Pessimism Quotes

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.”
― Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.”
― James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion

“You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down”
― Charlie Chaplin

“I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Antonio Gramsci: Prison Letters

“Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.

Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“I wish to weep
but sorrow is
stupid.
I wish to believe
but belief is a
graveyard.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.”
― Philip K. Dick

“I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.”
― P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest

“Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.”
― Thomas Friedman

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“Someone who smiles too much with you can sometime frown too much with you at your back.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“The world’s bumper sticker reads: Life sucks, and then you die. Perhaps Christian bumper stickers should read: Life sucks, but then you find hope and you can’t wait to die.”
― Ted Dekker, The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth

“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.”
― Mark Twain

“No misfortune is so bad that whining about it won’t make it worse. (Apr 2007 Gen Conf)”
― Jeffrey R. Holland

“When things are at their blackest, I say to myself, 'Cheer up, things could be worse.' And sure enough, they get worse.”
― Robert Asprin, editor

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“Sorrow spares no one, and scars respect no person.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, Infamous

“Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.”
― Joyce Carol Oates

“This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.”
― Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

“I will be the first to admit that I am a pessimist by nature. It is, after all, the wisest way to be. We pessimists have everything to gain, whereas optimists have a fifty-fifty chance of being disappointed.”
― Tamar Myers, As the World Churns

“Sometimes fiction is more easily understood than true events. Reality is often pathetic.”
― Young-ha Kim, I Have The Right To Destroy Myself

“It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“Seeing the glass as half empty is more positive than seeing it as half full. Through such a lens the only choice is to pour more. That is righteous pessimism.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Know yourselves- be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.”
― Peter Wessel Zapffe, Essays

“There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life

“POZZO:
I am blind.
(Silence.)
ESTRAGON:
Perhaps he can see into the future.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Abby must have been the one who found the safe house, because Townsend didn't like it.

"The building across the street is under construction," he snarled as soon as we'd carried our bags inside.

"The elevator has key card access, and I've hacked into the surveillance cameras from every system on the block," Abby argued. "We have a three-hundred-sixty-degree visual."

"Excellent." Townsend dropped his bag. "Now the circle can see us from every angle."

"Don't mind Agent Townsend, girls," Abby told us. "He's a glass-half-empty kind of spy."

"Also known as the good kind," he countered.

Abby huffed.”
― Ally Carter, Out of Sight, Out of Time