pessimism

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
61ed608	We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.	optimism inspirational perception pessimism	Oscar Wilde
ac6ba4e	You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down	wonder optimism inspirational pessimism	Charlie Chaplin
139c1f3	I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.	perseverance sorrow life weeping pessimism	Charles Bukowski
67aeaf4	I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.	science optimism intelligence pessimism will	Antonio Gramsci
f6ff96a	I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.	humor pessimism	P. G. Wodehouse
a07adb8	The world's bumper sticker reads: Life sucks, and then you die. Perhaps Christian bumper stickers should read: Life sucks, but then you find hope and you can't wait to die.	christianity positive-thinking pessimism	Ted Dekker
6df908f	If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?	death life pessimism	Arthur Schopenhauer
f739db3	This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.	gazebo pessimism	Raymond Carver
2cf244a	Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.	thoughts darkness optimism subconscious perspective perception pessimism human-nature	Charles Dickens
07d121d	POZZO: I am blind. (Silence.) ESTRAGON: Perhaps he can see into the future.	future funny humor pessimism	Samuel Beckett
a95c595	"What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide. "That is because I know what life is," said Martin."	satire pessimism	Voltaire
256ba07	"Fuck you! I hope you die!" "Everybody Dies," I said. "So fuck you."	truth pessimism	Lawrence Block
3aefbd2	You predicted quick victory. Now it's going to get hopelessly complicated. Jesus, don't you know any better than that by now?	optimism pessimism thomas-raith	Jim Butcher
d4ad157	Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.	jealousy pessimism	William Shakespeare
cc01aba	Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.	self-fulfilling-prophecy inaction pessimism	Howard Zinn
70e12cb	I'm beginning to think the only choice anyone has in life is between either a bad choice or a worse one.	pessimism	Sherrilyn Kenyon
94a0341	Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.	pessimism	Charlotte Brontë
852c559	If you think someone is seriously on the prod for your ass, it keeps you awake.	pessimism	Richard Bachman Stephen King
91682f9	I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane. It never is, sir. Lane, you're a perfect pessimist. I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.	pessimism	Oscar Wilde
cfb215c	Once is never. Twice is always.	wisdom twice quip once pessimism	James S.A. Corey
f52cc96	That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war.	story history inspirational ww2 russian world-war-ii pessimism jews russia jewish	David Benioff
c17cb2c	I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him-only to bring him to life.	life pessimism	G.K. Chesterton
3835366	I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.	optimism pessimism	G.K. Chesterton
6bbc9ff	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.	the-future pessimism posterity	P.D. James
aa1c096	"You always think everything is so easy," Royce replied, wiping his eyes. "I'm just a glass-half-full kinda guy. How's your glass looking these days?" "I have no idea. I'm still trying to get over the sheer size of it."	theft-of-swords pessimism	Michael J. Sullivan
20b8f10	However, the struggle with that sentinel is, as a rule, not so hard as it may seem from a long way off, mainly in consequence of the antagonism between the ills of the body and the ills of the mind. If we are in great bodily pain, or the pain lasts a long time, we become indifferent to other troubles; all we think about is to get well. In the same way great mental suffering makes us insensible to bodily pain; we despise it; nay, if it should outweigh the other, it distracts our thoughts, and we welcome it as a pause in mental suffering. It is this feeling that makes suicide easy; for the bodily pain that accompanies it loses all significance in the eyes of one who is tortured by an excess of mental suffering. This is especially evident in the case of those who are driven to suicide by some purely morbid and exaggerated ill-humor. No special effort to overcome their feelings is necessary, nor do such people require to be worked up in order to take the step; but as soon as the keeper into whose charge they are given leaves them for a couple of minutes, they quickly bring their life to an end. When, in some dreadful and ghastly dream, we reach the moment of greatest horror, it awakes us; thereby banishing all the hideous shapes that were born of the night. And life is a dream: when the moment of greatest horror compels us to break it off, the same thing happens.	suicide studies-in-pessimism schopenhauer pessimism	Arthur Schopenhauer
16d61a6	It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.	intelligent-life pessimism	P.D. James
43b4e5f	There came an awful day when I picked up the phone and knew at once, as one does with some old friends even before they speak, that it was Edward. He sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a well. I still thank my stars that I didn't say what I nearly said, because the good professor's phone pals were used to cheering or teasing him out of bouts of pessimism and insecurity when he would sometimes say ridiculous things like: 'I hope you don't mind being disturbed by some mere wog and upstart.' The remedy for this was not to indulge it but to reply with bracing and satirical stuff which would soon get the gurgling laugh back into his throat. But I'm glad I didn't say, 'What, Edward, splashing about again in the waters of self-pity?' because this time he was calling to tell me that he had contracted a rare strain of leukemia. Not at all untypically, he used the occasion to remind me that it was very important always to make and keep regular appointments with one's physician.	friends friendship leukemia self-pity edward-said pessimism insecurity	Christopher Hitchens
d88654b	These days, there are angry ghosts all around us, dead from wars, sickness, starvation--and nobody cares. So you say you're under a curse? Well, so what? So's the whole damned world.	pessimism ghosts	Hayao Miyazaki
fc5d78c	It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.	optimism hope anxiety drive americans atheism pessimism disappointment	Alain de Botton
ed77377	Hatred becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation.	hatred pessimism	Victor Hugo
368e934	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.	pessimism	John Kenneth Galbraith
c7e7953	Some things are hard to imagine. Can you conceive of excessive contentment, for example? Or an over pleasant evening? Too much happiness?	happiness pessimism	Alan Moore
fa837b5	The mind is an intricate mechanism that can be run on the fuels of both victory and defeatism.	optimism emotions thinking pessimism	Pat Conroy
f3a3c01	Human beings shouldn't have to enter such doors, shouldn't have to stay behind them. No moon ever entered there, no stars, no anything at all. They were worse than the grave, for in the grave is an absence of consciousness. And God, she reflected, ordered the grave for all of us; but God didn't order such burrows in a third-class New York City Hotel.	noir pessimism new-york	Cornell Woolrich
00d8b46	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!	religion philosophic-reflection theology pessimism	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4284d02	The difference was not that one was a pessimist and the other an optimist, it was that one's pessimism had led to an ethos of fear, and the other's pessimism had led to a noisy, fractious disdain for Everything-That-Was. One shrank, the other flailed. One toed the line, the other crossed it out. Much of the time they were at loggerheads, and because Willy found it so easy to shock his mother, he rarely wasted an opportunity to provoke an argument. If only she'd the wit to back off a little, he probably wouldn't have been so insistent about making his points. Her antagonism inspired him, pushed him into ever more extreme positions, and by the time he was ready to leave the house and go off to college, he had indelibly cast himself in his chosen role: as malcontent, as rebel, as outlaw poet prowling the gutters of a ruined world.	rebellion optimism son pessimism	Paul Auster
fc6862d	The world is full of dead optimists.	pessimism	Libba Bray
b4c65f6	Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life---and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good=tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we're sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion---to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it.	joy optimism pessimism	Gretchen Rubin
94404d1	"The author says people are guilty of "wrecking the present because the future was bound to be a wreck."	pessimism sin	T.H. White
4945931	If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.	government pessimism	Henry David Thoreau
8684d54	No one dies halfway through the last act. - Heinrich Ibsen	sovereignty-of-god grace-of-god pessimism	Harold Bloom
ee5f42e	Almost anything at all can be transmuted into a labyrinth.	frustrations obstacles pessimism	Harold Bloom
f1b6af4	Sombres, dites-vous? Mais posez-vous la question docteur : pourquoi tous les grands philosophes sont-ils sombres? Demandez-vous qui sont les gens satisfaits, rassures et eternellement joyeux! Laissez-moi vous donner la reponse : -- la populace et les enfants!	somber nietzsche french pessimism	Irvin D. Yalom
5d880c9	"Magical?" "Non." "Magnificent?" "Don't be absurd." "Less bleak than anything else we have seen?" "Now truly you are speaking French," the ambassador said approvingly."	pessimism	Neal Stephenson
5d27054	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.	skepticism pessimism	G.K. Chesterton
06bd501	Fritz had to stop himself from interrupting when Karl spoke about the difficulty of working. Stories are just as hard as clocks to put together, and they can go wrong just as easily--as we shall soon see with Fritz's own story in a page or two. Still, Fritz was an optimist, and Karl was a pessimist, and that makes all the difference in the world.	writing optimism clockwork working pessimism difficulties	Philip Pullman
3af5786	Happiness made Marv anxious because he knew it didn't last. But happiness destroyed was worth wrapping your arms around because it always hugged you back.	pessimism	Dennis Lehane
587585c	The world is perhaps ultimately to be defined as a place of suffering. Man is a suffering animal, subject to ceaseless anxiety and pain and fear.	suffering the-human-condition the-black-prince iris-murdoch worldview nihilism the-world pessimism	Iris Murdoch
417fd23	Todos nos crescemos vendo os mesmos programas de TV. E como se tivessemos os mesmos implantes artificiais de memoria. Nao nos recordamos de quase nada da nossa verdadeira infancia, mas nos lembramos de tudo o que aconteceu com as mesmas familias dos seriados de comedia. Temos os mesmos objetivos basicos. Todos nos temos os mesmos medos.	pessimism	Chuck Palahniuk
38af6e7	When a kingdom rests on it, I always expect difficulty. Then, if there is none, no blame. But if there is, one is prepared.	optimism pessimism planning pragmatism strategy	Geraldine Brooks
6ecb9f8	Statistically it was not greatly different than it had been for previous generations, but anecdotally it had become so prominent that every problem was noticed and remarked. The cognitive error called ease of representation thrust them into a space where every problem they witnessed convinced them they were in an unprecedented colapse. They were getting depressed.	science science-fiction society pessimism	Kim Stanley Robinson
95e0aa9	"I spoke one time at the Library of Congress, in 1972, or so. A man stood up in the middle of the audience, when I was about halfway through, and he said, "What right have you, as leader of America's young people, to make those people so cynical and pessimistic?" I had no good answer, so I left the stage. Talk about profiles in courage!"	youth leadership pessimism	Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

optimism inspirational perception pessimism

Oscar Wilde

ac6ba4e

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

wonder optimism inspirational pessimism

Charlie Chaplin

139c1f3

I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.

perseverance sorrow life weeping pessimism

Charles Bukowski

67aeaf4

I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.

science optimism intelligence pessimism will

Antonio Gramsci

f6ff96a

I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.

humor pessimism

P. G. Wodehouse

a07adb8

The world's bumper sticker reads: Life sucks, and then you die. Perhaps Christian bumper stickers should read: Life sucks, but then you find hope and you can't wait to die.

christianity positive-thinking pessimism

Ted Dekker

6df908f

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?

death life pessimism

Arthur Schopenhauer

f739db3

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.

gazebo pessimism

Raymond Carver

2cf244a

Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.

thoughts darkness optimism subconscious perspective perception pessimism human-nature

Charles Dickens

07d121d

POZZO: I am blind. (Silence.) ESTRAGON: Perhaps he can see into the future.

future funny humor pessimism

Samuel Beckett

a95c595

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

satire pessimism

Voltaire

256ba07

"Fuck you! I hope you die!" "Everybody Dies," I said. "So fuck you."

truth pessimism

Lawrence Block

3aefbd2

You predicted quick victory. Now it's going to get hopelessly complicated. Jesus, don't you know any better than that by now?

optimism pessimism thomas-raith

Jim Butcher

d4ad157

Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.

jealousy pessimism

William Shakespeare

cc01aba

Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.

self-fulfilling-prophecy inaction pessimism

Howard Zinn

70e12cb

I'm beginning to think the only choice anyone has in life is between either a bad choice or a worse one.

pessimism

Sherrilyn Kenyon

94a0341

Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.

pessimism

Charlotte Brontë

852c559

If you think someone is seriously on the prod for your ass, it keeps you awake.

pessimism

Richard Bachman Stephen King

91682f9

I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane. It never is, sir. Lane, you're a perfect pessimist. I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.

pessimism

Oscar Wilde

cfb215c

Once is never. Twice is always.

wisdom twice quip once pessimism

James S.A. Corey

f52cc96

That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war.

story history inspirational ww2 russian world-war-ii pessimism jews russia jewish

David Benioff

c17cb2c

I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him-only to bring him to life.

life pessimism

G.K. Chesterton

3835366

I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.

optimism pessimism

G.K. Chesterton

6bbc9ff

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.

the-future pessimism posterity

P.D. James

aa1c096

"You always think everything is so easy," Royce replied, wiping his eyes. "I'm just a glass-half-full kinda guy. How's your glass looking these days?" "I have no idea. I'm still trying to get over the sheer size of it."

theft-of-swords pessimism

Michael J. Sullivan

20b8f10

However, the struggle with that sentinel is, as a rule, not so hard as it may seem from a long way off, mainly in consequence of the antagonism between the ills of the body and the ills of the mind. If we are in great bodily pain, or the pain lasts a long time, we become indifferent to other troubles; all we think about is to get well. In the same way great mental suffering makes us insensible to bodily pain; we despise it; nay, if it should outweigh the other, it distracts our thoughts, and we welcome it as a pause in mental suffering. It is this feeling that makes suicide easy; for the bodily pain that accompanies it loses all significance in the eyes of one who is tortured by an excess of mental suffering. This is especially evident in the case of those who are driven to suicide by some purely morbid and exaggerated ill-humor. No special effort to overcome their feelings is necessary, nor do such people require to be worked up in order to take the step; but as soon as the keeper into whose charge they are given leaves them for a couple of minutes, they quickly bring their life to an end. When, in some dreadful and ghastly dream, we reach the moment of greatest horror, it awakes us; thereby banishing all the hideous shapes that were born of the night. And life is a dream: when the moment of greatest horror compels us to break it off, the same thing happens.

suicide studies-in-pessimism schopenhauer pessimism

Arthur Schopenhauer

16d61a6

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.

intelligent-life pessimism

P.D. James

43b4e5f

There came an awful day when I picked up the phone and knew at once, as one does with some old friends even before they speak, that it was Edward. He sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a well. I still thank my stars that I didn't say what I nearly said, because the good professor's phone pals were used to cheering or teasing him out of bouts of pessimism and insecurity when he would sometimes say ridiculous things like: 'I hope you don't mind being disturbed by some mere wog and upstart.' The remedy for this was not to indulge it but to reply with bracing and satirical stuff which would soon get the gurgling laugh back into his throat. But I'm glad I didn't say, 'What, Edward, splashing about again in the waters of self-pity?' because this time he was calling to tell me that he had contracted a rare strain of leukemia. Not at all untypically, he used the occasion to remind me that it was very important always to make and keep regular appointments with one's physician.

friends friendship leukemia self-pity edward-said pessimism insecurity

Christopher Hitchens

d88654b

These days, there are angry ghosts all around us, dead from wars, sickness, starvation--and nobody cares. So you say you're under a curse? Well, so what? So's the whole damned world.

pessimism ghosts

Hayao Miyazaki

fc5d78c

It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.

optimism hope anxiety drive americans atheism pessimism disappointment

Alain de Botton

ed77377

Hatred becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation.

hatred pessimism

Victor Hugo

368e934

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.

pessimism

John Kenneth Galbraith

c7e7953

Some things are hard to imagine. Can you conceive of excessive contentment, for example? Or an over pleasant evening? Too much happiness?

happiness pessimism

Alan Moore

fa837b5

The mind is an intricate mechanism that can be run on the fuels of both victory and defeatism.

optimism emotions thinking pessimism

Pat Conroy

f3a3c01

Human beings shouldn't have to enter such doors, shouldn't have to stay behind them. No moon ever entered there, no stars, no anything at all. They were worse than the grave, for in the grave is an absence of consciousness. And God, she reflected, ordered the grave for all of us; but God didn't order such burrows in a third-class New York City Hotel.

noir pessimism new-york

Cornell Woolrich

00d8b46

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!

religion philosophic-reflection theology pessimism

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

4284d02

The difference was not that one was a pessimist and the other an optimist, it was that one's pessimism had led to an ethos of fear, and the other's pessimism had led to a noisy, fractious disdain for Everything-That-Was. One shrank, the other flailed. One toed the line, the other crossed it out. Much of the time they were at loggerheads, and because Willy found it so easy to shock his mother, he rarely wasted an opportunity to provoke an argument. If only she'd the wit to back off a little, he probably wouldn't have been so insistent about making his points. Her antagonism inspired him, pushed him into ever more extreme positions, and by the time he was ready to leave the house and go off to college, he had indelibly cast himself in his chosen role: as malcontent, as rebel, as outlaw poet prowling the gutters of a ruined world.

rebellion optimism son pessimism

Paul Auster

fc6862d

The world is full of dead optimists.

pessimism

Libba Bray

b4c65f6

Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life---and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good=tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we're sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion---to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it.

joy optimism pessimism

Gretchen Rubin

94404d1

"The author says people are guilty of "wrecking the present because the future was bound to be a wreck."

pessimism sin

T.H. White

4945931

If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.

government pessimism

Henry David Thoreau

8684d54

No one dies halfway through the last act. - Heinrich Ibsen

sovereignty-of-god grace-of-god pessimism

Harold Bloom

ee5f42e

Almost anything at all can be transmuted into a labyrinth.

frustrations obstacles pessimism

Harold Bloom

f1b6af4

Sombres, dites-vous? Mais posez-vous la question docteur : pourquoi tous les grands philosophes sont-ils sombres? Demandez-vous qui sont les gens satisfaits, rassures et eternellement joyeux! Laissez-moi vous donner la reponse : -- la populace et les enfants!

somber nietzsche french pessimism

Irvin D. Yalom

5d880c9

"Magical?" "Non." "Magnificent?" "Don't be absurd." "Less bleak than anything else we have seen?" "Now truly you are speaking French," the ambassador said approvingly."

pessimism

Neal Stephenson

5d27054

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.

skepticism pessimism

G.K. Chesterton

06bd501

Fritz had to stop himself from interrupting when Karl spoke about the difficulty of working. Stories are just as hard as clocks to put together, and they can go wrong just as easily--as we shall soon see with Fritz's own story in a page or two. Still, Fritz was an optimist, and Karl was a pessimist, and that makes all the difference in the world.

writing optimism clockwork working pessimism difficulties

Philip Pullman

3af5786

Happiness made Marv anxious because he knew it didn't last. But happiness destroyed was worth wrapping your arms around because it always hugged you back.

pessimism

Dennis Lehane

587585c

The world is perhaps ultimately to be defined as a place of suffering. Man is a suffering animal, subject to ceaseless anxiety and pain and fear.

suffering the-human-condition the-black-prince iris-murdoch worldview nihilism the-world pessimism

Iris Murdoch

417fd23

Todos nos crescemos vendo os mesmos programas de TV. E como se tivessemos os mesmos implantes artificiais de memoria. Nao nos recordamos de quase nada da nossa verdadeira infancia, mas nos lembramos de tudo o que aconteceu com as mesmas familias dos seriados de comedia. Temos os mesmos objetivos basicos. Todos nos temos os mesmos medos.

pessimism

Chuck Palahniuk

38af6e7

When a kingdom rests on it, I always expect difficulty. Then, if there is none, no blame. But if there is, one is prepared.

optimism pessimism planning pragmatism strategy

Geraldine  Brooks

6ecb9f8

Statistically it was not greatly different than it had been for previous generations, but anecdotally it had become so prominent that every problem was noticed and remarked. The cognitive error called ease of representation thrust them into a space where every problem they witnessed convinced them they were in an unprecedented colapse. They were getting depressed.

science science-fiction society pessimism

Kim Stanley Robinson

95e0aa9

"I spoke one time at the Library of Congress, in 1972, or so. A man stood up in the middle of the audience, when I was about halfway through, and he said, "What right have you, as leader of America's young people, to make those people so cynical and pessimistic?" I had no good answer, so I left the stage. Talk about profiles in courage!"

youth leadership pessimism

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.