Cynicism Quotes

There was something in her eyes that made me trust her. Maybe it was because they held the same cynicism, the same world-weariness I saw in my own every morning when I looked at myself in the mirror.

~ Melika Dannese Lux

Everyone else felt the need to assure me that Mother's death was part of God's plan. Exactly, I wanted to shout after reading this sentiment half a dozen times--- his plan is to kill us all, and if an innocent child dies in agony and a wicked man breathes his last at an advanced age in his sleep, who are we to call it injustice?

~ Valerie Martin

Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed for myself,' said Denethor. 'Have I not tasted it now many nights upon my tongue, foreboding that worse lay in the dregs?

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

Cynicism always comes clothed in realism. The alternatives to begin with an act of imagination. Can we imagine another way?

~ Walter Brueggemann

I sometimes think that 'friend' is just a word I use for all the people I haven't murdered yet.

~ Scott Lynch

We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy.

~ Paul Hoffman

And you that sought for magic in your youth but desire it not in your age, know that there is a blindness of spirit which comes from age, more black than the blindness of eye, making a darkness about you across which nothing may be seen, or felt, or known, or in any way apprehended.

~ Lord Dunsany

It is unfortunate that for some, kindness is an unwarranted expenditure, compassion an avoidable weakness, and love an unnecessary gamble.

~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

Ignore cynicism, appreciate criticism, and embrace optimism.

~ Debasish Mridha

Your every ill-thought, secreted hate, cynical and vicious judgment you carry is meant only for you.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Failure generates its own majesty. Defeat becomes a panoptic stain on the soul; it creates its own all-embracing pathos. Reverses engulf us in fleshy feelings of self-pity, sorrow, and apathy. Resounding setbacks might even be subtlety attractive because it means we can give up trying. It is tempting to accept defeat, surrender to our insecurities, and admit that because of failing to accomplish one particular goal that the best part of our life was wasted. Cynically writing ourselves off as a failure, we are free to capitulate to the emptiness of our lives.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The world has become jaded. Romance has died, some no longer believe in love, and because of this, they suffer.

~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

When you succumb to cynicism, darkness, pessimism and sarcasm you are amplifying imbalance and negativity.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Only a cynic can create horror--for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving demonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them.

~ H.p. Lovecraft

People want to feel good, be entertained, eat salty shit, and cum twice a week, and provided they do they'll stay quiet.

~ Rick Remender

Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in western popular culture, but in reality, our cynicism advances the desires of the powerful: cynicism is obedience.

~ Alex Steffen

I work hard to stay cynical enough! I keep my expectations of our culture and our leaders low, low, low, and I do it so I don't have to be let down. And yet again I am lowballed by the brokenness of the American cultural machine.

~ Vinnie Tesla

Sarcasm is a manifestation of anger, and anger can make you the puppet of your opponents.

~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

Humans are moving into a new phase, one based on the knowledge that talking about their feelings has never got them anywhere.

~ Glen Duncan

On revient toujours a son premier amour. It sounds like a cynicism to-day. As if we really meant: On ne revient jamais a son premier amour. But as a matter of fact, a man never leaves his first love, once the love is established. He may leave his first attempt at love. Once a man establishes a full dynamic communication at the deeper and higher centers, with a woman, this can never be broken. But sex in the head breaks down, and half circuits break down. Once the full circuit is established, however, this can never break.

~ D.h. Lawrence

It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrification, if not from moral corruption.

~ H. Rider Haggard

Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be.

~ Ambrose Bierce

Voltaire expected that within fifty years of his lifetime there would not be one Bible in the world. His house is now a distribution centre for Bibles in many languages.

~ Corrie Ten Boom

Life will never meet all of our expectations. We must nonetheless accept all disappointments without becoming bitter and cynical. We must always remain mindful of the opportunity to extend kindness and work to improve our character.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

When everything seems to be lacking integrity, you find it in yourself.

~ Madam Secretary

It doesn't matter if justice is on your side. You have to depict your position as just.

~ Benjamin Netanyahu

We shall, as we ripen in grace, have greater sweetness towards our fellow Christians. Bitter-spirited Christians may know a great deal, but they are immature. Those who are quick to censure may be very acute in judgment, but they are as yet very immature in heart. He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more; he overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it. ... I know we who are young beginners in grace think ourselves qualified to reform the whole Christian church. We drag her before us, and condemn her straightway; but when our virtues become more mature, I trust we shall not be more tolerant of evil, but we shall be more tolerant of infirmity, more hopeful for the people of God, and certainly less arrogant in our criticisms.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.

~ Stephen Colbert

She would put her “naïve American optimism” toward making herself indispensable to him, and she’d win him. Because naïve American optimism beat out English cynicism any day.

~ Sabrina Jeffries

It's strange but as I grow older, I find myself developing more optimism. I keep inching toward the point where I believe that it's more difficult to have hope than it is to embrace cynicism. In the deep dark end, there's no point unless we have at least a modicum of hope. We trawl our way through the darkness hoping to find a pinpoint of light. But isn't it remarkable that the cynics of this world—the politicians, the corporations, the squinty-eyed critics—seem to think that they have a claim on intelligence? They seem to think that it's cooler, more intellectually engaging, to be miserable, that there's some sort of moral heft in cynicism. But I think a good novel can be a doorstop to despair. I also think the real bravery comes with those who are prepared to go through that door and look at the world in all its grime and torment, and still find something of value, no matter how small.

~ Colum Mccann

Cynicism is a disease. Optimism is the cure.

~ Aakashvani

Dantes had entered the Chateau d’If with the round, open, smiling face of a young and happy man, with whom the earlypaths of life have been smooth. and who anticipates a future corresponding with his past. This was now all changed. The oval face was lengthened, his smiling mouth had assumed the firm and markedlines which betoken resolution; his eyebrows were arched beneath a brow furrowed with thought; his eyes were full of melancholy, and from their depths occasionally sparkled gloomy fires of misanthropy and hatred; his complexion, so long kept from the sun, had now that pale color which produces, when the features are encircled with black hair, the aristocratic beauty of the man of the north; the profound learning he had acquired had besides diffused over his features a refined intellectual expression; and he had also acquired, being naturally of a goodly stature, that vigor which a frame possesses which has so long concentrated all its force within itself.

~ Alexandre Dumas

Maybe it's the fact the most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip - and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It's more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendant horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it's stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete.

~ David Foster Wallace

Cynicism is a boring and dull old man’s disease people have no business getting when they’re young.

~ Erika Lopez

The foolishness of youth with the cynicism of age is a dangerous combination.

~ Murad S. Shah

Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves!

~ Jerome K. Jerome

They were Archer's second set of children an d paragons of contemporary teenage cynicism. They enjoyed setting fire to the tails of tender thoughts.

~ Tom Wolfe

It takes a long time before we cease to feel proud of being wanted. Though God knows why we should feel it, when we look around and see who is wanted too.

~ Graham Greene

The dark war consciousness and pride have seized upon the weak, with great cynicisms and glib, soulless intellects, that grind away like robotic gears at what they despise and can never understand.

~ Bryant Mcgill

I thought back to Meg’s advice about Hemingway sentences—simple declarative statements that showed the truth and distilled the meaning. My first attempt at that had been cynical and messed up. I gave it a go again.Find one lost sheep.The angels rejoice.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk