quotations about optimism
To me it seems not unreasonable to find a re-enforcement of optimism, a renewal of courage and hope, in the modern theory that man has mounted to what he is from the lowest step of potentiality, through toilsome grades of ever-expanding existence, even thought it have been by a spiral stairway, mainly dark or dusty, with loop-holes at long intervals only, and these granting but a narrow and one-sided view.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Progress of the World
The near cousin of optimism is hope: knowing the steps needed to get to a goal and having the energy to pursue those steps. It is a primal motivating force, and its absence is paralyzing.
DANIEL GOLEMAN
Working With Emotional Intelligence
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"
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
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
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
I'm no optimist ... I'm just a realist who smiles too much.
TIFFANY REISZ
The Siren
Unsatisfied desire is the characteristic feature of human life. That is the common fact out of which both pessimism and optimism are constructed. Dwell on the impossibility of ever getting a state of complete and permanent satisfaction with what you have, and you become a pessimist. Dwell on the opportunity for endless growth and conquest which this same fact makes possible, and you become an optimist.
WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE
The Art of Optimism
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
Despite the cautions just raised, 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
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
Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
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
I feel the matter of my heart being transformed, metallized, in an optimism of steel.
F. T. MARINETTI
The Steel Alcove
Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
Optimism is cowardice.
OSWALD SPENGLER
Man and Technics
I'm just saying when tragedy strikes, we have to look on the bright side. You know? Like how even used Mercedes still have leather seats.
CORDELIA
"Teacher's Pet", Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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
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
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray