"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
— Oscar Wilde

"As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So?'"
— Bill Bryson (The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America)

"If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life."
— Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!)

"Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn't the faintest idea what the heck is really going on."
— Mike Royko

"A true friend is a gift from God. Since God doesn't exist, guess what? Neither do true friends."
— Scott Dikkers (You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day)

"Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be."
— Ambrose Bierce (The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary)

"All I have to be thankful for in this world is that I was sitting down when my garter busted."
— Dorothy Parker (Portable Dorothy Parker)

"Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."
— William Goldman (The Princess Bride)

"Life is serious but art is fun!"
— John Irving

"Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent."
— Glen Cook (Shadow Games)

"I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!"
— Jean Anouilh (Antigone)

"Sometimes I think books are the only friends worth having."
— Susie Derkins

"...God created the world in six days. On the seventh day, he rested. On the eighth day, he started getting complaints. And it hasn't stopped since."
— James Scott Bell (Sins of the Fathers)

"If you behaved nicely, the communists wouldn't exist."
— Jenny Holzer (Jenny Holzer: Truisms And Essays)

"In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless."
— Sigmund Freud

"Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.'"
— Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park)

"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away."
— Tom Waits (The Early Years: The Lyrics of Tom Waits 1971-1983)

"Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed."
— Joseph Heller (Good As Gold)

"Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates. No, too much faith never brings anything good..."
— Milan Kundera

"Cynicism was a one-way path, and once taken the way back was lost forever."
— Chris Wooding (Poison)

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And
though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could
remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I
bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to
be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money
suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not
itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her
own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in
iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. . . . And now
abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these
is money.

I Corinthians xiii (adapted) "
— George Orwell (Keep the Aspidistra Flying)

"Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren’t treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making certain you’re on the right side?"
— Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)

"You're such an optimist Kane -- that's your problem. You only end up disappointed."
— Paul Grist (Kane Volume 1: Greetings From New Eden)

"You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discivered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack."
— W. Somerset Maugham

"Love is a hormonally charged lapse of emotional and mental reasoning: a dangerous yet enjoyable lapse - like tying an elastic band around your finger and prodding it with a pencil."
— Roy Gallagher

"Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try. ---in Good Housekeeping"
— Peggy Noonan

"Cynicism is nothing more than soul-rot. It’s nothing more than a coward dressed up in a tweed blazer smoking a Peterson pipe. It is dismissive and disengaged while looking invested and astute."
— Matthew Perryman Jones

""Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.""
— Bergen Evans

"Life seemed to him to be a narrow cage, and her iron bars were many and dense, and there was only one way out."
— Leonid Andreyev

"…a cynic who was still saddened whenever his jaundiced view of mankind was confirmed..."
— Sharon Kay Penman (When Christ and His Saints Slept)

"The atmosphere was electrified by the orgasm with which the strong and secure are overcome when confronted with the visible frailty of someone worse off than themselves."
— Paul Leppin (Blaugast: A Novel of Decline)

"Cynicism, like gullibility, is a symptom of underdeveloped critical faculties."
— Jamie Whyte (Crimes Against Logic)

"A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern. "
— Edgar A. Shoaff

"I'm getting old, thought Eileen Calder. Old and worn out and cynical. And being cynical is a lot worse than being old or worn out."
— Charles Sheffield (Brother to Dragons)

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
— George Bernard Shaw

"National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right."
— Arthur Schopenhauer