quotations about pessimism
Oh happy pessimists! What a joy it is to them to be able to prove again and again that there is no joy.
MARIE VON EBNER-ESCHENBACH
Aphorisms
Pessimists are just as illogical as optimists; insomuch as both envisage the aims of mankind as unified, and as having a direct relationship (either of frustration or of fulfilment) to the inevitable flow of terrestrial motivation and events. That is--both schools retain in a vestigial way the primitive concept of a conscious teleology--of a cosmos which gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitos, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to James F. Morton, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life
A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.
JOHN RALSTON SAUL
The Doubter's Companion
Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.
HOWARD ZINN
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.
JEAN ROSTAND
Journal of a Character
If I make dark my countenance,
I shut my life from happier chance.
ALFRED TENNYSON
The Two Voices
It will scarcely be doubted, therefore, that there does exist a real and a very grave danger lest Poetry should, in these perplexing and despondent days, not only be closely associated with Pessimism, but should become for the most part its voice and echo.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
It takes a fine sense of pessimism to brood with any sort of respectability.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Elantris