Quotes About Pessimism

Depression is not generalized pessimism, but pessimism specific to the effects of one's own skilled action.

How many pessimists end up desiring the things they fear, in order to prove they are right?

How many pessimists end up by desiring the things they fear, in order to prove that they are right?

In life two negatives don't make a positive. Double negatives turn positive only in math and formal logic. In life things just get worse and worse and worse.

That's because people find what they're looking for. If we look for beauty, we'll find beauty. If we look for conspiracies, we'll find conspiracies. It's all a matter of setting our mental channel.

his optimistic view of America's potential coexisted with an essentially pessimistic view of human nature.

the incident confirmed his innate pessimism.

You're not a realist, she says. You're a dreamer who doesn't believe in the dream.

Zeno spoke Greek, not Latin, and preferred passive resignation to reckless optimism.

Sometimes you woke up, and you knew for sure, from history and experience and weary intuition, that the brand new day would bring nothing good at all.

In Michelangelo was realized the grandeur of Italy struggling vainly against crushing oppression. He expressed that which was highest in it, reflecting the loftiest side of its idealism mingled with deep pessimism in his survey over life; for, wrapped in austerity, he saw mankind in heroic terms of sadness.

I am not afraid of this devil!" he thought of Death. "I simply feel sorry for my life. It is a splendid thing, no matter what the pessimists say about it. What if they were to hang a pessimist? Ah, I feel sorry for life, very sorry!

I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it.

The world is full of dead optimists.

Pessimism is mental disease. It means illness in the person who voices it, and in the society which produces that person.

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.

I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.

The glass is neither half empty, nor half full. The glass is just a glass and it's content can perpetually change with your perception.

Nothing is as good as it seems and nothing is as bad, but somewhere between reality falls.

You pessimists always fall into the disillusion trap," said the cheerful man cheerfully. "From one distance a thing looks bright. From another it looks dark. You think you've found the truth when you've replaced the cheerful view by the opposite, but true profundity blends all possible views, bright as well as dark.

I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.

Mon Dieu, la vie est par trop moche.

Success and cynicism are not only achieved; they are also inherited.