Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money.
Gerald Brenan
1. "Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous."
Elias Canetti, "The Secret Heart Of The Clock"
2. "We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope."
Epictetus, "Dissertations"
3. "Hope is tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment."
Evan Esar
4. "Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity."
Robert G. Ingersoll
Other categories: Truth and Falsity
5. "Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable."
François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), "Candide"
6. "The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope."
Frank Lloyd Wright, "The Living City"
Other categories: Time and Passing
7. "A desert is a place without expectation."
Nadine Gordimer
Other categories: Various
8. "I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will."
Antonio Gramsci, "Gramsci: Letters from Prison"
Other categories: Intellect, Judgement
9. "Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they?re better than other human beings."
James Baldwin, "A Dialogue"
10. "I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist."
Henry Brooks Adams
Other categories: Art and Culture
11. "Uncertainty is the refuge of hope."
Henri-Frederic Amiel, "Journal Intime"
12. "Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey."
Ouida (Marie Louise De La Ramée), "Wisdom, Wit and Pathos"
13. "A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it."
Aldous Huxley, "Do What You Will"
14. "Hope is like a harebell trembling from its birth."
Christina Georgina Rossetti
15. "It's such an act of optimism to get through a day and enjoy it and laugh and do all that without thinking about death. What spirit human beings have!"
Gilda Radner
Other categories: Joy and Sadness
16. "Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow."
(?)
Other categories: Time and Passing
17. "I believe in the sun even if it isn't shining. I believe in love even when I am alone. I believe in God even when He is silent."
(?)
Other categories: God and Religion
18. "I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool an optimist must know how sad a place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day."
Peter Ustinov
19. "Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier."
Colin Powell
Other categories: Power and Weakness
20. "A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love."
Marie-Henri Beyle (Stendhal)
Other categories: Love
21. "Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than any other."
Brian Tracy
Other categories: Happiness -:- Success and Fame
22. "Hope is patience with the lamp lit."
Tertullian
23. "Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools."
Napoleon Bonaparte
Other categories: Bravery and Fear -:- Work and Laziness
24. "A pessimist is someone who looks at the land of milk and honey and sees only calories and cholesterol."
(?)
Other categories: Health and Alcohol
25. "The best bridge between hope and despair is often a good night's sleep."
(?)
26. "To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death."
Pearl Buck, "To My Daughters, With Love"
27. "Optimism is the opium of the people."
Milan Kundera
28. "Who dares nothing, need hope for nothing."
Friedrich von Schiller
Other categories: Bravery and Fear
29. "Hope is putting faith to work when doubting would be easier."
Navjot Singh Sidhu
30. "A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is a man who hopes they are."
Chauncey Depew
Other categories: Woman and Man
31. "Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery."
John Ralston Saul, "The Doubter's Companion"
32. "The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination."
Tommy Lasorda
Other categories: Dreams and Desires -:- Success and Fame
33. "Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is good company along the way."
George Savile
34. "Optimist is the one who looks at bullshit and sees fertilizer."
Navjot Singh Sidhu
35. "The glass is not half-empty, it's just twice as big as it needs to be."
(?)
Other categories: Various
36. "The pessimist complains about the direction of the wind, the optimist expects the direction to change, but the leader simply adjusts the sails!"
John C. Maxwell
37. "A pessimist is one who burns bridges before the enemy gets to them."
Navjot Singh Sidhu
38. "The meaning of life is to go back to sleep and hope that tomorrow will be a better day."
Charles Monroe Schulz
Other categories: Life and Death
39. "Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope."
William Hazlitt
Other categories: Life and Death
40. "A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists."
Don Marquis
41. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
James Branch Cabell, "Silver Stallion"
42. "In the factory we make cosmetics; in the store we sell hope."
Charles Revson
Other categories: Beauty and Ugliness
43. "A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties."
Harry S. Truman
44. "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."
Vaclav Havel
45. "Do you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."
George Bernard Shaw, "An Unsocial Socialist"
46. "While there is life, there is hope."
Marcus Tullius Cicero
47. "Great hopes make great man."
English proverb
Other categories: Success and Fame
48. "Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are."
St. Augustine of Hippo
Other categories: Bravery and Fear -:- Anger
49. "We promise according to our hopes; we fulfill according to our fears."
François de La Rochefoucauld
Other categories: Bravery and Fear
50. "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you."
Jesus Christ, Matthew 7:7
2007, collected and compiled by Kazimierz Matan
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