Quotes About Pessimism

The older books were quite light-hearted. But I think most of my novels do end on a deep note of pessimism. Shadows seem to be closing in. The final conclusion isn't that life is wonderful and everything is bright and cheery and in the garden.

The world is a bad place. There are many wonderful people, but on the whole, humanity basically stinks.

Many of us develop different flavors of cynicism that we work hard to resist because they can be lazy mental shortcuts.

Clov: Do you believe in the life to come?Hamm: Mine was always like that.

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

If you don't expect gratitude you'll seldom be disappointed.' – Eyor Dedonki, Memoirs of a Pessimist. 479 M41

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

If things were half as bad as some people persist in believing, I'd have retired with a bottle of Scotch and a pistol a long time ago.

You know, you have to be an optimist, a pessimist, sarcastic and pleasant all at the same time to be a photographer.

Con dogmáticos o con inteligentes, el Perú estará siempre jodido —dijo Carlitos—. Este país empezó mal y acabará mal. Como nosotros, Zavalita.

My natural optimism just leads me to be skeptical.

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.

if things look good today, they will most assuredly turn to shit tomorrow.

Las cosas serán siempre peores, nunca mejores. Qué nuevo mundo están preparándose ustedes.

Contemplation of this banal maxim increased the depression that had suddenly descended on me.

The best opportunities come in times of maximum pessimism.

The best opportunities come in times of maximum pessimism," or Warren Buffett's mantra, "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful

Some men there are with minds so strangely fashioned, that they extract an ill from every good and grief from every blessing.

She thought so badly of men and women generally, and of Mr Broune and herself as a man and a woman individually, that she was unable to conceive the possibility of such a sacrifice.

There are men who rarely think well of women, — who hardly think well of any woman. They put their mothers and sisters into the background, — as though they belonged to some sex or race apart, — and then declare to themselves and to their friends that all women are false, — that no woman can be trusted unless her ugliness protect her;

Tutti i più ridicoli fantasticatori che nei loro nascondigli di geni incompresi fanno scoperte strabilianti e definitive, si precipitano su ogni movimento nuovo persuasi di poter spacciare le loro fanfaluche. D'altronde ogni collasso porta con sé disordine intellettuale e morale. Bisogna creare uomini sobri, pazienti, che non disperino dinanzi ai peggiori orrori e non si esaltino a ogni sciocchezza. Pessimismo dell'intelligenza, ottimismo della volontà.

Gerstenfeld somt eerst enkele redenen op waarom het leven in het algemeen niet de moeite waard is geleefd te worden, mensen zijn wolven op twee benen, en gaat dan in op zijn eigen situatie, die niet bijzonder dramatisch is maar die hij kennelijk toch voor uitzichtloos houdt: lusteloosheid en weerzin spelen hem parten.

I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all.

He was saying that perhaps it was a mistake to bring human beings into a world that had such a strong possibility of becoming, in their lifetimes, a bleak and terrifying if not wholly unlivable place.