gwtw.mhn > gwtw.mhn's 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

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

“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

“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

“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism: The Essays

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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

“The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World

“If life is a punishment, one should wish for an end; if life is a test, one should wish it to be short.”
― Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Paul and Virginia by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Fiction, Literary

“Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“Though nihilism has been relentlessly criticized for overemphasizing the dark side of human experience, it might be equally true that this overemphasis represents a needed counterbalance to shallow optimism and arrogant confidence in human power. Nihilism reminds us that we are not gods, and that despite all of the accomplishments and wonders of civilization, humans cannot alter the fact that they possess only a finite amount of mastery and control over their own destinies.”
― John Marmysz, Laughing at Nothing: Humor as a Response to Nihilism