"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
— Winston S. Churchill

"A journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)

"You know how both life and porno movies end. The only difference is life starts with the orgasm."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.
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— Thomas L. Friedman

"No misfortune is so bad that whining about it won’t make it worse. (Apr 2007 Gen Conf)"
— Jeffrey R. Holland

"I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping."
— P.G. Wodehouse

""One can only tolerate the absolute idiocy of Man for so long before bringing out the bat.""
— Dean Hale

"One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, "Is it half full or half empty?" So I drank the water. No more problem."
— Alexander Jodorowsky

"When things are at their blackest, I say to myself, 'Cheer up, things could be worse.' And sure enough, they get worse."
— Robert Lynn Asprin

"Sometimes I get the feeling the whole world is against me, but deep down I know that's not true. Some smaller countries are neutral. "
— Robert Orben

"It’s a tricky business, nurturing that aura of unapproachability."
— Dean Hale

"a pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."
— George Bernard Shaw

"A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street."
— Laurence J. Peter

"Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness."
— Robertson Davies

"Sometimes fiction is more easily understood than true events. Reality is often pathetic."
— Young-ha Kim (I Have the Right to Destroy Myself)

"Life isn't all fricasseed frogs and eel pie.
-Puddleglum in The Silver Chair"
— C.S. Lewis

"If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

""I will be the first to admit that I am a pessimist by nature. It is, after all, the wisest way to be. We pessimists have everything to gain, whereas optimists have a fifty-fifty chance of being disappointed.""
— Tamar Myers (As the World Churns)

"The spirit of the gospel is optimistic; it trusts in God and looks on the bright side of things. The opposite or pessimistic spirit drags men down and away from God, looks on the dark side, murmurs, complains, and is slow to yield obedience."
— Orson F. Whitney

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity."
— William Butler Yeats

""The pessimist complains about the wind; the optomist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."
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— William Arthur Ward college administrator writer 1921-1994

"It struck me that the chief obstacle to marital contentment was this perpetual gulf between the well-founded, commendable pessimism of women and the sheer dumb animal optimism of men, the latter a force more than any other responsible for the lamentable state of the world."
— Michael Chabon (Wonder Boys)

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

"Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision."
— Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist)

"Who gathers the withered rose?"
— William Faulkner (Soldier's Pay)

"A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead."
— Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort

"Life, I fancy, would very often be insupportable, but for the luxury of self-compassion."
— George Gissing