Pessimism Quotes - Page 16

• The prophet who fails to present a bearable alternative and yet preaches doom is part of the trap that he postulates.

  Margaret Mead

  Alternatives, Failing, Prophet

  Margaret Mead (1970). “Culture and Commitment”

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• Now the pessimist proper is the most modest of men. ... under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.

  Agnes Repplier

  Pain, Fate, Men

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• Pessimism like calumny is easy to do, and attracts immediate attention. The gossiper and the writer may find this out soon enough, and a little encouragement from the current mood will procure them successes that bring endless imitators in their trail. On the other hand saying good things about life in general and individuals in particular and making it interesting is a serious task which few can achieve with credit.

  Bernard Berenson

  Encouragement, Hands, Calumny Is

  Bernard Berenson (1963). “Sunset and Twilight: From the Diaries of 1947-1958”, New York : Harcourt, Brace & World

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• Optimism isnt funny unless you are laughing at the person, whereas extreme pessimism is extremely funny. Its exaggeration.

  Steve Toltz

  Laughing, Optimism, Extremely Funny

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• Humans will always endure suffering - even accepting the fact that we're going to die will cause us suffering, and from that stems a little pessimism and negativity that all of us are susceptible to.

  Jason Mraz

  Negativity, Suffering, Facts

  Source: www.timeout.com

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• People misunderstand happiness. They think it's the absence of trouble. That's not happiness, that's luck. Happiness is the ability to live well alongside trouble. No two people have the same trouble, or the same way of metabolizing it. Q.E.D. - No two happy people are happy in the same way. . . . Every day brilliant people, people smarter than I, wallow in safe tragedy and pessimism, shying from what really takes guts - recognizing how much courage and labor happiness demands.

  Rachel Kadish

  Thinking, Two, People

  Rachel Kadish (2007). “Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story”, p.325, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Finally, develop tenacity and an optimistic outlook. It doesn't mean that everything will always work out or that you won't suffer. But pessimism seems to be designed to force you to suffer before the fact!

  William Foege

  Optimistic, Mean, Work Out

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• There's my pessimism. Because I didn't know yet that type of film is always going to become more extinct, that there won't be anymore. Because there will always be more films that win five Oscars like Terms of Endearment.

  Sergio Leone

  Winning, Oscars, Film

  Interview With Marlaine Glicksman, www.americansuburbx.com. December 28, 2012.

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• To refuse everything, to say, even when there is something which really should be done, "Ah, that's no longer feminist," is a pessimistic, even masochistic tendency in women, the result of having been habituated to inertia, to pessimism.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Feminist, Done, Pessimistic

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

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• The pessimism of the intellect is the starting point for struggle. It's not the end point, it's the starting point. You have to make something critical to make it meaningful, to make it transformative.

  Henry Giroux

  Meaningful, Struggle, Intellect

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