#simi

'The Dictator' lands somewhere between wan Mel Brooks and good Adam Sandler, whose 'You Don't Mess With the Zohan,' about an Israeli Special Forces soldier at a hair salon, manages to strike better contrasts with vaguely similar culture differences - it's a nuttier movie, too. ↗

— Wesley Morris

#adam #adam sandler #better #between #brooks

Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors? ↗

— Émile Zola

#pessimism #regrets #zola #dreams

One has to have the courage of one's pessimism. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#pessimism

Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#nails #similes #well-worn-phrases #christmas

I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who...prayed..with...unexpiated tears to 'dear,kind God! ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#pessimism #philosophic-reflection #religion #theology #life

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture. ↗

— Thomas Paine

#simile #stubbornness #scripture

Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed--sometimes it covers you just fine, and other times it leaves you cold and shaking; and worst of all, you never know which of the two it's going to be. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#uncertainty #sisters

Looking for an entirely reliable informant is like looking for a chaste mistress. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#information

What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide. "That is because I know what life is," said Martin. ↗

— Voltaire

#pessimism #satire #life

Life is a huge farce, and the advantage of possessing a sense of humour is that it enables one to defy fate with mocking laughter. ↗

— George R. Gissing

#life #pessimism #humor