Kaiserhans > Kaiserhans's Quotes

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

“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

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

“Life is a huge farce, and the advantage of possessing a sense of humour is that it enables one to defy fate with mocking laughter.”
― George Gissing

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

“Pessimism, she is a fond friend of yours, yes?" -
That's uncalled for. I barely know her. Mere acquaintances, at best.”
― Robert Jordan, The Gathering Storm

“To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

“Market moralities and mentalities-- fueled by economic imperatives to make a profit at nearly any cost-- yield unprecedented levels of loneliness, isolation, and sadness. And our public life lies in shambles, shot through with icy cynicism and paralyzing pessimism. To put it bluntly, beneath the record-breaking stock markets on Wall Street and bipartisan budget-balancing deals in the White House lurk ominous clouds of despair across this nation.”
― Cornel West, Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black America

“And the boys were all clean, their faces freshly and brutally shaved, their hair painstakingly gelled into exquisite apparent carelessness, with this electric feeling inside of them, which matched the feelings in the girls, that they were all ascending, moving into a future that could only improve them, and I wondered what it was like - the miracle, the stupidity of feeling that.”
― Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

“DEFENSE PESSIMISM: According to psychologist Julie Norem, positive thinking doesn't work for some people, who should try defensive pessimism. Here's how it works: in the face of an anxiety-producing task instead of psyching yourself up, psyche yourself down by consciously lowering your expectations. Rehearse everything that could go wrong, and devise strategies to avert every conceivable glitch. This will produce a sense of control and reduce anxiety, helping you to perform effectively. Or, maybe not.”
― Jon Winokur, Encyclopedia Neurotica

“Pessimism is a luxury of good times. In difficult times, pessimism is a self- fulfilling, self-inflicted death sentence.”
― Evelin Lindner

“My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.”
― Jean Rostand

“Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.”
― Kingsley Amis, Jake's Thing

“Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.”
― Stephen Colbert

“I have a hunch that our obsession with photography arises from an unspoken pessimism; it is our nature to believe the good things will not last. . . But photos provide a false sense of security> like our flawed memory, they are guaranteed to fade. . . . We take photographs in order to remember, but it is in the nature of a photograph to forget (pg 157)”
― Michelle Richmond, The Year of Fog

“Faith is a luxury for those who are able to ignore what the rest of us must see every day. Pessimism, distrust, and irony are the holy trinity of my religion, irony in particular.”
― Brando Skyhorse, The Madonnas of Echo Park

“Ignore the real world
“That would never work in the real world.” You hear it all the time when you tell people about a fresh idea.
This real world sounds like an awfully depressing place to live. It’s a place where new ideas, unfamiliar approaches, and foreign concepts always
lose. The only things that win are what people already know and do, even if those things are flawed and inefficient.
Scratch the surface and you’ll find these “real world” inhabitants are filled with pessimism and despair. They expect fresh concepts to fail. They
assume society isn’t ready for or capable of change.
Even worse, they want to drag others down into their tomb. If you’re hopeful and ambitious, they’ll try to convince you your ideas are impossible.
They’ll say you’re wasting your time.”
― David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework

“the thing about pessimism is that in most cases it's nothing more than a front behind which a body can hide its most sweetful yet painful hopes. please forgive mine.”
― Eric Clapton

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
― Lao Tzu

“There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.”
― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anais Nin

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you.”
― Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby

“I finally understood what true love meant...love meant that you care for another person's happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.”
― Nicholas Sparks, Dear John

“You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper