Pessimism Quotes

There are some for whom the good of mankind is their primary concern, and others who basically put their own considerations before everyone else. I was among the latter.

~ Peter David

Noblest. Bravest. What rot. There was no bravery in buying oneself out of difficulty.

~ Peter David

Only in this world of topsy-turvy attitudes could outright stupidity, such as I had displayed, be something that got me high marks. I had an amused glimmering of a notion at that point: If I ever turned out to be a complete and utter fool, I could wind up running the whole kingdom. It was something to consider.

~ Peter David

Some time later, I sat in the wine cellar, staring at the walls while cradling a wineskin in my lap like a child, murmuring over and over as if lulling the child to sleep, 'I am shat upon. I am shat upon'.

~ Peter David

Youth believes itself immortal. There is a cure for such an attitude, but unfortunately it is a cure from which one never recovers.

~ Peter David

In retrospect, I would have to recommend against epiphanies. They are difficult on an emotional level, and they also sometimes move you to foolish and inopportune acts, which was what happened in my case.

~ Peter David

Unfortunately, the world does not always act in a manner consistent with one's plans for it.

~ Peter David

I guess it really had been brave . . . because it was so bugger-all stupid, and if there was one thing I'd come to realize, ti was that bravery and bugger-all stupidity went hand in hand.

~ Peter David

I remember so many things [. . .] The problem is, only half of them are true . . . and the half which is true keeps changing places with the half which is false.

~ Peter David

It seemed to me that, no matter what endeavor I was involved in, I was to be something of a sham.

~ Peter David

You shall only continue to feel bitter when you continue to make your mind the door step for footprints of bitterness! When you mind your mind, you mind your mind, you mind your heart, you mind your body and you mind your spirit! The only rest stop in your body for bitterness is your mind. Don’t forget! mind your mind!

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

You shall only continue to feel bitter when you continue to make your mind the doorstep for footprints of bitterness! When you mind your mind, you mind your mind, you mind your heart, you mind your body and you mind your spirit! The only rest stop in your body for bitterness is your mind. Don’t forget! Mind your mind!

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Life presents innumerable possibilities for love, friendship, compassion, and self-fulfillment, but we must be willing to give in order to receive. Persistence, sacrifice, a quest for knowledge, along with acquaintance with our true self is essential in order to achieve our dreams. Panic, fear, worry, doubt, anger, and a negative attitude are the biggest impediments to self-realization. The most important battle we undertake in life is not with other people; rather it takes place in the human mind.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

To claim that one can never live a positive life with a negative mind is a very negative claim to make!

~ Criss Jami

There's no secret on how to attain a greater height, just keep climbing the ladder, don't look at the dreadful distance, lock up that negative thoughts today, and fulfil your dreams.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

To love at a distance and without hope; never to possess; to dream chastely of pale charms and impossible kisses extinguished on the waxen brow of death: ah, that is something like it. A delicious straying away from the world, and never the return. As only the unreal is not ignoble and empty, existence must be admitted to be abominable. Yes, imagination is the only good thing which heaven vouchsafes to the skeptic and pessimist, alarmed by the eternal abjectness of life.

~ Joris-Karl Huysmans

There is nothing to be got in the world anywhere; privation and pain pervade it, and boredom lies in wait at every corner for those who have escaped them. Moreover, wickedness usually reigns, and folly does all the talking. Fate is cruel, and human beings are pathetic.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

A negative outlook is dangerous. When you say, “It can’t get any worse!” You're essentially challenging the universe to do exactly that.

~ Kamand Kojouri

Pessimism is the key to see what really goes on within our world, the lies and manipulation that circles us all is exposed

~ Zachary Kroonenburg

It’s not about optimism, pessimism or realism. It’s not about thinking nothing bad will ever happen to you. It’s about having the faith and courage that no matter what happens, you’ll be okay.

~ Brownell Landrum

Sometimes fiction is more easily understood than true events. Reality is often pathetic.

~ Young-Ha Kim

If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing it.Becoming: an agony without an ending.The older I grow, the less I enjoy performing my little Hamlet. The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death. If History had a goal, how lamentable would be the fate of those of us who have accomplished nothing!On the frontiers of the self: ‘What I have suffered, what I am suffering, no one will ever know, not even I’. Events - tumours of time.Man secretes disaster.The secret of my adaptation to life? - I’ve changed despairs the way I’ve changed shirts. Each day is a Rubicon in which I aspire to be drowned.

~ Emil M. Cioran

Why harrow oneself by looking on the worst side?... Because it is sometimes necessary.

~ Agatha Christie

Disappointment focuses on ‘what is not,’ and completely misses the far greater reality of ‘what now is.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

But pessimism and reality are usually mistaken for each other

~ Anna Banks

Pessimism doesn’t change the reality, it prolongs the status quo. And it brings everyone down. It’s only ever lose-lose. Optimism and faith coupled with pragmatism change the reality. Self-belief and self-reliance change the reality. Boldness to explore new ideas changes the reality. A vision powered by effort and energy changes the reality.

~ Rania Al Abdullah

Life is like butter - when things cool down it can be reshaped

~ Alan Sheinwald

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.

~ Alphonse Karr

But when nothing in your life happens in a positive frame, it is difficult to think positively and hope for the best.

~ Faraaz Kazi

If you believe the world is conspiring against you it will just do that, you will help on by your pessimism action to prove you are right.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

As every good marxist already knows, the ideological shift toward a terminally optimistic humanism was vital to the rise of bourgeoisie, and the decline of aristocracy.

~ Terre Thaemlitz

When you always stay positive, you least worry yourself over anything at all! You only take lessons from negative moments of life, and people who seek to change your positive nature to negative! Don’t ever allow your life to be negative just because of people, things and negative occurrences in life, not even for a brief moment! You are you! You are a positive person; stay positive and be happy!

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

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

I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.

~ G.k. Chesterton

The optimistic nature finds joy in the very feeling for life, the pessimistic nature finds a feeling for life only in joy.

~ Lou Andreas-Salomé

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

A pessimist is someone who has forgotten the joy of beginning.

~ Marty Rubin

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

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The logic of pessimism moves through three refusals: a no-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-for-us, or Schopenhauer’s tears); a yes-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-in-itself, or Nietzsche’s laughter); and a no-saying to the for-us and the in-itself (a double refusal, or Cioran’s sleep).Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent?

~ Eugene Thacker