic

Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down. ↗

— John Kenneth Galbraith

#pessimism #age

Oh, that's typical of you modern young men; you've nibbled at science and it's made you ill, because you've not been able to satisfy that old craving for the absolute that you absorbed in your nurseries. You'd like science to give you all the answers at one go, whereas we're only just beginning to understand it, and it'll probably never be anything but an eternal quest. And so you repudiate science, you fall back on religion, and religion won't have you any more. Then you relapse into pessimism...Yes, it's the disease of our age, of the end of the century: you're all inverted Werthers. ↗

— Émile Zola

#religion #science #age

For better or worse, pessimism without compromise lacks public appeal. In all, the few who have gone to the pains of arguing for a sullen appraisal of life might as well never have been born. As history confirms, people will change their minds about almost anything, from which god they worship to how they style their hair. But when it comes to existential judgments, human beings in general have a unfalteringly good opinion of themselves and their condition in this world and are steadfastly confident they are not a collection of self-conscious nothings ↗

— Thomas Ligotti

#change

Life isn't all fricasseed frogs and eel pie. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#pessimism #puddleglum #humor