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More "Pessimistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and quit them quite calm and natty, without a stain. Today she could not do that any more, for since she had come to know Pierre her love had caused her to be filled with the tastes and distastes of her friend; but that was not her fundamental nature. Calm and smiling by reason of her race, not pessimistic at all. Melancholy, and the grand detached airs of life were not her business. Life is as it is. Let us take it as it is! It might have been worse! The hazards of an existence which Luce had always known to be precarious, on the look-out for expedients—and particularly ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... woke up. They found that in coarse yarns the Southern mills were successfully competing with their products. Some pessimistic representatives of the industry in the North prophesied that the Southern mills would soon control the market. Some New England mills built branch mills in the South; some turned to the finer yarns; and some sought to throw obstacles in the way of their competitors. It has been ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... not the lively repast of the previous evening. In the best of circumstances breakfast is a pessimistic meal. The world never looks the same as it appeared ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... sir," replied Frobisher, cheerfully—for he had begun to have quite a strong liking for the cultured and patriotic Chinese gentleman and sailor, and was sorry to find him taking so pessimistic a view of the situation—"that matters are not so bad as you imagine, and that China will issue from the coming struggle ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... responsible for the paralysis of Japanese civilization, which, like oft-tapped maple-trees, began to die at the top. This was in accordance with its theories and its literature. In the Bible there is, possibly, one book which is pessimistic in tone, Ecclesiastes. In the bulky and dropsical canon of Buddhism there is a whole library ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... confidence in human power with which Aristotle offers to man his will and character formation as his own work, the emphasis with which he has opposed to the quietistic 'velle non discitur' (we cannot educate volition nor learn to will, as later pessimistic opinions have expressed it axiomatically) with the real indispensability and at the same time the possibility of the formation of the will; this contention is admirable and quite characteristic of the methods of thought of ancient philosophy at its height." (Jodl., ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... passion, at first playfully tender in its irony, but later, under the influence of his critical antagonism to Brunetiere, growing keener, stronger, and more bitter. In 'Thais' he has undertaken to show the bond of sympathy that unites the pessimistic sceptic to the Christian ascetic, since both despise the world. In 'Lys Rouge', his greatest novel, he traces the perilously narrow line that separates love from hate; in 'Opinions de M. l'Abbe Jerome Coignard' he has given ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Bill Brown's pessimistic views of farm life were not accepted by any save Alfred's immediate family. Alfred carried a copy of his address, "A Glimpse of Nature, or Back to the Farm" in his pocket. Mrs. Field preserved Bill ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... very pessimistic frame of mind when Jimmy curveted into the room, with his head in the clouds and ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... on the side of the higher rather than the lower thought, the nobler rather than the baser. He deliberately takes the optimistic rather than the pessimistic view of everything, the helpful, rather than the cynical, because he knows that to be fundamentally the true view. By looking continually for the good in everything that he may endeavour to strengthen it, by striving always ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... the public would listen to him, I urged him to bring out a volume of selected pieces from all his works, an idea which for some time he contested with his usual pessimistic vigour. Having, however, set my heart upon it, I spoke upon the subject to Mr. John Lane, who at once saw his way to bring out such a volume at his own risk. To the poet’s astonishment the book was a success, and it at once passed ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... a good many people of pessimistic disposition say much about greed in American life. One would think to hear them talk that we were a race of misers in this country. To lay too much stress upon the reports of greed in the newspapers would ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... very conditions of the reality, the reality with which this chapter began. And the burden of it is the burden of Palestine; the narrowness of the boundaries and the stratification of the rock. A voice not of my reason but rather sounding heavily in my heart, seemed to be repeating sentences like pessimistic proverbs. There is no place for the Temple of Solomon but on the ruins of the Mosque of Omar. There is no place for the nation of the Jews but in the country of the Arabs. And these whispers came to me first not as intellectual conclusions upon the conditions of the case, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... the day's lost opportunities the bishop passed to such a pessimistic estimate of the church as had never ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... steward, undertakes the working department and eulogises a life of labour in the fields. Omar Khayyam is established in the cellar and swears that it is the only room in the house. Even the blackest of pessimistic artists enjoys his art. At the precise moment that he has written some shameless and terrible indictment of Creation, his one pang of joy in the achievement joins the universal chorus of gratitude, with the scent of the wild flower and the song of ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... may be called peculiar in many respects. In moments of reverse, when the future seems dark, one can easily trace its pessimistic tendencies. But once his comrades buried, the wounded attended to, and a moment's rest left him by the enemy, the cheerful part of the Boer nature prevails, and he is full of fun and sport. If anybody, in a sermon or in a speech, try to impress on him the seriousness ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... gazing at the old church that had seen the end of so many sorrows more bitter than her own, and the wreck of so many summers, till the darkness began to close round her like a pall, while the wind sung the requiem of her hopes. Ida was not of a desponding or pessimistic character, but in that bitter hour she found it in her heart, as most people have at one time or another in their lives, to wish the tragedy over and the curtain down, and that she lay beneath those dripping sods without sight or hearing, without hope or dread. It seemed to her that the Hereafter ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... upon things from a pessimistic standpoint, never find anything in them save pretexts for pouring out to their hearers tales of woe ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... prominent, indicates a serious-minded person, religiously inclined, slow to reach a conclusion, very prudent, free in the expression of opinions, but inclined to be pessimistic. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... so, but I'm afraid you'll be disappointed," answered Leeds. He was a new pupil, and was of a decidedly pessimistic turn of mind. ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... Nor will the pessimistic theory that the worker must spend as much as possible on indifferent food and housing in order to keep up the rate of wages, bear the light of common sense. It is true that the man who merely hoards for the sake of hoarding, developing no new and higher wants, no clearly defined aims, will ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... but he continued to sit at the little table, reveling in the happiness of a man who feels that he has been called to some purpose worth while. His companion hesitated to interrupt his thoughts; her somewhat drab business experience made her pessimistic toward all idealism, and yet she felt that here, surely, was a man who could carry almost any project through to success. The unique quality in him, which distinguished him from any other man she had ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... people, as Roosevelt was to so an amazing degree, and as magnetic persons usually are. He is cold, hard, and selfish. His quarrels are numerous, with the campaign managers of the Armageddon fight, with his own campaign manager of 1920, with the newspaper correspondents. He is habitually pessimistic, and pessimism and magnetism ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... That it has a "dark" side some do question; but I for one, after thirty years of experience, know it to be just as true as the bright side is true. I have heard Miss Carmichael's book denounced as "pessimistic." Just what is meant by that I am not quite sure; but if it means that what she has written is untrue, then I am prepared to say that it is NOT pessimistic, for there is not a line of it that cannot ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... than "Les Miserables" of Victor Hugo, a book of exceptional literary excellence and power? Literature is full of fascinating stories, admirably told, and there is no excuse for loading our libraries with trash, going into the slums for models, or feeding young minds upon the unclean brood of pessimistic novels. If it is said that people will have trash, let them buy it, and let the libraries wash their hands of it, and refuse to circulate the stuff which no boy nor girl can touch without ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... a most memorable talk because it opened out quite new horizons of thought. I'd been working rather close and out of touch with Ewart's free gesticulating way. He was pessimistic that day and sceptical to the very root of things. He made me feel clearly, what I had not felt at all before, the general adventurousness of life, particularly of life at the stage we had reached, and also the absence of definite objects, of any concerted purpose in the lives that were ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and laughed softly. "For a naturally cheerful, and even gay young man," said she, "you are most amazingly pessimistic. The mantle of Jeremiah—if he ever wore one—seems to have fallen on you, but without in the least impairing your good spirits excepting in ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... girls are to be the men and women of to-morrow, with all the responsibilities of the world resting upon their shoulders? Do we want them to enter upon the duties of life stoop-shouldered, flat-chested, spectacle-eyed? Do we want them to be anaemic, pessimistic, nervous wrecks? Do we want them to be mental weaklings and moral cowards? Do we want them even to approximate these conditions? No? Then, with all our provisions for their wants and their needs, let us be sure to ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... with such unwonted bitterness that Sylvia was aroused out of her own depression. She had never known him take so pessimistic a view before. With an impulsiveness that was warm and very womanly, she left her task and went ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... population; a shifting of political power due to the rise of the new West—in a word, the evidences of irrepressible national energy. But this energy was inadequately expressed by the national literature. The more cultivated Americans were quite aware of this deficiency. It was confessed by the pessimistic Fisher Ames and by the ardent young men who in 1815 founded "The North American Review." British critics in "The Edinburgh" and "The Quarterly," commenting upon recent works of travel in America, pointed out the literary poverty ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... This pessimistic view, unfortunately, is fully confirmed by the records of cases examined by the Committee. Long terms of imprisonment, though combined with the lash, have proved quite ineffective as a deterrent, even to the individual concerned. In some cases the offender within a short time after his release ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... comment upon the people they saw, and the secret between them made itself felt in what they said even of Thornburys and Elliots. Always calm and unemotional in her judgments, Mrs. Ambrose was now inclined to be definitely pessimistic. She was not severe upon individuals so much as incredulous of the kindness of destiny, fate, what happens in the long run, and apt to insist that this was generally adverse to people in proportion as they deserved well. Even this theory she was ready to discard in favour of one which ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... is of a merry heart hath a continual feast,' which shows that if we are truly happy, everything about us will appear brighter and more delightful. Again, it says: 'A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.' How true this is; you never saw a sour, gloomy pessimistic person who was in real good health, while the one who shows the most gladsome face is either in splendid physical condition or else has risen above his pains and distress in his appreciation of God's blessings. They are always believing that 'it ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... this beautiful emancipation, so the dream began in the time of Keats and Shelley to creep down among the dullest professions and the most prosaic classes of society. A spirit of revolt was growing among the young of the middle classes, which had nothing at all in common with the complete and pessimistic revolt against all things in heaven or earth, which has been fashionable among the young in more recent times. The Shelleyan enthusiast was altogether on the side of existence; he thought that every cloud and clump of grass shared his strict republican orthodoxy. He represented, in short, a revolt ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... lived—Cold-blood Slaughter, as they termed him, from his pessimistic, cynical manner of thought and speech—was an out-of-the-way spot even for the district of Birralong. A track, which was little more than what would result were a dray driven off the road at right angles, branched off the main road, and meandered for a couple of miles, always indistinct and never ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... goodly and glad, had become discredited; the world was no longer young, no longer fresh and fair and hopeful; it had passed through ages of war and misery, it was harassed by doubt, the general feeling was what we would now call pessimistic, and a resigned melancholy, a keen sense of there being something wrong in the universe, can be felt in every line of Virgil, and there are tears in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... is: "Why does he not divide all feelings into pleasurable and not-pleasurable, rather than into 'painful and not-painful'?" A Westerner will not be at a loss to answer that: "Oh, the Hindu is naturally so very pessimistic, that he naturally ignores pleasure and speaks of painful and not-painful. The universe is full of pain." But that would not be a true answer. In the first place the Hindu is not pessimistic. He is the most optimistic of men. He has not ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... way clear to follow the standard, why, appoint those that will, for as every fair minded man agrees, the dogs should follow the standard and not the standard follow the dogs. It is needless to add that I do not share in the pessimistic view taken by many lovers of the dog who think he will be permanently injured by the differences of opinion that prevail as to the type, etc., and the personalities that sometimes mar the showing of the dog, for I am of the same opinion as was probably felt by the great fish ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... thread of unbroken development. Hermann, the immature hero of the former, and his associates, bequeath a number of characteristics to the title-hero and his associates of the latter; but where the earlier work is predominantly sarcastic, political, and pessimistic, the later one is humorous, intellectual, and optimistic. It would seem, therefore, that, in view of its bright outlook, mature view, and sympathetic treatment, Immermann's greatest epic in prose was destined to be read in its entirety, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the pessimistic atmosphere of Capetown with relief, went by sea to Durban, the defence of which was entrusted to the Royal Navy, and reached Pietermaritzburg on November 25. By this time the situation had improved all along the ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... chiffon belts, you mean, not costumes, if we go by Corbett's clothes ideas," growled the pessimistic, prospective producer of the possible next season's hit in the ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the thinking of not a few persons the handicaps that lie in the path of social development bulk larger than the engines of progress. They are pessimistic over the weaknesses that constitute a fifth characteristic of social life. These are certainly not to be overlooked, but they are an inevitable result of incomplete adaptations during a constant process of change. There are ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... ideals of East and West clash. The East, bearing a huge burden of misery and essentially pessimistic, exhorts patience. The West, eager and ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... believing or misbelieving or unbelieving, have thought deeply and felt deeply, who have seen clearly that materialism leaves nothing for man's soul but the husks of swine; who have therefore boldly faced the inevitable alternative between spiritualistic philosophy and hope, and materialism with its pessimistic corollary. That a man may be a materialist or atheist and enjoy life thoroughly, who does not know? but then it is just at the expense of his manhood, because he lives without thought, reflection, or aspiration, i.e., materialistically. ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... the record of public opinion, and from time to time have invoked the aid of psychometry, which has dissipated every fear and contradicted all the pessimistic notions of politicians and newspaper correspondents ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... with a gesture of despair. He sat down in the high armchair that stood on the hearth, and tapped on the floor with one foot in pessimistic thought. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... question whether Europe shall enter an era of justice, and therefore happiness for the small peoples, or whether we will face a period of oppression more or less gilt edged. And as I always believed that wisdom and truth will triumph in the end, I want to believe, too, that, in spite of the pessimistic news reaching me from the different sides of the Balkan countries, there will be no war among them in order to justify those who do not believe in the ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... is a good time to buy stocks when nearly everybody wants to sell them. When general business conditions are bad, trading on the stock exchanges very light, and everybody you meet appears to be pessimistic, then we advise you to look for bargains in stocks. The last six months of 1921 was an unusually good time ...
— Successful Stock Speculation • John James Butler
... Church at least—to a large proportion even of those who do now attend? Rivalry between Museum and Gin-palace one can contemplate hopefully. But if the real rivalry is to be between Museum and Church, with such results as this rather pessimistic parson predicts, the look-out seems rather dismal—for the Church! Surely this is the highest compliment to secular attractions ever paid by a cleric! Mr. Punch hopes—and believes—it is as ill-deserved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... a page of the peculiar doubt that was as characteristic of her as the quick changes of her eyes. It gives just that pessimistic touch that tempered her valiant adventurousness, that gave a color at last to the tragedy ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... considering Bergson in relation to Religion and Theology, is his marked objection to teleology. It is this which has led many to style his philosophy pessimistic. Religion does not live readily in a pessimistic atmosphere. Then religion regards Life and the Universe as valuable, not because they yield to some single impulsion, but because, at every step, they manifest a meaning and significance interpreted by our conceptions ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... credit given to me for that undertaking, by the glamour of romance thrown around an army of 10,000 men lost to view, as it were, for nearly a month, about the fate of which uninformed speculation was rife and pessimistic rumours were spread, until the tension became extreme, and the corresponding relief proportionably great when that army reappeared to dispose at once of Ayub ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... of the association was held Dec. 14-19, 1915, in Washington, the scene of many which had preceded it, with 546 accredited delegates, the largest number on record. The one of the preceding year had left many of the members in a pessimistic frame of mind but this had entirely disappeared and never were there so much hope and optimism.[99] The Federal Amendment had for the first time been debated and voted on in the House of Representatives, receiving ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... match-maker," she said at last, "and so probably my view is unnecessarily pessimistic. But I happened to see Lady Constance just now, and I cannot pretend that she struck ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to the magic of Nature and the wonder of youth. Prospero, dismissing his spirits "into thin air," has the last word; and the last word is as the first: "we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." The easy-going persons who reluct at the idea of a pessimistic Shakespeare should turn the pages of Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, and Timon of Athens. What we guessed as we read Hamlet and Lear grows a certainty as we read ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... servant girl's pessimistic view, Jeanne had little apprehension as she went to the doctor's study, and Legrand's method of receiving her was reassuring. He rose, bowed low and placed a chair for her. He spoke of the pleasant crispness in the air, of the little dance which had taken place ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... time her baby was eighteen months old, she had finished it. It was blankly pessimistic, of course. Blank pessimism is the one creed possible for all save fools. To hold any other is to curl yourself up selfishly in your own easy chair, and say to your soul, "O soul, eat and drink; O soul, make merry. Carouse thy fill. Ignore ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... satisfactory reply to the persons who eke out a livelihood by publishing pessimistic books, and hooting, as the great Alexandre Dumas says, at ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... man, opens the door from yard and enters. He is elderly, and with a pessimistic expression of face, relieved somewhat by the sly humour that is in his eyes. He walks slowly to the centre of the kitchen, looks at KATE, and then turns his eyes, with a disgusted shake of the head, towards the dresser as if searching ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... them very concisely that he would pay them a thousand dollars for the first ear of corn raised in Salt Lake Valley. It is true that Bridger seemed to have become pessimistic in many matters. For one, the West was becoming overcrowded and the price of furs was falling at a rate to alarm the most conservative trapper. He referred feelingly to the good old days when one got ten dollars a pound for prime beaver skins in St. Louis; but "now ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... things by myself till I'm tired of arguing them out in my own head, and I want you to come down beforehand, so as to cheer me up a bit with your lighter and brighter philosophy. On the very eve of my marriage, I'm somehow getting dreadfully pessimistic.' ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... ambition, happiness, all must be abandoned: abandoned while I live, not after I have made myself, by years of self-discipline, indifferent to such considerations.... But for its piety, the Imitation is, I think, the most pessimistic book in the world. The Exercises of St. Ignatius (perhaps because he was a saint) produce quite an opposite effect upon me; they exhort us to hope, action, courage. They make one a citizen of both worlds. Merely to read him ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... would probably have been plural rather than singular—and of a conversation with Lord Basset, which might have resulted in something of interest: and life was exceedingly devoid of interest, thought Mr Godfrey, in a pessimistic spirit. He had not discovered that, to a great extent, life is to every man what he chooses to make it; that he who keeps his eyes fixed on street mud need not expect to discover pearls, while he who attentively scans the heavens is not at all unlikely to see stars. Let ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... however numerous they may be, can only give rise to a pessimistic or fault-finding temper in a faint-hearted and timid man. All these failings have a casual, transitory character, and are completely dependent on conditions of life; in some ten years they will have disappeared or given place to other fresh defects, which are all inevitable ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Charley promptly annexed the slight overhang of the cliff whence the deer had jumped. It was dry at the moment, but we uttered pessimistic predictions if the wind should change. Tom Rich and Jim Lester had a little tent, and insisted on ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... himself and for others! Gifted, self-willed, proud, passionate, with meager moral sense, he forfeited success by his perversity and his vices. From his own character and experience he drew the unhealthy and pessimistic views to which he has given expression in the maddening poem, The Conqueror Worm. And if there were not happier and nobler lives, we might well say with him, as we ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Haeckel, all the school of pessimistic philosophers that exercised such a tremendous influence upon the thought of his day; but he had always instinctively rebelled against the nihilism of their creed, the creed of materialism. Yet, at this moment he was perilously ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... Lothario, or a lover pour le bon motif? What are his distinguished family to think of the love affair, which would certainly ensue in fiction, though in real life nobody thought of it at all? Are we to end happily, with a marriage or marriages, or are we to wind all up in the pleasant, pessimistic, realistic, fashionable modern way? Is Mary to drown the baby in the Muckle Pool? Is she to suffer the penalty of her crime at Inverness? Or, happy thought, shall we not make her discarded rival lover meet Dick in the hills on a sunny day and then—are they not ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... year comes the necessity of looking forward to a new period—perhaps to be joyful, perhaps otherwise; anyway, a period on which it is necessary to enter as far as possible with confidence. From the general point of view that is not an easy matter as things stand. I am bound to say I am getting pessimistic about the War. The chief trouble is the total lack of action that characterises it. This grovelling in ditches is a rotten, foolish business in many ways—though to me sitting in comfort and safety behind the lines ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... characteristics of the Brahman and Buddhist religions are idealism and pessimism, which look upon the existence of the world as in the nature of a dream, and life as the result of our sins. In the doctrines of the Zendavesta, from which, as is well known, Judaism sprang, the pessimistic element is represented by Ahriman. In Judaism, Ahriman has as Satan only a subordinate position; but, like Ahriman, he is the lord of snakes, scorpions, and vermin. But the Jewish system forthwith ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... all seem extremely pessimistic. But it is only seemingly so. Experience shows it to ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... higher civilisation. The higher civilisation, so far, had treated them inconsiderately, at sparrow clubs. The Owl talked a good deal about the low moral tone of the human race in this respect, and was pessimistic about it, failing to perceive that higher types of organisms always like to signify their superiority over lower ones by shooting them, or otherwise making their lives a burden. The Owl, however, was a very talented bird, and one felt that even ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... the supreme folly of having a half-dozen competing lines, running side by side through the same territory, will be fully demonstrated. With this demonstration, will come the opportunity, to scores of paid press writers, pessimistic bigots, self-conceited, unprogressive wiseacres, who have so long and so loudly derided the government ownership of railroads, as the most suicidal and unbusiness like scheme ever hatched; to answer this pertinent ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... her mind, she was unprepared for the sober, pessimistic expression of Dr. Sartorius's face when he had finished his examination. He withdrew a little distance from the bed, and beckoned ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Torpedo Jimmy became a symbol. The more I long for peace, the more I long for that historic smoke. When Louisa's brother or Nora's uncle has a long pessimistic talk with KITCHENER, then I look sadly at my cigar; but when FRENCH and JOFFRE unbend to Vera's stepfather or Beryl's cousin and give him words of cheer, then I take it out and pinch it fondly, and already I see the waiter coming round with a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... rising inflection of the voice and a smile, say: "Ah! c'est gai la-bas—and monsieur was well amused while in that beautiful country?" "ah!—tiens! c'est gentil ca!" they will exclaim, as you enthusiastically continue to explain. They never dull your enthusiasm by short phlegmatic or pessimistic replies. And when you are sad they will condone so genuinely with you that you forget your disappointments in the charming pleasantry of their sympathy. But all this continual race for pleasure is destined in the course of time to end ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... pensions for discharged men have been condemned by members of all parties. So the War is not altogether forgotten by the House. Mr. Lloyd George, the new War Secretary, without wasting breath on the pessimistic comments of his colleague Mr. Churchill, has given an encouraging survey of the general situation. The cry has gone up that Mr. Hughes Must Come Back from Australia, and Mr. Swift MacNeill has been rewarded for his pertinacity ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... rarely spoken of as a whole, but in three portions, as if each were a complete work. The first is the long exordium, exhausting the pessimistic title (contempt of the world), and passing on to the second, where begins the real "Laus Patriae Coelestis." This being cut in two, making a third portion, has enriched the Christian world with two of its best hymns, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... they'll be old folks, too, which most of 'em seems to forget," returned Mrs. Dysart, sending a pessimistic glance after the ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... a pessimistic humour. He was one of those men who are brave enough on good wine and victuals, but lack the stamina to fight when hungry. He returned presently with the required information. The Plaza de Cadiz was, it appeared, quite close. Indeed, the town of Xeres is not ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... Cap'n Ira, in the same pessimistic way. "But it ain't had a coat of shack fish for three years and this spring not much seaweed. Besides that, after the potatoes are planted, who is to hoe 'em and knock the ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... last, we include all the laws of higher living, thinking and being, and we bring from the hidden center within ourselves a profound knowledge. As our life grows more and more in the power of perception, we retire farther and farther from the personal, the pessimistic, the limited belief of selfishness, condemnation, resistance, and we begin a new thought life filled with moral, intellectual and spiritual glory, and even though "since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... true," the girl sighed. "There are a great many unhappy marriages. Of course, people would say it was rather pessimistic, wouldn't they?" ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... man too responsible; the next, with not making him responsible enough. The truth is, that we need not try to make man too responsible in order to make him responsible enough. It has often been pointed out, that the Christian religion is by turns optimistic and pessimistic. St. Paul is pessimist enough where he says: "For I know that in me—that is, in my flesh—dwelleth no good thing." But who so optimistic as the same Apostle when he declares: "I can do all things through Christ which ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... the heat. We have gone far enough to know that when the fuel on the surface of our globe is all used up we shall only have to tap the center to get all the heat we want." "What a capital idea that will be," I interrupted, "to throw at some of our pessimistic friends on ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... now," said Madeleine. "We know your love for paradox. But not to-day. There's no time for philosophising today. Besides, you are in a pessimistic mood, and that's a ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... bad of you," she said. "Your point of view is almost as pessimistic as the detectives', or the newspapers'. I had expected comfort ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... said kind Lady Arabel. "Things are not so bad as that, surely. You must not be so dretfully pessimistic." ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... invention which had been the haunting vision of his uninspiring life. He had not been met with the careless rapture which had been described to him, and he was becoming violently antagonistic to American capital and pessimistic in his views of American institutions. Like Tembarom's father, he ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "You are pessimistic," mocked Livingstone. "It is the fault of the Irish that they have no faith in any government, because they cannot establish one ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... accumulating documents and methodically arranging them in a method that refuses to be concealed, advances in a rectilineal order, step by step, and with a measured gait, to a solid truth which he did not wish to be either evasive or complex. Highly pessimistic and a little affecting to be so, just as Renan was optimistic and much affected being so, he believed in the evil origin of man and of the necessity for him to be drastically curbed if he is to remain inoffensive. He has written a history of the Revolution wherein ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... as if both wind and tide had favoured me. I have suffered no great losses, or defeats, or illness, or accidents, and have undergone no great struggles or privations; I have had no grouch, I have not wanted the earth. I am pessimistic by night, but by day I am a confirmed optimist, and it is the days that have stamped my life. I have found this planet a good corner of the universe to live in and I am not in a hurry to exchange it ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... was not accustomed to be addressed in so pessimistic a tone, and the mere mention of her arch-enemy— Glenwilliam—had put defiance into her. With some dryness, she preached energy, watchfulness, and a hopeful mind. The agent grasped the situation with the quickness born of long acquaintance with her, and adroitly shifted ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pessimistic. Academy of Epicurus indeed! For once there was a great deal in a name. The class mentioned repeated it sneeringly; it spoke to them, and ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... we will get the emeralds. I, Valmont, pledge you my word. But if Mr. Jonas Carter before marriage calls a halt upon the ceremony until your uncle places fifty thousand pounds upon the table, I confess I am very pessimistic about your obtaining control of the ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... well as among the white school teachers, referred to above. That there is much in the present situation, both of encouragement and discouragement, is patent. Unfortunately, most of us shut our eyes to one or the other set of facts and are wildly optimistic or pessimistic, accordingly. That there may be no misunderstanding of my position, let me say that I agree with the late Dr. J. L. M. Curry in stating that: "I have very little respect for the intelligence or the patriotism of the man who doubts the capacity ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... not assert that it need necessarily be maintained as a Religious Office. There are serious objections to the attempt at divine officiation by those who have no conviction of their own Divine Office. There are surely sufficient persons, even in pessimistic and agnostic Spain, to carry on the Mass in sincerity for a long time to come. When sincerity failed, I would hold that the Mass as an act of religion ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... accordion,—had not arrived. There was a general idea that the mail-sleigh, in which the musicians were to travel, had been delayed by the storm, and might break its way through the snow-drifts and arrive at any moment. But Bill Moody, who was naturally of a pessimistic temperament, had offered ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... lyric's name. Yet, as to its art and imagery, the same effects are there, differing only in a more vigorous method, an intentional roughness, from the individual early verse. The new burthen is termed pessimistic, but for all its impatient summary of ills, it ends with a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... attacked on opposite grounds at once. It is condemned for being pessimistic, it is blamed for being optimistic. From this position Chesterton deduces that it is the only rational religion, because it steers between the Scylla of pessimism and avoids the Charybdis of a facile ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... Admiral considered must have floated off from some island; "not the continent," says the Admiral, whose theories are not to be disturbed by a piece of grass, "because I make the continental land farther onward." The crew, ready to take the most depressing and pessimistic view of everything, considered that the lumps of grass belonged to rocks or submerged lands, and murmured disparaging things about the Admiral. As a matter of fact these grasses were masses of seaweed detached from the Sargasso Sea, which ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... political economy (thirty, it is said) have been published in the last quarter of a century, a fact which has now and then been deplored by the pessimistic critic.[27] Few share this opinion, however. The textbooks have, to be sure, often served, not to unfold a consistent system of thought, but to reveal the lack of one. But they have afforded to the teachers and students, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... for good, in spite of the obvious unpopularity which an incessant critic cannot fail to draw down upon himself. The most pessimistic of us secretly crave a little respite when for half an hour we may forget the circumambient and all-pervading gloom: music, or an entertaining book, or a dear friend lifts the burden from us. And then comes our uncompromising pessimist and chides us for our ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... approaching doom," he writes, kept him from sleep, his fears being equal to his hopes. He was especially sensitive and discouraged by unforeseen expenditure, while his sanguine partner, Roebuck, on the contrary, continued hopeful and energetic, and often rallied his pessimistic partner on his propensity to look upon the dark side. He was one of those who adhered to the axiom, "Never bid the devil good-morning till you meet him." Smiles believes that it is probable that without Roebuck's support ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... The pessimistic man, observing these conditions, is filled with despair for the future of humanity. He predicts worse and worse times ahead, while he longs for the peaceable old days before the steam engine had appeared ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... part, precisely in the sense that the thing so vividly gripped is not or need not be permanent, may turn into something else, has only a tenancy, not a freehold, in its conditions of space and time, a 'toss-up' hold upon existence, as it were, full of the zest of adventurous insecurity. A pessimistic philosophy would dissipate this romance, or strip it of all but the mournful poetry of doom. Mr. Chesterton glorifies the dust which may become a flower or a face, against the Reverend Peter Bell for whom dust is dust and no more, and Hamlet who only remembers that it once was Caesar. If our realism ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... are still bad enough but they are certainly enormously better than they were some centuries ago. To say that the world is full of crime and violence proves nothing; nor does even the fact that a civilized nation has reverted to the wartime practices of savage life furnish real ground for a pessimistic view. What we have to do in determining whether there has been any racial progress in morality is to take as our standard of measurement something that tests the collective conscience. How does the world of today view war and how ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... needs of the situation. We have been carrying on a ship-building program with reference to conditions after the war. It is only within ten days that we have realized that the end of the war will be one of defeat unless we build twice as fast as we proposed to build. You know that I am not pessimistic. It is not my habit to look upon the gloomy side of things. It is no kindness to the American people or to France or England to give them words of good cheer now. This war is right at this minute a challenge to every particle of ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... breakfast thrice as hearty. The heavy, purging toil of weeks had given him the stomach and appetite of a wolf. He could eat anything, in any quantity, and be unaware that he possessed a digestion. Shorty he found voluble and pessimistic, and from him he received surprising tips concerning their bosses and ominous forecasts of the expedition. Thomas Stanley Sprague was a budding mining engineer and the son of a millionaire. Doctor Adolph Stine was also the son of a wealthy father. And, through their fathers, both had been ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... manner, ill temper, or a pessimistic outlook, on the contrary, will handicap the sale ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... most people," says Neilson. "Don't grow pessimistic, Margaret. There is a great deal of light and joy and laughter in the world, and I know no one so framed to enjoy it as yourself, if only you would give yourself full sway. You condemn marriage, yet how can you speak of it with authority—you ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... the nominal wealth of a community in millions of pounds or dollars or Lions, measured nothing but the quantity of hope in the air, and an increase of confidence meant an inflation of credit and a pessimistic phase a collapse of this hallucination of possessions. The new standards, this advocate reasoned, were to alter all that, and it ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... hot under the collar, as he always did in dealing with the pessimistic skipper. "But we're only fifteen miles from the ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... immortality through the endless life of children's children. Seeking counsels of our own souls' perfection, we have despised and rejected the possible increasing perfection of unending generations. Or if we are thrown back in pessimistic despair from making living folk decent, we leap to idle speculations of a thousand years hereafter instead of working steadily and persistently for the ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of brow-beating suavely the uppish representative of some foreign State. No man could then rival him in the insolently aristocratic school of diplomacy which England has made her own. But in his most dangerous crisis he had never been restless, apprehensive, pessimistic, as he was at this moment. And after all it was a very simple matter that had brought him there. It was merely the question of meeting a man as if by accident, and then afterwards making that man do certain things required of him. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... easy, however, to exaggerate the effect of the war on our power to finance other peoples. Pessimistic observers, with a pacifist turn of mind, who regard all war as a hideous barbarism and refuse to see that anything good can come out of it, are apt in these days to make our flesh creep by telling us that war will inevitably leave Europe ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... characters find a more congenial soil to grow in than in Protestantism, whose fashions of feeling have been set by minds of a decidedly pessimistic order. But even in Protestantism they have been abundant enough; and in its recent "liberal" developments of Unitarianism and latitudinarianism generally, minds of this order have played and still are playing leading and constructive parts. Emerson himself ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... experience of the new city and had impressed them with at least a subconscious idea of opportunity. Another certain proportion, however, remained in San Francisco without attempting the mines. These were either men who were discouraged by pessimistic tales, men who had sickened of the fever, or more often men who were attracted by the big opportunities for wealth which the city then afforded. Thus at once we have two different types to consider, the ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... not be surprised if some day I meet Eileen somewhere, because Dana and I are going about more than you would believe possible. I heartily join with you in wishing her every good that life can bring her. I don't want to be pessimistic, but I can't help feeling, Linda, that she is taking a poor way to win the best, and I gravely doubt whether she finds it in the spending of unlimited quantities of the money of a coarse man who stumbled upon his riches accidentally, as has many a ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the religion of these teachers. In the quiet assumption that life is not worth living, they are as pessimistic as was Buddha. But if, as seems to be the case, the Buddhist believed in the eventual extinction of his individuality, their pessimism is of a different sort. For the teacher of the Upanishads believes that ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... say the event proved that my pessimistic friend was by far too pessimistic. Of the seven seats to which the arrondissement of Lille is entitled, four were carried by the Monarchists—in two cases without an attempt seriously to contest them; and if the seven candidates had been voted for on a single ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... reserved for my old age to discover within me the power of poetical expression. I had rhymed in my youth and translated French verse, but until I wrote my one sonnet, poetry had been an untried field. The one-sided pessimistic pictures that Australian poets and writers present are false in the impression they make on the outside world and on ourselves. They lead us to forget the beauty and the brightness of the world we live in. What ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... the association was held Dec. 14-19, 1915, in Washington, the scene of many which had preceded it, with 546 accredited delegates, the largest number on record. The one of the preceding year had left many of the members in a pessimistic frame of mind but this had entirely disappeared and never were there so much hope and optimism.[99] The Federal Amendment had for the first time been debated and voted on in the House of Representatives, receiving 204 ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... breakfast, Kit sat down under the tarpaulin and ate a second breakfast thrice as hearty. The heavy, purging toil of weeks had given him the stomach and appetite of a wolf. He could eat anything, in any quantity, and be unaware that he possessed a digestion. Shorty he found voluble and pessimistic, and from him he received surprising tips concerning their bosses and ominous forecasts of the expedition. Thomas Stanley Sprague was a budding mining engineer and the son of a millionaire. Doctor Adolph Stine was also the son of a wealthy father. And, through their ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... had happened. The bitter cup was full, the iron neatly inserted in Gethryn's soul. In his most pessimistic moments he had never looked forward to the coming term so gloomily as he did now. His uncle noted his lack of enthusiasm, and attributed it to anxiety on behalf ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... ordered where shall it begin? Obviously among the teachers themselves. But judging from the estimate each one puts upon himself how shall we reform a thing which is already perfect? On the other hand, if we take the pessimistic attitude that all teachers are wrong will it not be a case of the blind leading the blind, in which instance their destination is definitely determined somewhere in the New Testament. Verily the situation ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... record of public opinion, and from time to time have invoked the aid of psychometry, which has dissipated every fear and contradicted all the pessimistic notions of politicians and newspaper correspondents down to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... thinking of not a few persons the handicaps that lie in the path of social development bulk larger than the engines of progress. They are pessimistic over the weaknesses that constitute a fifth characteristic of social life. These are certainly not to be overlooked, but they are an inevitable result of incomplete adaptations during a constant process of change. There are numerous illustrations of weakness. Social activity is not always ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... dismal, obscure, dim, shaded, lowering, overcast, lurid; melancholy, dejected, sad, despondent, pessimistic, disheartened, morose, crestfallen, glum, saturnine; disheartening, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... always be sought when symptoms are not understood; but it is not unusual for patients to bring to the doctor's attention many complaints that would pass unnoticed if they taught themselves to restrain the imagination, to refrain from pessimistic reflections, and to divert their thoughts ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... boys and girls are to be the men and women of to-morrow, with all the responsibilities of the world resting upon their shoulders? Do we want them to enter upon the duties of life stoop-shouldered, flat-chested, spectacle-eyed? Do we want them to be anaemic, pessimistic, nervous wrecks? Do we want them to be mental weaklings and moral cowards? Do we want them even to approximate these conditions? No? Then, with all our provisions for their wants and their needs, let us be sure to develop those things which ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... far from showing that Seneca had the least inkling of a doctrine of the Progress of humanity. Such a doctrine is sharply excluded by the principles of his philosophy and his profoundly pessimistic view of human affairs. Immediately after the passage which I have quoted he goes on to enlarge on the progress of vice. "Are you surprised to be told that human knowledge has not yet completed its whole task? Why, human wickedness has not yet ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Austrian army and underestimated the Russian. In this case they might face the danger of an invasion of Germany itself from Russia. Owing to the heterogeneous character of the Austrian army with its many races and the many pessimistic prophesies that have been made about the loyalty of the Slav portions of Austria, which were fulfilled it is said by the mutiny of some Slav regiments, it looked as if such ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... She was not accustomed to be addressed in so pessimistic a tone, and the mere mention of her arch-enemy— Glenwilliam—had put defiance into her. With some dryness, she preached energy, watchfulness, and a hopeful mind. The agent grasped the situation with the quickness born of long acquaintance with her, and adroitly ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... life of the communities to which they were applied but that they quickened every force and bettered every condition in those communities. But the people of New Jersey could not get them, and there had come upon them a certain pessimistic despair. I used to meet men who shrugged their shoulders and said: "What difference does it make how we vote? Nothing ever results from our votes." The force that is behind the new party that has recently been formed, the so-called "Progressive Party," is ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... above was written, I have read in the Outdoor World for April, 1912, the views of a veteran sportsman and writer, Mr. Emerson Hough, on the wild-life situation as it seems to him to-day. It is a strong utterance, even though it reaches a pessimistic and gloomy conclusion which I do not share. Altogether, however, its breadth of view, its general accuracy, and its incisiveness, entitle it to a full hearing. The following is only an extract from a lengthy article entitled, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... as if this poor woman had worked at step-cleaning herself for a living, she was so pessimistic about it, and appeared to be so very familiar with the whole subject. People never believe that a fortune is to be made at any business in which ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... good fellow finds himself in need. He goes to other good fellows, but they can't help him because they are in the same boat themselves. Then our good fellow grows pessimistic, and finds out too late that it does not pay ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... and a very motley audience,—I mean the want of money."[127] This degraded condition of the London stage Scott thought to be a consequence of limiting the number of theaters. We can hardly suppose, however, that he was pessimistic in regard to the written drama of his day, when he could say of Byron, "There is one who, to judge from the dramatic sketch he has given us in Manfred, must be considered as a match for Aeschylus, even in his sublimest moods of horror";[128] or when ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... birth-rates, though he also thinks that pressure on the labour market has forced both rates lower than the course of prices would lead one to expect. In so far as these causes are concerned, Udny Yule states, the fall is quite normal and pessimistic views are misplaced. Udny Yule, however, appears to be by no means confident that his explanation covers a large part of the causation, and he admits that he cannot understand the rationale of the connection between marriage-rates and prices. The ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... noticed distinctly that, from 1895 on, its tone became more pessimistic and its criticism was marked by greater acerbity. Mr. Rollo Ogden in his biography shows that Godkin's feeling of disappointment over the progress of the democratic experiment in America, and his hopelessness of our future, ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... not wish to seem, even, to be cynical or pessimistic, but when I look at some of the mental pabulum that our newspapers supply, I cannot but feel that we are making vast efforts to maintain the commonplace and ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... taking it for granted that you are the Prince, otherwise 'twere useless to waste time in this talk. You display all the confidence of youth in speaking of the exploits you propose, and, indeed, it is cheering for a middle-aged person like myself to meet one so confident of anything in these pessimistic days. But have you considered what will happen if something goes wrong ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... I known Raffles in so pessimistic a mood. I did not share his sombre view of either matter, though I confined my remarks to the one that seemed to weigh most heavily on ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... There had been a few protests against the new proposals with regard to legislation; but not enough to rouse any suspicion that violence would be attempted. Finally, when the organized emigration was beginning, and even the most pessimistic politicians were beginning to regard the situation as saved, without the slightest warning the blow had been struck, obviously by the directions of an international council whose very existence ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... in" women salesmen, and his lack of faith was more evident now that Una was back in the office. Una grew more pessimistic as she realized that his idea of women salesmen was a pure, high, aloof thing which wasn't to be affected by anything happening in his office right under his nose. But she was too busy selling lots, instructing her women aides, and furnishing a four-room flat near Stuyvesant Park, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... our affairs were conducted before the war is about as hopeful an enterprise as if an elderly jobbing brick-layer, working on strict trade-union rules, set out to stop the biggest avalanche that ever came down a mountain-side. And since I am by no means altogether pessimistic, in spite of my qualmy phases, it follows that I do not believe that the old spirit will necessarily prevail. I do not, because I believe that in the past few decades a new spirit has come into human affairs; that ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... find backers among profuse and innumerable multi- millionaires for the invention which had been the haunting vision of his uninspiring life. He had not been met with the careless rapture which had been described to him, and he was becoming violently antagonistic to American capital and pessimistic in his views of American institutions. Like Tembarom's father, he was the ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Carlton" was next door to "The Rats' Retreat," with "Vermin Villa" next door but one. "The Suicide Club" was the suburban residence of some members of the bombing squad. I remarked that the bombers seemed to take rather a pessimistic view of their profession, whereupon Shorty told me that if there were any men slated for the Order of the Wooden Cross, the bombers were those unfortunate ones. In an assault they were first at the enemy's position. They had ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... looked at me and laughed softly. "For a naturally cheerful, and even gay young man," said she, "you are most amazingly pessimistic. The mantle of Jeremiah—if he ever wore one—seems to have fallen on you, but without in the least impairing your good spirits excepting in ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... because of the sad heart that beats under it. Every pain is keener because of the dispiriting which it brings with it. Every sorrow is made darker by the hopelessness with which it is endured. Every care is magnified, and the sweetness of every pleasure is lessened, by this pessimistic tendency. The beauty of the world loses half its charm in the eyes which see all things in the hue of despondent feeling. Slightest fears become terrors, and smallest trials grow into great misfortunes. Our heart makes our world for us; and if the heart be without hope and cheer, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... was a most memorable talk because it opened out quite new horizons of thought. I'd been working rather close and out of touch with Ewart's free gesticulating way. He was pessimistic that day and sceptical to the very root of things. He made me feel clearly, what I had not felt at all before, the general adventurousness of life, particularly of life at the stage we had reached, and also the absence of definite objects, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... those who look upon things from a pessimistic standpoint, never find anything in them save pretexts for pouring out to their hearers tales ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... apprehension of injustice is so keen and true, {155} and his seriousness, in view of the weariness and offence that the whole subject gives to a great majority of the people, is so urgent, that the paper has been criticized as pessimistic, and as an impatient cry against evils that are speedily being rectified. We may say that the optimistic view of evils never did much to correct them, and that those who are patient with wrongs will never create a sentiment against them. To us, this seems the voice of a prophet pleading ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., June, 1888., No. 6 • Various
... hopeful, joyous demeanor so that his followers may also be joyous or hopeful and thus be energized to their best. Morale is the state of emotion of a group; it is raised when joyous, energizing emotions are set working in the group and is lowered when pessimistic deenergizing emotions become dominant. A city or a nation becomes energized with good news and success and deenergized when ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... paced the room, but outside in the road her gaze fell on old Aaron who was uneasily pacing, too, and in his drooping shoulders and grimly set face she read no encouragement to hope. That morose and pessimistic figure held her gaze with a fascination of terror and she watched it until its pacing finally carried it around a twist of the road. Then she went out and stood under the tree which in its wordlessness was still a more ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... tender in its irony, but later, under the influence of his critical antagonism to Brunetiere, growing keener, stronger, and more bitter. In 'Thais' he has undertaken to show the bond of sympathy that unites the pessimistic sceptic to the Christian ascetic, since both despise the world. In 'Lys Rouge', his greatest novel, he traces the perilously narrow line that separates love from hate; in 'Opinions de M. l'Abbe Jerome Coignard' ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... peoples, or whether we will face a period of oppression more or less gilt-edged. And as I always believed that wisdom and truth will triumph in the end, I want to believe, too, that, in spite of the pessimistic news reaching me from the different sides of the Balkan countries, there will be no war among them in order to justify those who do not believe in the vitality of the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... enjoyable thinking. Books sometimes furnish this, when they lift the mind as far as possible out of its usual track, and produce only pleasant thoughts. Tragedies, novels which end miserably, or which are pessimistic, should all be avoided. Perhaps some easy science or art is the best exercise of all, when the brain is suffering from overstrain. But taste will guide in this. The great matter is to have pleasurable, easy, and natural ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... his weapon, and ever and anon he would utter some pessimistic word, or presage dire disaster, or remind Casey that his scalp was destined to dry in a Sioux's lodge, or call on Shane to hit something to save his life, or declare the engine was off the track. He rambled on. But it was all talk. The man had gray hairs ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... of marriage is clearly inside the province of government. That such an argument as is quoted from William Lloyd Garrison can still be circulated in the United States and apparently carry weight, is sufficient cause for one to feel pessimistic over the spread of the scientific spirit in this nation. Suffice it to say that on this point the National Association is a century behind ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... helped to prepare the way for the French Revolution. Among the Italians, too, each man appeals to this noble instinct within him, and though with regard to the people as a whole—chiefly in consequence of the national disasters— judgements of a more pessimistic sort became prevalent, the importance of this sense of honour must still be rated highly. If the boundless development of individuality, stronger than the will of the individual, be the work of a historical ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... on Chinese armaments no mention is ever made of the Yuen-nan army, and statistics are hard to get. But it is evident that the cult of the military stands paramount, and it has to be conceded, even by the most pessimistic critics of this backward province, that the new troops are sufficiently numerous and sufficiently well-organized to crush any rebellion. This must be counted a very fair result, since it has been attained in about two years. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... witness to the fact that his liver was still in him—and he was inclined to take a pessimistic view of life. Peter Walsh paid no attention to his ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... in their point of view, so very clear, incisive, brief, with so much point in them (The Second Motive; The Right Man). For by then having been struggling with the short-story problem in other magazine offices before this, I had become not a little pessimistic as to the trend of American short fiction, as well as long—the impossibility of finding any, even supposing it publishable once we had it. My own experience with "Sister Carrie" as well as the fierce opposition or chilling indifference ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Schnitzler's profession, too, has not been without some influence upon his poetical work. A physician facing humanity daily not in strength and health, but in weakness and disease, cannot divest himself of a certain pessimistic bias. Brought up and practising in a city like Vienna, he cannot escape the cynicism which belongs alike to the man of the world as to the doctor before whom all veils and pretenses are discarded. It is difficult, indeed, to banish the idea ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Alfred's knowledge goes, Bill Brown's pessimistic views of farm life were not accepted by any save Alfred's immediate family. Alfred carried a copy of his address, "A Glimpse of Nature, or Back to the Farm" in his pocket. Mrs. Field preserved Bill Brown's screed. As ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... all delightful, and almost as good as a holiday. The city clerk, the jaded shopman, the weary milliner, the pessimistic dyspeptic, should each read the book. It will bring a suggestion of sea breezes, the plash of waves, and all the accessories of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... you'd be a leetle mite anxious," said the Captain, who was in somewhat of a pessimistic mood that day. "They can't all be equally good. You remember what ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the meantime his friend may somewhere lose one and enable him to get on level terms again. When two players with plus handicaps are engaged in a match, a bunkered ball will generally mean a lost hole, but others who have not climbed to this pinnacle of excellence are far too pessimistic if they assume that this rule operates in their case also. The second matter in which the philosophic golfer rises superior to his less favoured brother when there is a bunker stroke to be played, is that he fully realises that the bunker was placed there for the ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... things, don't you think? Men have so much on their hands—the great things of the world—but the little things, they often count, don't you think? But I tell dear Olivia not to worry. Everything will come right. Things do come right—very often. I'm more pessimistic than Rodney—that I must say. But still I think things have a way of coming right when we least expect it. I tell dear Olivia that Peter will send a line just when we're not looking for it. It's the watched pot that never boils, you know, and so I ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... amazing degree, and as magnetic persons usually are. He is cold, hard, and selfish. His quarrels are numerous, with the campaign managers of the Armageddon fight, with his own campaign manager of 1920, with the newspaper correspondents. He is habitually pessimistic, and pessimism and magnetism do ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... get in five," added Bess, with an equal eagerness. "Can I have the Addcocks?" Bess and the pessimistic Mrs. Addcock had got together over some medicine to prevent pip ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... that they were face to face with an impossible situation, and he began to feel inclined to share Mr. Halfpenny's pessimistic opinions as to the usefulness of these researches. But Professor Cox-Raythwaite was not to be easily daunted, and he was no sooner baulked in one direction than he hastened ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... often rejected as being pessimistic and disloyal to the progress of the world: yet has not the history of the age verified the teaching? And is not the coming glory nearer and more certain when depending upon His promised return in resistless ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... Though her pessimistic and unpopular opinions had been discredited time and again, the newspapers, possibly to enliven their now perpetually gloomy columns with a little humor, gave some space to interviews which, with variations predicated on editorial policy, ran ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... is too bad of you," she said. "Your point of view is almost as pessimistic as the detectives', or the newspapers'. I ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... afterward thought so himself—this editorial was a bit too pessimistic. But he had to write it—had to ease his soul. He set it off, however, by a lovely little paragraph which he printed boxed. Here ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... students to have sufficient physical exercise, while if it were decided to devote more time to exercise, the years allotted to education would have to be lengthened—a fact which must involve a serious loss in regard to the work of the nation. I do not take quite such a pessimistic view of the lack of physical education of the youth of Japan. In the first place, gymnastics form part, an important part, of the course of instruction in all schools throughout the country, and in the next place ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... prejudice. He could never, in any case, be made to run a machine. He hated the obvious way of saying or doing a thing. He cultivated the "unexpected" almost to a fault, and always gave a touch of originality even to the commonplace. His pessimistic and unhopeful temperament was doubtless due to inherent and hereditary bodily weakness, and to the lack of muscular cultivation in his youth, which might have modified inherent tendencies. His mental lack was form not ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... physical prosperity of the community, that the nominal wealth of a community in millions of pounds or dollars or Lions, measured nothing but the quantity of hope in the air, and an increase of confidence meant an inflation of credit and a pessimistic phase a collapse of this hallucination of possessions. The new standards, this advocate reasoned, were to alter all that, and it ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... "Don't be so pessimistic. It would be much more sensible to think of marriage as solid meadow-land after your present scramble over ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... lively repast of the previous evening. In the best of circumstances breakfast is a pessimistic meal. The world never looks the same as it appeared ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... under the collar, as he always did in dealing with the pessimistic skipper. "But we're only fifteen miles from the Warehouse!" ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... some pessimistic mother will exclaim, "What is the use of making these old-fashioned appeals to our modern girls? They are so taken up with the delights of their freedom, so absorbed in the pleasure of cycling and athletic games, so full of manly ambitions, so persuaded that the proper cultivated ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... works, his glorious eulogies of Luther, Knox and Cromwell, his vivid histories, his pessimistic utterances, his hatred of falsehood and his true, pure and laborious life, I have no time or space to write. He was the last of the giants in one department of British literature. He will outlive many an author who slumbers in ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... merchants and friends in St. John's did their best to make it a red-letter day. Sir Edward Morris, the Prime Minister, and other politicians, the Mayor and civic functionaries were all good enough to come and add their quota to the launching of the new ship. There were still pessimistic and croaking individuals, however, as well as joyful hearts, when a few days later we again ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... dignity of an English classic, this will be spoken of as his third period, and critics will be wise in the elucidation thereof. But just at present this third period is characterized by the terms 'pessimistic' and 'unhealthy.' ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... be the reasons for such a sequence, it would appear that the purpose must be to deprive the student of any occasion for becoming pessimistic. Certainly nobody will ever have his convictions upset by looking at ancient cloths daubed over with linseed oil, nor by the bum-ta-ra of music. But, to my mind, in a country like Spain, it is better that our young men should be dissatisfied than that they should go to ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... action and ultimately launched me upon the great adventure which, while leading me into many strange and terrible perils, was so profoundly to influence the whole of my after life. I remember that I was in a very pessimistic, downcast mood that night, and expressed the opinion that there appeared to be nothing for it but for me to erect a sort of glorified Kafir hut on my land, invest my money in a small flock of sheep, shepherd them ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... say: "Ah! c'est gai la-bas—and monsieur was well amused while in that beautiful country?" "ah!—tiens! c'est gentil ca!" they will exclaim, as you enthusiastically continue to explain. They never dull your enthusiasm by short phlegmatic or pessimistic replies. And when you are sad they will condone so genuinely with you that you forget your disappointments in the charming pleasantry of their sympathy. But all this continual race for pleasure is destined in the course of time to ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... age o' three," said Jim Grimm, with a pessimistic wag of the head, "'twill be more by luck than ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... prosperous life assured by British rule. His proposal was to unite the Cape Colony, Natal, and the Free State in a federal legislature, consisting of representatives chosen by popular vote in the several states. In urging this measure he took occasion to combat the pessimistic views of South African affairs which were prevalent in England. The country was not commercially useless, but of "great and increasing value." Its people did not desire Kafir wars, but were well aware of the much greater advantages which they derived from the peaceful pursuits of ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... false step, some sin of which we are paying the penalty. I cannot refrain from recommending the thoughtful reader a popular, but at the same time, profound treatise on this subject by Claudius[1] which exhibits the essentially pessimistic spirit of Christianity. It is entitled: Cursed is the ground ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of his speculative temper, was ever returning to a pantheistic creed. The same is true of the Brownings. Arnold is, of course, undecided upon the question, and now approves, now rejects the pessimistic view of pantheism expressed in Empedocles on AEtna, in accordance with his change of mood putting the poem in and out of the various editions of his works. But wherever his poetry is most worthy, his worship of nature coincides with Wordsworth's pantheistic faith. Swinburne's Hertha ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... merely artistic but historical and ethical enthusiasm; an enthusiasm for the Catholic creed which made mediaeval civilisation. Even on the huge Puritan plains of the Middle West the influence strays in the strangest fashion. And it is notable that among the pessimistic epitaphs of the Spoon River Anthology, in that churchyard compared with which most churchyards are cheery, among the suicides and secret drinkers and monomaniacs and hideous hypocrites of that happy village, almost the only record of respect ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... The gathering darkness, relieved only by a dull glow from the smouldering logs in the adobe chimney, added to my loneliness. In the circumstances I knew I ought to have put aside the repast and given myself up to gloomy and pessimistic reflection; but Nature is often inconsistent, and in that keen mountain air, I grieve to say, my physical and moral condition was not in that perfect accord always indicated by romancers. I had an appetite and I gratified it; dyspepsia ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... human life. Certainly, the indiscriminate reading of vice investigations is dangerous for many young people,—for young men because some of them are allured into personal investigations, and for young women because they get an exaggerated and pessimistic view of all sexual problems. For the intelligent reader who wants the general information that every public-spirited citizen should have, the well-known book by Jane Addams will serve both as an outline and an encyclopedia of the social evil. Social workers and some educators ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... her nature disastrously. She had her "attacks," she "felt badly" very often nowadays, poor dear; and how was a Patricia person to be expected to make allowances for the fact that at such times poor Agatha was unavoidably a little cross and pessimistic? ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... hand, was a bitter opponent of what she called "ring rule," and Adelaide Rich, who was the only recruit that they could succeed in adding to their party, had never forgotten the depths of iniquity which her pessimistic acquaintance had revealed in the seemingly innocent and well conducted first meeting, and was prepared to distrust everything, down to the reading ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... us in Mr. JOHN MURRAY'S pessimistic forecast is his failure to recognise and advocate the only and obvious remedy. By the reduction of the Bread Subsidy fifty millions have been made available for the relief of national needs. We do not say that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... mosquito-like T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., advanced on the stronghold of old Bildad, so named because he was a pessimistic Job's comforter, like Bildad, the Shuhite, of old—like a flock of German spies reconnoitering Allied trenches. Hearing the house, with Butch and Beef holding the helpless, but loudly protesting Hicks, who would fain have executed ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... drama was suggested by two or three rather meagre pages of the 'Islendingasaga' of Sturla Thordsson (ed. Vigfusson, ch. 146). To my notion, the poet has succeeded admirably in reproducing the cool coloring, the ironic-pessimistic attitude, that uncompromisingly masculine sentiment we know so well in their refreshing acerbity from the best sagas. Not the least meritorious thing in the play, by the way, is the very slight insistence on Thorolf's ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... small scale, and Gabriel wished that it would break at once to relieve the strain from which nature seemed to suffer. Whether it was the fatigue of his day's labour, or the late interview with Bell which depressed him, he did not know, but he felt singularly pessimistic and his mind was filled with premonitions of ill. Like most people with highly-strung natures, Gabriel was easily affected by atmospheric influence, so no doubt the palpable electricity in the dry, hot air depressed his nerves, but whether this was the cause of his restlessness he could not say. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... conservative who perhaps takes a mild interest in progress is usually "a sober and cautious" person, fairly content with the present and not very sure about the future. The radical, on the other hand, is usually a naturally hopeful and enthusiastic individual, profoundly pessimistic about the present, but with a boundless confidence in even the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... lover pour le bon motif? What are his distinguished family to think of the love affair, which would certainly ensue in fiction, though in real life nobody thought of it at all? Are we to end happily, with a marriage or marriages, or are we to wind all up in the pleasant, pessimistic, realistic, fashionable modern way? Is Mary to drown the baby in the Muckle Pool? Is she to suffer the penalty of her crime at Inverness? Or, happy thought, shall we not make her discarded rival lover meet Dick in the hills on a sunny day and then—are they not (taking a hint from facts) to fight ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... in the Frenchies," the pessimistic McAndrew put in, "wi' five thousand redskins aboot, and they lying in wait. The Colonel's no vera ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... appeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by some overwhelming power or carried in the hollow of some superhuman hand. The captain, a sad-eyed, strong-featured American, was cartooned in the papers as "Gloomy Gus" (the pessimistic ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... Mr. Haggard feed entirely on raw meat. Indeed, for lurid and somewhat pessimistic narrative, there is nothing like the ordinary currant bun, eaten new and in quantity. A light humorous style is best attained by soda-water and dry biscuits, following cafe-noir. The soda-water may be either Scotch or Irish as the taste inclines. For a florid, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... it had more fully advanced, he dissolved parliament prematurely and appealed to the people in mid-winter. In this resolve he was perhaps influenced by a growing consciousness of his failing physical strength. He was less pessimistic as to the result of the election than in 1887, yet he considered his chances of success not more than even. As on previous occasions, he had recourse to Sir Charles Tupper, to whom he cabled on January 21, 1891: 'Your presence ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... spent half the night in planning in their desert camp. Hiram's frank, open nature tended to breed confidence in the most pessimistic of men; and when he told Filer of the wonderful character of Jerkline Jo and assured him that, despite his past rascality, he would be handsomely rewarded by her, the helpless old man agreed to all that ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... worry over for the present on her score. Our own troubles began when we reached the only hotel and found it crowded. The proprietor, a little wizened, pockmarked Arab in a black alpaca jacket and yellow pants, with a tarboosh balanced forward at a pessimistic angle, suggested that there might be guests in the hotel who would let us ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... voices; it comes thundering at the close in octave and chordal unisons, it rumbles in the bass and is persistently asserted by the soprano voice. Its scale is unusual, the atmosphere not altogether cheerful. Chopin could be depressingly pessimistic at times. Op. 50, No. 3, shows how closely the composer studied his Bach. It is by all odds the most elaborately worked out of the series, difficult to play, difficult to grasp in its rather disconnected procession of moods. To me it has a clear ring of exasperation, as if ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... personal advantages, with no regard to the interests of the species. To a mind accustomed to the idea of unity in nature, such a proposition appears utterly indefensible. And yet, improbable and unphilosophical as it is, it has never found a lack of supporters. There always were writers who took a pessimistic view of mankind. They knew it, more or less superficially, through their own limited experience; they knew of history what the annalists, always watchful of wars, cruelty, and oppression, told of it, and little more ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... too pessimistic; he was an earnest spirit, unafraid to speak his mind and too much a lover of truth to be misled by a love of his country into making exaggerated claims for works by his countrymen. We must not forget that he was here looking upon Brazilian ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... to be the more likely, for his restless eyes displayed no lack of mental activity. At any rate, he displayed an attitude that afternoon which startled even his bartender. Not once, but several times that individual, of pessimistic mood, had been called upon to dispense free rations of the worst possible liquor in the place, until, driven from wonder to protest, he declared, with emphatic conviction and an adequate flow of blasphemy, addressing himself to the bottles under the counter, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... she did. His ravishment had suffered a sharp natural decline reflected in a mental gloom. For the moment he desired nothing, valued nothing. And, in this mood, he became talkative; he poured a storm of pessimistic observation over Savina; and she listened with a rapt, transported, attention. It stopped as suddenly as it had begun, in a silence coincident with dusk. The room slowly lost its sombre color and the sense of the confining walls; it became grey and apparently limitless; ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the paralysis of Japanese civilization, which, like oft-tapped maple-trees, began to die at the top. This was in accordance with its theories and its literature. In the Bible there is, possibly, one book which is pessimistic in tone, Ecclesiastes. In the bulky and dropsical canon of Buddhism there is a whole library of ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... spirit and refused to be discouraged by my pessimistic view of his expedition. He laughed gayly and pointed across the country where half a dozen spires of smoke were rising. There was the railroad. There was the great highway where his real journey was to start. There was the beginning of his great adventure. I was the last outpost of the ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... his heaven and all was well with the world. He had been stricken with a wariness concerning life, a reluctant distrust of much that in his old easy-going philosophy seemed solid as the hills. He was disposed to a critical and sometimes pessimistic examination of his own feelings and of ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... prefer the white man's more potent poisons, with the result that in a small place like Manapuri one can see enacted, as on a stage, the last act in the great American tragedy. To be succeeded, doubtless, by other and possibly greater tragedies. My thoughts at that period of suffering were pessimistic in the extreme. Sometimes, when the almost continuous rain held up for half a day, I would manage to creep out a short distance; but I was almost past making any exertion, scarcely caring to live, and taking absolutely ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... discovery of mine; it's an old truth. Read Ecclesiastes, the pessimistic chronicle of the Bible, and you'll find what comes to the pleasure-chaser, and you will know about "vanity ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... fellow, agile like a monkey, clean-shaven like an actor, and obliging like a born courtier. He seems to have quite a pocketful of money, but nobody knows what his trade is. Mrs MacNab, therefore (being of a pessimistic turn), is quite sure it is something dreadful, and probably connected with dynamite. The dynamite must be of a shy and noiseless sort, for the poor fellow only shuts himself up for several hours of the day and studies something behind a locked ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Buddhist scriptures. So far as I have been able to learn, there are no positive immoralities connected with Buddhistic worship. The example of Buddha has in it some worthy elements, such as the renunciation of earthly and sensual ambitions. But Buddhism, for all that, is a pessimistic religion. It denies to man the existence of a soul, and it gives him no hope for anything but practical extinction. Buddha no longer lives to help his worshipers. In the struggle with sin, there is no atonement for the transgressions of ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... not make our own woe," says Barbara, who is a sturdy enemy to all pessimistic thoughts. "Wait a moment, Joyce." She hurries after her and lays her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Will you come with me next ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... forward as a mere statement of fact. And the previous history of religious belief in India would tend to show that emphasis was laid on the fact, less as an explanation of the origin of evil, than as a protest against a then current pessimistic idea that salvation could not be reached on earth, and must therefore be sought for in a rebirth in heaven, in the Brahmaloka. For if the fact—the fact that the conditions of individuality are the conditions, also, of pain—were admitted, then ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... its effect. There is need of such teaching, and it can be appropriated into the thought and life of the time with great promise of good. Yet the outcome of George Eliot's morality was rather depressing than otherwise. While she was no pessimist, yet she made her readers feel that life was pessimistic in its main tendencies. She makes on the minds of very many of her readers the impression that life has not very much light in it. This comes from the whole cast of her mind, and still more because ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... "spirit," and its underground noises. "Are not our ears already full of bad sounds?" say the skeptics, as lovers of repose, and almost as a kind of safety police; "this subterranean Nay is terrible! Be still, ye pessimistic moles!" The skeptic, in effect, that delicate creature, is far too easily frightened; his conscience is schooled so as to start at every Nay, and even at that sharp, decided Yea, and feels something like a bite thereby. Yea! ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... current with negative pole application to the eye in the reduction of increased intra-ocular tension, but quote for our general benefit the opinions of those who have employed it. I have always been very frankly pessimistic in regard to the therapeutic value of electricity in ocular disorders. Perhaps I am wrong; I am willing to be enlightened. There seems little doubt that Truc and Imbert's observations that high frequency currents can temporarily reduce intra-ocular ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... voice—as you might say. He remarked that the last time he saw Miss McLeod she had her beautiful dog with her. That made me suspicious, because from what you told me she always had her dog with her. Then he said her dog must be feeling it very keenly, you remember. I tried him with my pessimistic conclusions to see how he took it. You see, as soon as I saw the dog I put contagious disease out of the question. Natural forces unguided seemed impossible, but natural forces of some nature that ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... thorough Frenchmen and their critical sense must be unbridled. They love their ideas and their systems. They would doubtless not hesitate to advise Foch. Personally, if I were Foch, I should turn a deaf ear. But if I were a timid, vacillating, pessimistic spirit, still in doubt as to the final outcome, I should most certainly seat myself at a neighbouring table and listen to their conversation that I might come away imbued with a little of their ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... the ideals of East and West clash. The East, bearing a huge burden of misery and essentially pessimistic, exhorts patience. The West, eager and ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... for twenty-four hours, ship time, and then came into the mess cabin ravenously hungry, to catch up on both food and news. And he refused to join with the prevailing pessimistic view of the future. Instead he was sure that their own immunity having been proven, they had a talking point to use with the medical officials at Luna and he was eager to alter course directly for the quarantine station. Only the combined arguments of the other three ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... the comforting thought that you have behaved like a gentleman, and that any discourtesy of hers cannot detract from the merit of your action. You did not do it for the thanks you might receive, but because it is right. It is not pessimistic to assert that all through life, we are working on this principle—not that we may receive the credit for what we do, but doing good for the good's sake. Do not be so rash as to say bitterly—"So much for sacrificing my own comfort!" "Catch me giving ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... not influenced by this order of thought from without. He does not attract it to him. He is in another current of thought. Consequently the weakening, failure-bringing thoughts of the fearing, the vacillating, the pessimistic about him, have no influence upon him. The one who is of the negative, fearing kind not only has his energies and his physical agents weakened, or even paralyzed through the influence of this kind of thought that is born within him, but he also in this way ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... peculiar theory of values) in the not very amiable paradox that friendship and patriotism were things one could do without; while another—Death's-advocate, as he was called—helped so many to self-destruction, by his [24] pessimistic eloquence on the evils of life, that his lecture-room was closed. That this was in the range of their consequences—that this was a possible, if remote, deduction from the premisses of the discreet Aristippus—was surely an inconsistency in a thinker ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... the right material in him, he needed only the object lesson of her quick dexterity at stripping a problem of its shell of nonessentials. He had become what the ineffective call a pessimist. He had learned the primer lesson of large success—that one must build upon the hard, pessimistic facts of human nature's instability and fate's fondness for mischief, not upon the optimistic clouds of belief that everybody is good and faithful and friendly disposed and everything will "come out all right somehow." ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... yet forgiving, interested in outward events. The phlegmatic type is impassive, unemotional, slow to anger, but not of great kindness, persistent in pursuing his purposes. The sanguine type is optimistic, impressionable, enthusiastic, but unsteady. The melancholic type is pessimistic, introspective, moody, suspicious of the motives of others. Most pupils belong to more than one class. Perhaps the two most prominent types represented in school are (1) that variety of the sanguine temperament which leads the individual to think himself, ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... state, with its plutocracy and neglected populace and materialistic and Servile morality, that it must take a sharp turn that will be a sensational turn. No evolution into Catholicism will have that moral effect. Christianity is the religion of repentance; it stands against modern fatalism and pessimistic futurism mainly in saying that a man can go back. If we do decidedly go back it will show that religion is alive. For the rest, I do not say much about the details of continuity and succession, because the truth is they did not much affect me. What I see is that we cannot complain of England ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... judge of their true place in the long perspective of English literature. Meredith, with the analytical temper and the disconnected style of Browning, is for mature readers, not for young people. Hardy has decided power, but is too hopelessly pessimistic for anybody's comfort,—except in his earlier works, which have a romantic charm that brightens the obscurity ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... nor Thomists, neither adherents nor detractors, suspected that a heretical Jew was slumbering under the name Avicebron. It remained for an inquirer of our own day, Solomon Munk, to reveal the face of Gabirol under the mask of a garbled name. Amazed, we behold that the pessimistic philosopher of to-day can as little as the schoolmen of the middle ages shake himself free from the despised Jew. Schopenhauer may object as he will, it is certain that Gabirol was his predecessor by more ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... the girl sighed. "There are a great many unhappy marriages. Of course, people would say it was rather pessimistic, wouldn't they?" ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the signs of the times take an extremely pessimistic view of the situation, and believe that we shall witness "blood to the horses' bridles." No one can deny that things are desperately bad, and that something must be done soon to relieve the strain or the very worst may be apprehended; yet the author prefers to see things through optimistic eyes, ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... imagination" cannot be denied; for example, no one can deny that a man with a firm conviction that such a success will be achieved by him, or such a danger avoided, will be far more likely to gain his desire, other conditions being equal, than one of a pessimistic turn of mind. The mere conviction itself is a factor in success, or a factor in failure, according to its nature; and it seems likely that herein will be found a true explanation of the effects believed to be due to the ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... hearts as Eustace Hignett moved down the room and took his place at the piano. A pianist! This argued more singing. The more pessimistic began to fear that the imitation was going to be one of those imitations of well-known opera artistes which, though rare, do occasionally add to the horrors of ships' concerts. They stared at Hignett apprehensively. There seemed ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... his unwilling muse in the gloom Of a mood pessimistic, was shut in his room. A whistle, a step on the stairway, a knock, Then over the transom there fluttered a flock Of white letters. The Muse, with a sigh of content, Left the poet to read them, and hurriedly ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... headed, 'Occupation or Assimilation,'" said the banker. "It is of some importance, and well written. It is very pessimistic." ...
— When William Came • Saki
... not love beautiful thoughts and acts, no verbal power can make his product great; and if the artist paints trivial or vulgar subjects he wastes his genius. Too much poetry that is sensual, flippant, drearily pessimistic, morbid, or obscure, is included in anthologies because cleverly wrought, with a sense for form and cadence. Too many stories, too many pictures, are applauded by critics, though in subject and tone they are contemptible. As proofs ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... what's really here—because I'm so sure there's an awful lot here and an awful lot more that's coming. If I make a noise like a knocker at times you don't want to put me down as any Schopenhauer fan. None of that pessimistic dope for little Joey Kramer. I never open a new book without hoping I'll find the real stuff I want, and I never open a paper without hoping that some more of it will be right here in the news of the day. Kid," he ended intensely, ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... a vigorous optimism as to Israel's ultimate well-being on earth, and the blessedness of the chosen people in the Messianic kingdom is sketched in glowing and sensuous colours (xxix., xxxix.-xl., lxiii.-lxxiv.). Over against these passages stand others of a hopelessly pessimistic character, wherein, alike as to Israel's [v.03 p.0455] present and future destiny on earth, there is written nothing save "lamentation, and mourning, and woe." The world is a scene of corruption, its evils are irremediable, its end is nigh, and the advent of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... to Japan. He was staring worshippingly at Claire. With rapturous gaze he noted the grey glory of her eyes, the delicate curve of her cheek, the grace of her neck. He had no time to listen to pessimistic warnings from any Gloomy Gus of a Subconscious Self. He was ashamed that he had ever even for a moment allowed himself to be persuaded that Claire was not all that was perfect. No more doubts and hesitations for Dudley Pickering. He ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... time when idle tales Could set your heart aflame; But now the novel nought avails, Philosophy's your game. You talk of SCHOPENHAUER with zest, And pessimistic teaching; Believe me that I loved you best ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... a very pessimistic view of the economic position of Great Britain. Mr. Hyndman said that "Great Britain had lost her commercial and industrial supremacy. The United States now stood first, Germany second, and Great Britain was forced into third place."[799] Many years ago some far-seeing ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... There could be no possible chance of loss from a financial point of view. Their bonds were safe, for the loan itself was a perfectly legitimate transaction, a conclusion which could not be gainsaid by the most pessimistic of the objectors. Mr. Blithers would be paid in full when the time came for settlement, the bonds would be restored to their owners, and all would be ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... illusion, and he may console himself for what he loses with the reflection that he has expressed the true relation of man to the universe—that he has expressed either man's insignificance or man's oneness with nature, according as his temper is pessimistic ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... marriage of the young people a good ending. Haxard himself, of course, is past all surgery. But the thing isn't pessimistic, as I understand, for its doctrine is that harm comes ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... desire for education is very pronounced. American opinion as to the capability of the Filipinos to attain a high degree of learning and maintain it seems much divided, for many return to America and publicly express pessimistic views on this point. In daily conversation with young middle-class Filipinos one can readily see that the ambition of the majority is limited to the acquisition of sufficient English to qualify them for Government employment or commercial occupations. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... be surprised if some day I meet Eileen somewhere, because Dana and I are going about more than you would believe possible. I heartily join with you in wishing her every good that life can bring her. I don't want to be pessimistic, but I can't help feeling, Linda, that she is taking a poor way to win the best, and I gravely doubt whether she finds it in the spending of unlimited quantities of the money of a coarse man who stumbled ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... seem extremely pessimistic. But it is only seemingly so. Experience shows it to be ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... in spite of himself, it was no longer cynical. He could not indulge himself in that pessimistic scepticism which had aided him in bearing his poverty, and the restless craving of sense and spirit which had accompanied it. His enthusiasm for art was falling away; as a faith it had failed him in his hour of need. In its stead another faith had ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... foreign State. No man could then rival him in the insolently aristocratic school of diplomacy which England has made her own. But in his most dangerous crisis he had never been restless, apprehensive, pessimistic, as he was at this moment. And after all it was a very simple matter that had brought him there. It was merely the question of meeting a man as if by accident, and then afterwards making that man do certain ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... prospect does not at first seem very hopeful; but on second thoughts we see that we are not forced to draw any very pessimistic conclusion from it. The direction of human evolution need not remain always the same. The movement, in fact, of civilization from East to West has now clearly completed itself. The globe has been circled, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... of recapture the birds learned a quantity of additional language which unfitted them for further service in the Suffragette cause; some of the green ones were secured by ardent Home Rule propagandists and trained to disturb the serenity of Orange meetings by pessimistic reflections on Sir Edward Carson's destination in the life to come. In fact, the bird in politics is a factor that seems to have come to stay; quite recently, at a political gathering held in a dimly-lighted ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... place we note a large amount of optimism over results achieved or thought or hoped to be achieved. Sixty-four of them said directly, in answer to a question concerning their attitude and estimate, that they were optimistic. Seven were uncertain, and withheld their opinions and three were very pessimistic indeed. The presidents and deans answering the major questionnaire were quite certain that the teachers had the attitude of sustained interest in the work ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... apparently irreconcileable with the doctrine that there is nothing other than God. Thus he teaches that there are four elements—earth, air, water and fire—out of which all things are generated. He also anticipates Lucretius in his pessimistic view of humanity's lot; and insists on the apparently independent existence of a principle of discord or strife in the Universe. It would be a forced interpretation to suppose him to have set forth precociously the Darwinian theory of the struggle for life. For his notion seems much more ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
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