Pessimistic Quotes

“No one in the world gets what they want and that is beautiful.”
― They Might Be Giants

“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“We could have saved [the Earth] but we were too damned cheap.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Some people are in such utter darkness that they will burn you just to see a light. Try not to take it personally.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“Hope is the last thing a person does before they are defeated.”
― Henry Rollins

“It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

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

“What a beautiful day to go to hell”
― Ransom Riggs, Library of Souls

“Death, my son, is a good thing for all men; it is the night for this worried day that we call life. It is in the sleep of death that finds rest for eternity the sickness, pain, desperation, and the fears that agitate, without end, we unhappy living souls.”
― Bernardin De Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie

“Pessimistic" is a word for "realistic" that optimists use to make themselves feel better (about their unrealisticness).”
― Claire

“We never do what we wish when we wish it, and when we desire a thing earnestly, and it does arrive, that or we are changed, so that we slide from the summit of our wishes and find ourselves where we were.”
― Mary Shelley

“I told him to buy land, my mum says, they’re not making it anymore.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Beware of those who are bored and not passionate about life, for they will bore you with reasons for not living.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Depression is not generalized pessimism, but pessimism specific to the effects of one's own skilled action.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

“Goals incapable of attainment have driven many a man to despair, but despair is easier to get to than that -- one need merely look out of the window, for example.”
― Donald Barthelme

“Those who have been pulled out of the calm tranquility of the void and trapped for life to a bodily existence have a single consolation: everything that lives, also dies. Sooner or later, the tragedy will be forever over. Every life is destined to return to the sweet nothing from which it emerged without its consent. This is our consolation.”
― Selim Güre, The Occult of the Unborn

“Sometimes it's like I'm living my life waiting for more bad news.”
― Evan Kuhlman, The Last Invisible Boy

“I don't know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I'm pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“We are not merely more weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday.”
― Samuel Beckett

“A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks' notice. "I'll get a job around here," he'd told her. "Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We're not paying rent, and Dad's left us plenty. You should quit, too." A year earlier this news would have filled her with delicious, full fat, chocolate-coated joy. But now, after a grueling routine of shitty work, shitty- weird home life in a house where the shadow of a dead boy walked more solidly than the grownups, shitty headaches, shitty worry about a husband who couldn't keep his dick out of other women, the golden offer just weirded Laine out. She didn't trust it.”
― Stephen M. Irwin, The Dead Path

“My father believed it was a cancerous lump, not because my mother was genetically prone to such a thing, but because he was looking out for the saboteur of his wonderful life.”
― Sarah Winman

“I shield to one who is pessimistic and shield to one who is optimistic leaving this in a wandering state.”
― Josh Cathey

“The only thing I’m optimistic about is the future of pessimism.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Optimists may have fugitive doubts about the basic desirability of existence, but pessimists never doubt that existence is basically undesirable. If you interrupted them in the middle of an ecstatic moment, which pessimists do have, and asked if existence is basically undesirable, they would reply “Of course” before returning to their ecstasy.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

“Don’t believe the skeptics. Rather, be skeptical of their skepticism.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Being miserable is something one carries in the soul before it is made apparent in the spirit. - On Being Miserable”
― Lamine Pearlheart, Awakening

“always remember that when things look darkest, they usually get considerably worse”
― Robert Heinlein

“The attitude of “I can’t” is really a decision of “I won’t.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I can’t think of a more misused phrase than ‘I can’t,’ except in this instance.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“We must be cautious of those who attempt to shame us for our blessings.”
― Angel Moreira