OPTIMISM QUOTES V

quotations about optimism

My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect.

ELLEN WILLIS

"Tom Wolfe's Failed Optimism", Beginning to See the Light: Pieces of a Decade


Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

MARCUS AURELIUS

Meditations

Tags: Marcus Aurelius


I'm no optimist ... I'm just a realist who smiles too much.

TIFFANY REISZ

The Siren


This one sits shivering in Fortune's smile, taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath. This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while laughs in the teeth of Death.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

"Pessimist and Optimist"

Tags: Thomas Bailey Aldrich


Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.

ANDRE GIDE

Autumn Leaves

Tags: Andre Gide


That had to have been the fakest attempt at optimism since my fourth grade teacher tried reasoning that we were better off without the dead kids in our class because it'd mean more turns on the playground swings for the rest of us.

ALEXANDRA BRACKEN

The Darkest Minds


The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.

MARK TWAIN

notebooks, 1902

Tags: Mark Twain


I resolved that, like the sun, as long as my day lasted, I would look on the bright side of everything.

THOMAS HOOD

preface, The Works of Thomas Hood

Tags: Thomas Hood


Because optimism does at times with some ill-balanced natures lead to disaster, is that anything against optimism? Not at all, that is no more against optimism than that it could be claimed that foolhardiness is against courage. Foolhardiness is an unreasoning exhibition of a valuable human instinct, but neither courage nor optimism are to be condemned, because, acting without proper control, they may lead to melancholy results. The credulous ignorant optimist may find his ruin among the swindles of the company promoter, but that is no more an indictment of optimism than that such a foolhardy feat as looping the loop is a reflection upon courage. No, optimism is no more to be reckoned by its failures than courage by the desperate ventures of foolhardiness.

FRANK CHALLEN

"Optimism: The Creed of Progress", The Westminster Review, September 1904


Optimists don't internalize pain or criticism. They take it for what it is worth and carry on.

ROBERT M. SHERFIELD

The Everything Self-Esteem Book

Tags: Robert M. Sherfield


There is abundant reason to believe that optimism -- big, little, and in between -- is useful to a person because positive expectations can be self-fulfilling.

CHRISTOPHER PETERSON

American Psychologist, January 2000

Tags: Christopher Peterson


Some people argue against both optimism and pessimism in favor of so-called realistic thinking. They distrust optimism on the grounds that it causes us to sugercoat problems, discount risks, and exaggerate the upside. Pessimism, on the other hand, is criticized as too downbeat, de-energizing, and generally damaging in its impact. This crown prefers realism as the neutral and objective middle ground.

PRICE PRITCHETT

Hard Optimism

Tags: Price Pritchett


No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.

G. K. CHESTERTON

Orthodoxy

Tags: G. K. Chesterton


I feel the matter of my heart being transformed, metallized, in an optimism of steel.

F. T. MARINETTI

The Steel Alcove

Tags: F. T. Marinetti


Optimism is the tendency to look on the bright side of things; it is the belief that the bright side is the natural side; it is the belief that the sum total of the forces at work in the world are making for righteousness; it is the belief that man is so constituted that one sunshiny day makes him forget many cloudy days by which it was preceded.

ELWIN BIRD JOHNSON

An Optimistic Equation and Other Optimism


To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic.

ALBERT SCHWEITZER

Out of My Life and Thought

Tags: Albert Schweitzer


If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

OSCAR WILDE

Lady Windermere's Fan

Tags: Oscar Wilde


Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming: feedback is the treatment.

KENT BECK

Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change


What is hope but a feeling of optimism, a thought that says things will improve, it won't always be bleak, there's a way to rise above the present circumstances. Hope is an internal awareness that you do not have to suffer forever, and that somehow, somewhere there is a remedy for despair that you will come upon if you can only maintain this expectancy in your heart.

WAYNE W. DYER

There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem

Tags: Wayne W. Dyer


The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

OSCAR WILDE

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Tags: Oscar Wilde