Pessimism Quotes - Page 10

• We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves; fear, desire, hope, still push us on toward the future.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Optimism, Desire, Stills

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays”, p.52, 谷月社

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• Some recent philosophers seem to have given their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts that affirm that the intelligence of an individual is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be augmented. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we will try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.

  Alfred Binet

  Intelligent, Trying, Approval

  "Modern Ideas About Children". Book by Alfred Binet, 1909.

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• Cease negative mental chattering. If you think a thing is impossible, you'll make it impossible. Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed.

  Bruce Lee

  Motivational, Success, Thinking

  "Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living". Book edited by John Little, p. 121, 2000.

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• Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  War, Men, Invisible

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer”, p.44, Simon and Schuster

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• ‎I was cursed with the pessimism of both the Russians and the Jews two of the gloomiest tribes in the world. Still if there wasn't greatness in me maybe I had the talent to recognize it in others even in the most irritating others.

  David Benioff

  Greatness, Two, World

  David Benioff (2008). “City of Thieves: A Novel”, p.78, Penguin

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• Life...as God intended it enables us to live above the drag of fear, superstition, shame, pessimism, guilt, anxiety, worry, and all the negativity that keeps people from seizing each day as a gift from Him.

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Fear, People, Worry

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• We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future, but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Future, Past, Optimism

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “The Journals”

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• So far there has been no philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not grown into an apology for knowledge; on this point, at least, every one is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all tyrannized over by logic, and this is optimism in its essence.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophy, Apology, Hands

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1965). “The Philosophy of Nietzsche”, Signet Book

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• You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams.

  George Santayana

  Dream, Optimism, Body

  George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.471, 谷月社

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• I have a hunch that our obsession with photography arises from an unspoken pessimism; it is our nature to believe the good things will not last. . . But photos provide a false sense of security> like our flawed memory, they are guaranteed to fade. . . . We take photographs in order to remember, but it is in the nature of a photograph to forget (pg 157)

  Michelle Richmond

  Photography, Memories, Believe

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• Our notion of an optimist is a man who knowing that each year was worse than the preceding, thinks next year will be better. And a pessimist is a man who knows the next year can't be worse than the last one.

  Franklin P. Adams

  Men, Thinking, Years

  Franklin P. Adams (''F.P.A.'') (1944). “Nods and Becks”

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• In securing the future of the planet, we secure happiness for ourselves. One of the aims of the Greens is to turn around the tide of pessimism amongst the young people of the world.

  Bob Brown

  Positive, People, Environmental

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.

  Agnes Repplier

  Law, Optimism, Triumph

  Agnes Repplier (1924). “Under dispute”

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• It is one of the consolations of middle aged reformers that the good that they inculcate must live after them if it is to live at all.

  Hector Hugh Munro

  Optimism, Middle, Consolation

  'Beasts and Super-Beasts' (1914) 'The Byzantine Omelette'

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• The vanishing, volatile froth of the present which any shadow will alter, any thought blow away, any event annihilate, is every moment converted into the adamantine.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Blow, Optimism, Shadow

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.22, Harvard University Press

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• We look for some reward of our endeavors and are disappointed that not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Optimism, Effort, Battle

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “Collected Memoirs, Travel Sketches and Island Literature of Robert Louis Stevenson: Autobiographical Writings and Essays by the prolific Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer, author of Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped & Catriona”, p.452, e-artnow

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• It seems almost oxymoronic to believe that this new idealism has led to a new pessimism about marriage, but that is exactly what has happened. In generations past there was far less talk about "compatibility" and finding the ideal soul mate. Today we are looking for someone who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires, and this creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the searchers and the searched for.

  Timothy Keller

  Believe, Past, Expectations

  Timothy Keller (2011). “The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God”, p.22, Penguin

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• The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead In fact maybe there is a lesson there for how we should approach the future...with fourteen parts optimism - anticipating what could go right and the benefits - and one part pessimism - anticipating what could go wrong so we can avoid them.

  Robert Breault

  Average, Long, Optimism

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• It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annonyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness. Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism and self-abasement.

  Aristotle

  Ignorance, Men, Self

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• Though I am alive now, I do not believe an old man's pessimism is nessessarily truer than a young man's optimism simply because it comes after. There are things a young man knows that are true and are not yet in the old man's power to recollect. Spring has its sappy wisdom.

  Richard Rodriguez

  Life, Spring, Believe

  Richard Rodriguez (1993). “Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father”, Penguin Group USA

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• A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Men, Interesting, Mouths

  "Counsels and Maxims". Book by Arthur Schopenhauer, Vol. 2, Ch. 29, § 377, 2007.

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• When the worms are scarce, what does a hen do? Does she stop scratching? She does not. She scratches all the harder. A lot of businessmen have been showing less sense than a hen since orders became scarce. They have laid off salesmen; they have stopped or reduced their advertising; they have simply resigned themselves to inaction and, of course, to pessimism. If a hen knows enough to scratch all the harder when the worms are scarce, surely businessmen ... ought to have gumption enough to scratch all the harder for business.

  B. C. Forbes

  Perseverance, Order, Gumption

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  There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.

  Washington Irving

  Encouraging, Kindness, Lying

  Washington Irving (2015). “The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more”, p.39, e-artnow

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• It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

  William James

  Life, Faith, Optimism

  William James (1956). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality”, p.59, Courier Corporation

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• Pessimism doesn't grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities.

  Harvey Mackay

  Jobs, Opportunity, Maintaining The Status Quo

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