#simi

I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good. ↗

— John Corey Whaley

#outlook #pessimism #where-things-come-back #life

We've got rights the right to starve We've got jobs waiting for work We're all brothers lousy and dirty We're all free and equal to die like dogs ↗

— Peter Weiss

#equality

Your life can be different, Young Ju. Study and be strong. In America, women have choices. ↗

— An Na

#assimilation #education #gender-equality #korean #education

Sex is like air; it's not important unless you aren't getting any. ↗

— John Callahan

#humor #sex #simile #funny

Though nihilism has been relentlessly criticized for overemphasizing the dark side of human experience, it might be equally true that this overemphasis represents a needed counterbalance to shallow optimism and arrogant confidence in human power. Nihilism reminds us that we are not gods, and that despite all of the accomplishments and wonders of civilization, humans cannot alter the fact that they possess only a finite amount of mastery and control over their own destinies. ↗

— John Marmysz

#optimism #pessimism #equality

Our experience of the governments of the world, our knowledge of the weapons at their disposal, and our awareness of our own limitations justify pessimism. But some mysterious factor deep in the human psyche has produced a countervailing conviction that educating, organizing, uniting, and acting will make a difference. ↗

— David T. Dellinger

#pessimism #political #resistance #education

Faith is a luxury for those who are able to ignore what the rest of us must see every day. Pessimism, distrust, and irony are the holy trinity of my religion, irony in particular. ↗

— Brando Skyhorse

#faith #irony #pessimism #religion #trinity

I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#optimism #pessimism #faith

The time of minor poets is coming. Good-by Whitman, Dickinson, Frost. Welcome you whose fame will never reach beyond your closest family, and perhaps one or two good friends gathered after dinner over a jug of fierce red wine… While the children are falling asleep and complaining about the noise you’re making as you rummage through the closets for your old poems, afraid your wife might’ve thrown them out with last spring’s cleaning. It’s snowing, says someone who has peeked into the dark night, and then he, too, turns toward you as you prepare yourself to read, in a manner somewhat theatrical and with a face turning red, the long rambling love poem whose final stanza (unknown to you) is hopelessly missing. ↗

— Charles Simic

#the-world-doesn-t-end #family

To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its ancestors. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#ancestors #assimilation #family #family-line #heritage