Optimism Quotes

I am often guilty of expecting the worst so as to avoid disappointment and welcome surprise.

~ Criss Jami

Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life---and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good=tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we're sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion---to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it.

~ Gretchen Rubin

Tiny GigglesSilly giggles of laughterI store upon a shelfI give some to otherI save some for myselfI am rich beyond all measureThough not with worldly wealthI store up these treasuresFor my heart and soulful health.

~ Muse

Until further notice, celebrate everything.

~ Anonymous

Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy and the make the most of where you are.

~ Germany Kent

Happiness grows best in the soil of contentment.

~ Tim Fargo

One must be honest with himself. Then it will be much better than it is now.

~ Ali A. H. Al-Allaq

We gardeners are healthy, joyous, natural creatures. We are practical, patient, optimistic. We declare our optimism every year, every season, with every act of planting.

~ Carol Deppe

Just us fancy wise-men trying to take on the world.

~ Sapphire Belucci

Hold on to anything you find that's good and workable for you. Drop anything negative where you find it.

~ Germany Kent

There is always something worse, limit thinking about worse things and concentrate on the best things.

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Step ahead immediately and do what you have to do before it's too late.

~ Moutasem Algharati

The bigger the victory, the bigger the battle. Still, be the light and a change agent for healing, restoration and transformation.

~ Germany Kent

Everyday can be extraordinaryAnd ripe,Like a flower burst,If the will is there.

~ Scott Hastie

Peace is one thing, revolution is another. You were either impatient or highly optimistic to think one would lead to the other. – Panchali Draupadi.

~ Krishna Udayasankar

...rewilding is all about being nice, kind, compassionate, empathic, and harnessing our inborn goodness and optimism. We must all work together at this. It's about time we focus on the good side of human and animal nature. ... nature offers many lessons for kinder society. Blood shouldn't sell.

~ Marc Bekoff

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

~ Paul Romer

It is noted that from 1967 to 1995 essays on negative emotions far outnumbered those on positive emotions in the psychological literature. The ratio was 21:1. Even those supreme perpetrators of pop nihilism, The New York Times and The Washington Post, have a better ratio than psychological literature. They average 12 negative stories to every one that might be construed to be non-negative. Many of their non-negative stories, however, cover success in sports and entertainment. I demand that the purveyors of despair who pretend to be dispassionate observes of the human condition go ahead and disclose that the 10 most beautiful words in the English languages are chimes, dawn, golden, hush, lullaby, luminous, melody, mist, murmuring, and tranquil; that Java sparrows prefer the music of Back over that of Schoenberg; that math experts have determined there are 1/96 trillion ways to lace up your shoes; that the Inuit term for making love is translated as ‘laughing together in bed;' and that according to Buckminster Fuller, “pollution is nothing but resources we’re not harvesting.

~ Rob Brezsny

Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

You augment your strength every time you overcome obstacles. Discover and use that unique potential you have in coping well in a positive way no matter how worst the situation can be.

~ Angelica Hopes

You can’t be beaten by something you laugh at.

~ Jonathan Harnisch

I always think fondly of my years inside Detention Center LC/766B.The women and the children I met had all lost people they loved, but they never wallowed in despair.Dying is one of the few experiences we'll eventually all enjoy firsthand, and like most shit that's commonplace, it's boring to dwell on. My fellow inmates/classmates (and really, what's the difference?) showed me it was more interesting to concentrate on the living.Because death is fucking predictable... ...but life has science experiments and free time and surprise naps and who knows what comes next?

~ Brian K. Vaughan

Man, I’m just trying to get you lighten up a bit.” “Murphy, we’re looking at a thousand rotting corpses. Lighten up?” “Life is what you make it, man.

~ Bobby Adair

Life has too many disappointments to make room for negativity.

~ Daniel Willey

You can do what you want. You can fly as far as you want, be as determined as you want, but sooner or later you have to ask yourself, or the person with you, ‘will there be everything we have hoped for?’ When you realise there’s so little hope left, it is like seeing an entire shadow all over the world.

~ Kyra Gregory

...I don't ever want to feel that way. Feel as if there are no surprises left. The surprises make life worth living. Expecting nothing, accepting it all. Accepting isn't the right word. ACKNOWLEDGING it all. I suppose I'll just try to figure it out as I go or at least try to understand it. Or f***, just think about it. I'll face whatever comes my way...

~ John O'callaghan

If you emit positive energy, even people who don't like you will not be negative when around you.

~ Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

The joy of success outweighs whatever negativity you might get from failing a couple of times.

~ Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.

~ Albert Camus

When life gives you lemons, you don't make lemonade. You use the seeds to plant a whole orchard - an entire franchise! Or you could just stay on the Destiny Bus and drink lemonade someone else has made, from a can.

~ Anthon St. Maarten

The bright light of brilliance keeps the darkness away, but it can be so very exhausting.

~ Fennel Hudson

I’m a classic eccentric, living at the extremes of high mania and low mood. There’s no middle ground, only madness and sadness.

~ Fennel Hudson

I admit to being prone to deep thinking, which – given that I’m emerging from dark times – can take me to some very sombre or profound places. But this is no bad thing. I always resurface wiser and with a way of viewing things that is different to before.

~ Fennel Hudson

Creativity always comes as a surprise to us; therefore we can never count on it and we dare not believe in it until it has happened... Hence, the only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity than it will turn out to be... We are apparently on the trail here of some sort of invisible or hidden hand that beneficially hides difficulties from us.

~ Albert O. Hirschman

Genius moves to creation, not to destruction. Only a very few have combined both.

~ Edith Hamilton

Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enough to beat the honest men and hang up them.

~ William Shakespeare

For years to come the debris of a convulsed world will beset our steps. It will require a purpose stronger than any man and worthy of all men to calm and inspirit us. A sane society whose riches are happy children, men and women, beautiful with peace and creative activity, is not going to be ordained for us. We must make it ourselves.

~ Helen Keller

The outcome is not up to you. The outlook is.

~ Germany Kent

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

~ Noam Chomsky

I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.

~ Arthur C. Clarke