Quotes About Pessimism

When I look in the glass I see that every line in my face means pessimism, but in spite of my face - that is my experience - I remain an optimist.

My pessimism goes to the point of suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.

A pessimist is one who has been compelled to live with an optimist.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerves give to wisdom.

The optimist claims we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

The world gets better every day - then worse again in the evening.

An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.

Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.

A pessimist is one who feels bad when he feels good for fear he'll feel worse when he feels better.

How happy are the pessimists! What joy is theirs when they have proved there is no joy.

A pessimist? A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.

He growled at morning, noon, and night, And trouble sought to borrow; Although today the sky was bright, He knew t'would storm tomorrow; A thought of joy he could not stand, And struggled to resist it; Though sunshine dappled all the land This sorry pessimist it.

Some people see the cup as half empty. Some people see the cup as half full. I see the cup as too large.

He that can't endure the bad will not live to see the good.

Age 50. — At 50 a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass.

Is anyone born a futilitarian? Or does it simply grow on us, like a fungus that afflicts the toenail of the great toe on our right foot from wearing shoes too small, eventually spreading to the neighboring toes?

If I were pressed to give my brand of political thought a label, I would call it pessimistic anarchistic quietism, or anarchistic quietistic pessimism or pessimistic quietistic anarchism: anarchism because experience tells me that what is wrong with politics is power itself; quietism because I have my doubts about the will to set about changing the world, a will infected with the drive to power; and pessimism because I am sceptical that, in a fundamental way, things can be changed.

One fast move or I'm gone,' I realize, gone the way of the last three years of drunken hopelessness which is a physical and spiritual and metaphysical hopelessness you can't learn in school no matter how many books on existentialism or pessimisn you read, or how many jugs of vision-producing Ayahuasca drink, or Mescaline take, or Peyote goop up with -

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed, Everybody knows that the war is over, Everybody knows the good guys lost.

After all, the girl actually had faith in something, which was more than most people had in these dark times. It was wrong to destroy it.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... the truly wise person is colorblind.

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

I'm a half-empty kind of girl.