"Optimist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has held his own against the world! how he has scourged its wickedness and folly, this gigantic optimist, who never wrote a single line in his ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... perforce, as an excuse for some trouble he put me to, and so slightly worded that I paid no heed. This is a good measure of his courage under sufferings of which none but the untried will think lightly. And I think it worth noting how this optimist was acquainted with pain. It will seem strange only to the superficial. The disease of pessimism springs never from real troubles, which it braces men to bear, which it delights men to bear well. Nor does it readily spring at all, in minds that have conceived of life as a field of ordered duties, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... idolatry, its infanticide, its girl suicides, its public corruption and moral degradation, rubbing shoulders continually at close quarters with the inhabitants, and himself living in the main a Chinese life, our optimist may alter his opinions, and stand in wonder at the extraordinary differences in the most ordinary details of life at the ports on the China coast and the Interior, and of the gross inconsistencies in the Chinese mind and character. If in addition he has stayed a ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... The optimist is right. The pessimist is right. The one differs from the other as the light from the dark. Yet both are right. Each is right from his own particular point of view, and this point of view is the determining factor in the life of each. It determines as to whether it is a life of power or of impotence, ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... of God, I was a fervent Optimist. But as I could not but see that the present state of things was not the best, I was necessarily led to look ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... on—but to me he seems the most cheerful and constant companion in nature. He is a bringer of good tidings—a philosopher who insists that we are masters of our fate and that winter is just the time when there is some sense in being an optimist. Anybody, he seems to say, can be an optimist when the days are long and the air is warm and worms are plentiful; but it is just when things are looking a little black and the other fellows begin to grouse ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the way looks dark; far from feeling called to work among this people, I am beginning to doubt the safety of my own soul. I am afraid the desires of Bro. Brown and his family are set too much on carnal things." A dyspeptic is usually a pessimist, and an optimist always keeps a ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... the Barbilles had spoken to him in its own language of good cheer and defiance. Yes, there it was, half covered by the ruins, but its head was erect in the midst of fire and disaster. Brought low, it was still alert above the wreckage. The child, the dreamer, the optimist, the egoist, and the man alive in Jean Jacques sprang into vigour again. It was as though the Cock of Beaugard had really summoned him to action, and the crowing had not been that of a barnyard bantam not a hundred feet away from him. Jean ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... to be unhappy about? What on earth does any man want to get married for? I don't ... Give me my gay bachelor life! My uncle Charlie used to say 'It's better luck to get married than it is to be kicked in the head by a mule.' But he was an optimist. Good-night, Miss Bennett. And ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... Thus was she punished for an infraction of the law. The next day the particulars were told me by the facetious Coroner himself, whose jury had just rendered a verdict of accidental drowning in both cases. I don't know when I have enjoyed a heartier laugh. The Optimist, ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... thorough-going pessimist. Neither Swift nor Carlyle could have gone much beyond him in condemning the actual state of the political or religious condition of the world. Things, on the whole, were in many directions going from bad to worse. The optimist is apt to regard these views as wicked, and I do not know whether it will be considered as an aggravation or an extenuation of his offence that, holding such opinions, Fitzjames could be steadily cheerful. I simply state the fact. His freedom from the ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... an optimist. The next morning he saw on a newspaper placard: "Birthday Honours. Twenty-two New Knights." And he actually stopped his car, bought a paper, and searched the lists for his name. It was ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... time since my leap from the wall I found myself with sufficient leisure to review the situation. It struck me that only a very hardened optimist could describe it as hopeful. I had made my bolt almost instinctively, without stopping to think what chances I had of getting away. That these were meagre in the extreme was now becoming painfully clear to me. Even if I managed to slip out of my present hiding-place ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... is lame enough. We are asked to set aside the data of experience and act on an off-chance. But the determination of the optimist to escape from the logic of his own argument is significant. He has no conception of an increasing purpose or underlying unity in the history of man, but he thinks that Providence—the old Providence of St. Augustine, who arranged the events of Roman history with a view to ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... It was also Hall's affair to keep Mark Twain cheerful, to look pleasant himself, and to show how they were steadily getting rich because orders were pouring in, though a cloud that resembled bankruptcy loomed always a little higher upon the horizon. If Hall had not been young and an optimist, he would have been frightened out of his boots early in the game. As it was, he made a brave steady fight, kept as cheerful and stiff an upper lip as possible, always hoping that something would happen—some grand sale of his other books, some unexpected inflow from the type-setter interests—anything ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... long, too actively, and too intelligently to have left any of his large, original stock of the optimism that had so often shipwrecked his career in spite of his talents and his energy. Out of the bitterness of experience he used to say, "A young optimist is a young fool. An old optimist is an old ass. A fool may learn, an ass can't." And again, "An optimist steams through the fog, taking it for granted everything's all right. A pessimist steams ahead too, but he gets ready for trouble." However, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... himself; what's the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? One honeymoon. And now they had reached their home town. People were not altogether new to Warble. She had seen them before. But these were her own people, to bathe and encourage and adorn—and, they didn't seem to ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... "The optimist notion, therefore, that Nature is an all-wise designer, in whose work order, system, wisdom, and beauty are prominent, does not fare well when placed under ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... will which opposes us is as inflexible as our own—"such is life"—that is our ultimate comment. An appreciation of tragedy involves, therefore, a sure discernment of the essential disharmony of existence, yet at the same time, a feeling for the moral values which it may create; neither the optimist nor the utilitarian can ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... mentioned that England and France, at all events, were this year represented at the great fair of Nijni-Novgorod by two of the most distinguished products of modern civilization, Messrs. Harry Blount and Alcide Jolivet. Jolivet, an optimist by nature, found everything agreeable, and as by chance both lodging and food were to his taste, he jotted down in his book some memoranda particularly favorable to the town of Nijni-Novgorod. Blount, on the contrary, having in vain hunted for a ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... "You are an optimist,"—said Maryllia, kissing her—"and you're very young! I have learned that in this best of all possible worlds, human nature is often the worst part of all creation, and that when you want to avoid a particularly ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... human or angelic." Certainly, most of the poets who have reached the heart of men, since Burns dropped the tear for poor "auld Nickie-ben" that softened the stony-hearted theology of Scotland, have had "non-clerical" minds, and I suppose our young friend is in his humble way an optimist like them. What he says in verse is very much the same thing as what is said in prose in all companies, and thought by a great many who are thankful to anybody that will say it for them,—not a few clerical as wall as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... from one feature to another of the obsequies with the comprehensive yet swift perception of an artist. An experience of three years on the staff had made him an expert on ceremonies, and, captious as he could be when the occasion merited his scorn, his predilection was for praise, as he was an optimist by instinct. This time he could praise unreservedly, and he was impatient to transfer to the pages of his note-book his seething impressions of the solemn beauty and simplicity of the last rites in the painful tragedy. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... of restless misery and despair pressed hardest upon him, it was soon perceived that Annaple's cheerful tact enabled her to deal with him as no one else could do. There was the restraint of courtesy towards her, such as had worn out towards his daughter, and besides her sanguine optimist spirit never became so depressed as did poor Nuttie's. Mark went by day to his work, but came back to dine at his uncle's, hear the reports, and do what he could for him; and meantime Annaple spent the chief part of the day in aiding Nuttie and Mr. Egremont, while her baby ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an incorrigible optimist! and I truly believe that the world is advancing in every way and that we are already in the dawn of a new era of the understanding, and the exploitation for our benefit of the great forces of nature. ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... of importance is very well known to me, and the same abomination is steadily destroying the higher life in all. The Chancellors of the Exchequer gaily repeat the significant figures which give the revenue from alcohol; the optimist says that times are mending; the comfortable gentry who mount the pulpits do not generally care to ruffle the fine dames by talking about unpleasant things—and all the while the curse is gaining, and the betting, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... his reading is beautiful; I can't say as I ever heard reading as could equal it;—and them choristers, though they're hawful to manage, is trained as I never see boys trained in my life afore. There's one of them houses, ma'am," continued the optimist, turning to Miss Wentworth, "as is a beauty. Miss Wodehouse can tell you what it is; no lady in the land could desire a handsomer drawing-room; and as for the kitchings,—I don't pretend to be a judge up-stairs, but being brought up a blacksmith, I know what's what ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... 'Are you an anarchist?' which is intrinsically quite as impudent as 'Are you an optimist?' or 'Are you a philanthropist?' I am not discussing here whether these things are right, but whether most of us are in a position to know them rightly. Now it is quite true that most Englishmen do not find it necessary to go about all day asking each other whether they are anarchists. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... vainly trying to smile. She was singularly quiet for a while. Her husband was enjoying himself immensely. He was an optimist, his wife inclined to pessimism. George Nelson believed in making the best of things that had already happened and making nothing of things to come until they came. Caroline, his wife, lived a great many of her troubles ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... is more on the side of the pessimist than the optimist. I found in America no trace of interest in such valuable records as the Kearton pictures of African jungle life or the Ponting records of the Arctic Zone. For the moment the whole energy of the gigantic cinema ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... know what it is to feel at times a wave of unaccountable persuasion that it is about to go well with him?—not the feverish confidence of men in danger of a blow from fate, not the persistent illusion of the optimist, but an unsought conviction, springing up like a bird from the heather, that success is at hand in some great or little thing. The general suddenly knows at dawn that the day will bring him victory; the man on the green suddenly knows that he will put down ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... the optimist, the pessimist, and the vacillating man, from the designing and manufacturing point of view of a machine business, applies with equal force to ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... prepared," his companion answered. "It may be that he is my only companion. In that case, I go back to a life lonelier than I have ever dreamed of. It is on the knees of the gods. So far there has come no word, but although I am not by nature an optimist, my superstitions are on my side. All the way over on my last voyage, when I lay in my berth, awake and we sailed over and through the clouds, my star, my own particular star, seemed leaning always down towards me, and for that reason I ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... able to run over again in March and see you. The Colonel of our gunners has just dashed in to ask me to luncheon before I go to the trenches. He says that he wants cheering up. I suppose he thinks me an optimist! What time would suit you best if I could get a week at the end of February or beginning of March? I know you said something about running across to Ireland again, and I do not wish to interfere with that. I do not know whether I shall be able to get it, but it is an idea. ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... such a change was annoying, but scarcely alarming to an ingrained optimist, and Bob took comfort in reflecting that the best-selling literature of the day was replete with instances of disinherited sons, impoverished society men, ruined bankers, or mere idlers, who by lightning strokes of genius had mended their fortunes overnight. Some few, in the ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... it has taken, and how much blood has been spilt before this or that most obvious folly has been abolished! With what absurd tenacity have men flown in the face of reason and flouted common sense! So our Optimist, looking into the conditions which made Civil Service Reform imperative, will shed tears either of pity ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the fair frame of all established things, and to his horror saw men, instead of covering the thin surface with the concrete, digging in it for abstractions, and asking fundamental questions about the origin of society, and why one man should be born rich and another poor. Burke was no prating optimist: it was his very knowledge how much could be said against society that quickened his fears for it. There is no shallower criticism than that which accuses Burke in his later years of apostasy from so-called Liberal opinions. Burke was all his life ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... essays, binds them up in a book, and calls it Seven Stormy Sundays. Mr. H. T. Tuckerman makes a book of essays on various subjects, and calls it The Optimist; and then devotes several pages of preface to an argument, lexicon in hand, proving that the applicability of the term optimist is 'obvious.' An editor, at intervals of leisure, indulges his true poetic taste for the pleasure of his friends, or the entertainment of an occasional audience. Then his book appears, entitled not Miscellaneous Poems, but Asleep in the Sanctum, by A. ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... he said. "That is where we are going, if there is any possible way to go. An optimist would stand here and wait, certain that wings would soon sprout for him to fly up; a pessimist would sit down and quit. An optimist is a fool; a pessimist is ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... Bootstrap-lifters; the mystic and transcendentalist, Swedenborgian and Jacob Boehme Bootstrap-lifters; the Elbert Hubbard high-art Bootstrap-lifters with half a million magazinelets at two bits apiece; the "uplift" and "optimist," the Ralph Waldo Trine and Orison Swett Marden Bootstrap-lifters with a hundred thousand volumes at one dollar per volume. There are the Platonist and Hegelian and Kantian professors of collegiate metaphysical ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... the optimist is," says Dugald Stewart, "that all events are ordered for the best; and that evils which we suffer are parts of a great system conducted by almighty power under the direction of infinite wisdom and goodness." Leibnitz, who is unquestionably one ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... by step, buildings rose up, numbers increased, and distinctions were won, but behind all the outward success was the vitalising energy of the Headmaster, the inspiration of the optimist, the personality of ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... nine-tenths in the midst of whom they live, and around whose homes they rot and die? No doubt, in every large mass of human beings there will be some incurably diseased in morals and in body, some for whom nothing can be done, some of whom even the optimist must despair, and for whom he can prescribe nothing but the beneficently stern restraints of an ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... be an optimist and persuades himself he is improving, he does improve. This is the explanation of "Faith moving mountains", for the curative power of prayer, Christian Science, laying-on of hands, suggestion treatment and patent medicine, depends ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... optimist, Marcella," he said impatiently. "Lord, I wish I'd never started on this business! Everything's against us—I knew it would be! We'll give it up. You go off into the back blocks where you will at least be sure of food ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... looks on the bright side of things is called an optimist, and one who looks on the dull side ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... Dupleix, "because of the crowd of people wanting to see us and bless us;" the comptroller-general, Herault de Sechelles, as well as the king and Madame de Pompadour, then and for a long while the reigning favorite, gave so favorable a reception to the hero of India that Dupleix, always an optimist, conceived fresh hopes. "I shall regain my property here," he would say, "and India will recover in ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... it as a dividing line between them. He probably felt so at college; and this brings us back to an old subject. Hawthorne's superiority to Longfellow as an artist consisted essentially in this, that he was never an optimist. Puritanism looked upon human nature with a hostile eye, and was inclined to see evil in it where none existed; and Doctor Channing, who inaugurated the great moral movement which swept Puritanism away in ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... hunter looked in and had a shrapnel bullet removed from his shoulder. He was a most interesting man, and gave us all his views about the conduct of the war. Every mistake that it is possible to make has been made, he thinks. Once more we are hung up for want of ammunition. He is no optimist with regard to the duration of the war. Unless the new landing pushes on and keeps hitting he fails to see how they will do much. Even though Austria and Turkey are knocked out, Germany is one vast fort, with everything within herself, and will hold out for long. He condemns our ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... expert whose specialty is the sale of small farms, on time payments. Well, no business man ever contemplates the purchase, at a top price, of property that is to be sold on mortgage foreclosure; and I think he would be an optimist, indeed, who would bid ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the fifty of the hard-riding optimist of the great outdoors. The smooth tan of his cheeks contrasted oddly with the silver of his close-cropped hair. He appeared as a young ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... disappointment struck Johnnie silent. Pros Passmore was an optimist, one who never used a strong word to express sorrow or dismay, but he came out of a brown study in which he had muttered, "Blaylock. No, Harp wouldn't do. Culp's. Sally Ann's not to be trusted. What about the Venable boys? No good"—to ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... never any despondency or infirmity of faith in Emerson. He is always hopeful and courageous, and is an antidote to the pessimism and materialism which existing times tend to foster. Open anywhere in the Journals or in the Essays and we find the manly and heroic note. He is an unconquerable optimist, and says boldly, "Nothing but God can root out God," and he thinks that in time our culture will absorb the hells also. He counts "the dear old Devil" among the good things which the dear old world holds for him. He saw so clearly how good comes out of evil ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... character here given: he had been something of an optimist; at least had known villainy only from books; at thirty years of age it is to him a discovery that a man may smile and be a villain! Then think of the shock of such discoveries as are here forced upon him! Villainy is no longer a mere idea, but a fact! and of all villainous ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... optimist," said the Puddin' rudely. "Puddin'-thieves never suffer from remorse. They only suffer from ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... thinking about cultivating one would do well to treasure Mrs. Mudge's words, because even Zenith (and everybody knew that Zenith stood in the van of spiritual and New Thought progress) didn't often have the opportunity to sit at the feet of such an inspiring Optimist and Metaphysical Seer as Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, who had lived the Life of Wider Usefulness through Concentration, and in the Silence found those Secrets of Mental Control and the Inner Key which ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... mind—the sort of forced weather that issues offstage in roars of thunder the moment the villain begins his plotting. She took a street car, having meant to walk and give herself time to pull together and adopt the fat smile of a professional optimist. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... of adventure, and the wide world knows the feel Of the stuff that stirs good huntsmen all and brings the hounds to heel! It's the one reward that's gratis and precedes the toilsome task— It's the one thing always better than an optimist can ask! It's amusing, it's amazing, and it's never twice the same; It's the salt of true adventure and the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... happen, we of this great empire shall have the consolation of saying that we have contributed to the happiness of the world."[37] It is possible to {264} argue that because Russell admitted that the time for separation was not yet approaching he was therefore an optimist. But the evidence leans rather to the less glorious side. It was this speech which kindled Elgin into a passion and made him bid Grey renounce for himself and his leader the habit of telling the colonies that the colonial is a provisional existence. The same speech, too, extorted ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... you. I think it is the business of imagination to project things as they really are. I don't want to slip out from under reality and see only beauty. Beware, Madeline, or you will degenerate into a mere optimist." ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... talking to an optimist, whose nerves have been getting shaky. We fancy that a straw vote of the rocking-chair fleet on a sanitarium porch would show a preponderance of optimists. What brought them there? Worry, which is ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... street. There had been discussions and disputes as to speed, and John's wagon, a long, well-oiled affair with a coat of red, discarded house paint on its framework, had come to grief in a collision with Brown's, one sunny afternoon. Even Silvey, the optimist, who had furnished the motive power, had looked at the wreckage in ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... a spirit is the school system of Cincinnati founded. From its point of vantage, set upon its high hill of ministry to child needs, it flashes like a searchlight through the storm of nineteenth century pedagogical obscurity. The optimist sings a new, glad song; the pessimist is confounded; the searcher after educational truth uncovers reverently before this masterpiece of educational organization, this practical demonstration of the wonders that may be accomplished ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... had stopped and he anticipated adventure. The idea of getting across the river in a goufa flashed across his mind, but a glance at the foaming, tearing water was sufficient deterrent even to an optimist like Brown. It might be done in daylight, but at night it ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... we are told, become the realities of to-morrow. In these despites I am an optimist. Much truly there needs still to be learned, much to be unlearned. Advanced as we consider ourselves we are yet a long way from the most rudimentary perception of the civilization we are so fond of parading. The eternal verities—where shall we seek them? Little ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... that two people look at the same thing at the same time, and each of the two sees something entirely different from the other. Somebody has described the optimist as the man who sees the doughnut, while the pessimist sees nothing but the hole. So, also, you and I might see before us nothing but an unshapely block of marble, while the sculptor would see the angel in ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... Austria were outnumbered by at least three to one. But on this particular morning, people were too stunned for calculations. The incredible had happened. The long-discussed war—the nightmare of the nervous, the derision of the optimist—had actually materialised. The happy-go-luck years of peace and plenty had suddenly come to an end. Black tragedy ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sincere; still Raymond thought that in this case her bonte might have gone a little further. At any rate this was the only allusion that she made to his bothers and worries. Indeed, she always passed over such things lightly; she was an optimist for others as well as for herself, which doubtless had a great deal to do (Raymond indulged in the reflection) with the headway she made in a society tired of ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... so gentle in his speech; Simeon, with his diplomatic face; Florian, the student of medicine; and my friend, colossal-breasted Christian. Palmy came a little later, worried with many cares, but happy to his heart's core. No optimist was ever more convinced of his philosophy than Palmy. After them, below the salt, were ranged the knechts and porters, the marmiton from the kitchen, and innumerable maids. The board was tesselated with plates of birnen-brod and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... preached. He did not preach renunciation; he was not a Pessimist any more than an Optimist. Sometimes he felt he was not doing enough; he knew very well that others thought so. I remember his saying, in his rooms at Oxford in one of those years: "Here I am, trying to reform the world, and I suppose I ought to begin with myself, I am trying to do St. Benedict's work, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... able to interest himself in private affairs. Many times he made the attempt to continue writing, but found it useless. Until then he had lived the life of a man in middle life—and a young one at that—golfing, fishing, swimming each day, sometimes doing all three in one day. Optimist as he always was and tried to be, even in the face of the failure of his hopes, the world disaster was too much. His heart was broken. A severe attack of influenza followed by two serious attacks of pneumonia ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... He began to produce his knowledge of the world for her benefit, jerkily and allusively, and with a strong, rank flavor of "savoir faire." He took an optimist view of her chances. Ann Veronica listened thoughtfully, with her eyes on the turf, and now and then she asked a question or looked up to discuss a point. In the meanwhile, as he talked, he scrutinized her face, ran his eyes over her careless, gracious poise, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... required something more than normal courage to venture out of doors. It was the courage of desperation which ultimately sent Neifkins out in an attempt to get hay to his sheep. There was small resemblance between the optimist who had assured Wentz so confidently that everything would be all right and the perspiring and all but exhausted Neifkins who wallowed in snow to his arm-pits in an effort to break trail for the four-horse ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... of a cheerful disposition that naturally inclined to seek out the good in every situation. He was a genuine optimist. Thus, after tramping the three miles from home to begin the day's work on the ditch, he discovered that he had been careless, and explained ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... two-ton load." And then along came a steam-roller from off the transport, and the roller weighed five tons and it was important that it be passed across. "Go ahead," said the marine commander—"only I hope you can swim!" And they all camped on the bank to watch. The steam-roller man was an optimist and a literary person: "You may have builded better than you know, captain!" The bridge settled down another foot, but the roller got across, and back and over many more times; which set the younger marines to standing on the bank and ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... optimist ventured to question a particularly lugubrious statement, he was challenged to explain the betting, which had crept up to six to one on Jefferson ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... optimist. He invited his hearers, one and all to adopt the optimistic view of life, and help to bring the kingdom of God upon earth. He pointed out the causes which should help to make us cheerful, beautiful nature, healthy mental ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... might, if one had the time to make it all out, be shown to be the sufficient basis for a belief in, and a logical ground for anticipating, the progress of man toward moral and spiritual perfection. A healthy man is an optimist. Pessimism is the product of dyspepsia; and all the intermediate phases of philosophy come from some want of normal brain-action. Following out the Darwinian theory,—supported as it seems to be by the facts,—one must believe that the human race as a whole ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... been prepared already to sacrifice his career. To be sure, his career was not of much value at present, and didn't seem a large thing to sacrifice; but then, when it comes to giving anything away, even the most thorough-paced pessimist is capable of turning optimist about its worth. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... who believed in the Tennessee land—Jane Clemens's favorite cousin, James Lampton, the courtliest, gentlest, most prodigal optimist of all that guileless race. To James Lampton the land always had "millions in it"—everything had. He made stupendous fortunes daily, in new ways. The bare mention of the Tennessee land sent him off into figures that ended with the purchase ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... remember Pangloss in Candide: only a Pedant Optimist, I think, which became the soubriquet of Maupertuis' Akakia Optimism; but I have not the book, and do not want ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... picture of O'BRIEN'S fist Clenched playfully beneath a colleague's nose-piece Lets me foresee—a sanguine optimist— That Union which shall bring to ancient foes peace, When all who lap the Boyne Beg on their knees to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... eccentric genius of Cheyne Row, so long struggling with poverty, was assured of a competence, and was received in some of the proudest families of the kingdom as a teacher and a sage. Thus far he was an optimist, taking cheerful views of human life, and encouraging those who had ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... are a great many disagreeable things in life which wise people say are good for us, and for which they tell us we ought to be grateful in proportion to our discomfort. For my own part, however, I am no optimist. I am not fond of mortifying the flesh, and the eloquence of Socrates would fail to persuade me that a carbuncle was a cheerful companion, or the gout an ailment to be ardently desired. Yet, for all this, I cannot say that I look upon your adventure ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... From the standpoint of four-score I propose in this chapter to take a retrospect of some of the moral and religious movements that have occurred within my memory—in several of which I have taken part—and I shall note also the changes for better or worse that I have observed. If as an optimist I may sometimes exaggerate the good, and minimize the evil things, it is the curse of a pessimist that he can travel from Dan to Beersheba and find nothing ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... to the first, I am no optimist, but I have the firmest belief that the Divine Government (if we may use such a phrase to express the sum of the "customs of matter") is wholly just. The more I know intimately of the lives of other men (to say nothing of my own), the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... resolute and resourceful: he speaks French fluently and he was familiar with the foreign trade field. With the outbreak of war he did not lose his head and try to get business indiscriminately. Instead, he made a careful survey of the field; he did not listen to the optimist who said it would be a short war: his instinct told him, on the contrary, that it would be a long one. "What will France need more than anything else?" he ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... CAN come about the new birth of Art, and I think it WILL come about thus. You may say it is a long process, and so it is; but I can conceive of a longer. I have given you the Socialist or Optimist view of the matter. Now for ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... with the direst poverty in the slums, people on sick beds and death beds, in hospitals and in funeral processions; life pictures of successes and failures, of the discouraged, the despondent, the cheerful, the optimist and the pessimist, passed in quick succession and stamped themselves on the brains of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Hodges, The Optimist, in an editorial for the Philadelphia North American, says: "And when, after Pollyanna has gone away, you get her letter saying she is going to take 'eight steps' to-morrow—well, I don't know just what you may do, but I know of one person who ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... root of Mr. Anstey's success lies near the surface, and is nothing but the vividness of his dialogues. It is a great deal more; it lies in the truth of his characters, subtly drawn, but irresistible, and, now and again, tenderly pathetic. Thus may you see the optimist and pessimist, and the link between them, in the following scene in the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... had been lovely, and Officers and men had spent it mostly in sleeping and smoking upon the deck. Spirits had risen as the day grew older. For at dawn the cheeriest optimist is a pessimist, while at midday pessimists become optimists. In the early morning the German Army had been invincible. At lunch the Battalion was going to Berlin, on the biggest holiday ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... shoulders a great load had been lifted and now he was happy and rejoicing that he was a free man again. When I informed him of the drifts in our favour from other parts of the country and said that it was too early to concede anything, he said: "Tumulty, you are an optimist. It begins to look as if the defeat might be overwhelming. The only thing I am sorry for, and that cuts me to the quick, is that the people apparently misunderstood us. But I have no regrets. We have tried to do our duty." ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... savoring of achievement or of any other pleasure. I believe that the successful invalid is more apt to be cynical about his success than the healthy failure about his failure. The latter is usually an optimist. But this is a hard belief to substantiate. For the perfectly healthy failure does not ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... a somewhat difficult role—that of friend to the husband and undeclared lover to the wife—without losing our respect. He is in many ways a successful hero, and acts his part without either insipidity or priggishness. A genial optimist like Mrs. Forrester, as her old readers may well believe, sacrifices to a hopelessly unhappy marriage no lot which interests us. Disagreeable husbands die at an auspicious moment, and everybody is finally made happy in his or her own way, which includes the possession ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... judged enough for a hero that he succeed without being clever or good, but neither did Graham pass this doubtful and dangerous test. For when you clear away the romance which heroic poetry and excited prose have flung around him, you were an optimist if you did not see his life was one long failure as well as a disappointment and a sorrow. He did bravely with the Prince of Orange, and yet somehow he missed promotion; he was the best officer the government had in Scotland, and yet it was only in the ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... mountain-lion might have to be reckoned with; and if a pursuer should follow him under the rock his only chance would lie in getting hold, after a fight, of the man's loaded revolver or ammunition-belt. Such a hope involved a great deal of confidence, but de Spain was an optimist—most ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... been thinking," said the gunner. "I ain't an ornamental soldier, but I've a good deal of cosmic kinetic optimism, and it's the cosmic kinetic optimist what comes through. Now these Wenuses don't want to wipe us all out. It's the women they want to exterminate. They want to collar the men, and you'll see that after a bit they'll begin catching us, picking the best, and feeding us up in cages ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... Sir Adrian, for one who ever cherished ideal aspirations, for the student, the "man of books" (as his father had been banteringly wont to term him), worshipper of the muses, intellectual Epicurean, and would-be optimist philosopher, it must be admitted he had strangely dealt, and been dealt with, since he first beheld that face, now returned to light his solitude! Ah, God bless the child! Pulwick at least nursed it warmly, whilst unhappy Adrian, ragged and degraded into a mere fighting beast, roamed through ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the right of primogeniture—just the one to preach a crusade for Equality, he that thinks himself the equal of no one. If he were a bachelor, he would go into society; if he were in a fair way to be a Royalist poet with a pension and the Cross of the Legion of Honor, he would be an optimist, and journalism offers starting-points by the hundred. Journalism is the giant catapult set in motion by pigmy hatreds. Have you any wish to marry after this? Vernou has none of the milk of human kindness in him, it is all ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... veracity of the assertion. Mrs Brandon only joined in the prayer-meetings that he held at our house, when Ford himself was perfectly sober—thus she did not often attend—Brandon never. Whilst he wore the top-boots, he was an optimist, and perfectly epicurean in his philosophy—I use the term in the modern sense. When he had eighty pounds odd a year, with no family of his own, no man was more jovial or happy. He had the most perfect reliance on Providence. He boasted ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... and fascinated the English ear, so that the philosophy of the Persian and the Roman might be reduced to something like a common denominator. Lucretius is so far a pessimist that, under existing conditions, human life is for him no more than a hideous nightmare; but he is so far an optimist that he looks upon all this misery as due to one removable cause, this cause being the prevalence of one mistaken belief, which a true scientific philosophy will altogether eradicate. The belief in question is a belief ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... the day before. This was for the weakest spot in the financial dike. And with one bank president after another similar scenes were enacted. They were paralyzed with fear, and first of all he played his role of the big vital optimist. Times were improving. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... the general." Thomas Hardy is recognized as the finest living English novelist, but there is very little comparison between himself and Meredith. Professor William Lyon Phelps, who is one of the best and sanest of American critics, says they are both pagans, but Meredith was an optimist, while Hardy is a pessimist. Then he adds this illuminating comment: "Mr. Hardy is a great novelist; whereas, to adapt a phrase that Arnold applied to Emerson, I should say that Mr. Meredith was not a great novelist; he was a great ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... through the remainder of 1816, and at the beginning of the next year, was almost invariably cheerful, and she showed by the completion of Persuasion that she was capable of first-rate literary work during the summer of 1816. The fact is that, as to health, she was an incurable optimist; her natural good spirits made her see the best side, and her unselfishness prompted the suppression of anything that might distress those around her. Nothing, for instance, could be more lively than the following letter to Edward Austen, written while he was still at Winchester ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... The obstinate optimist stares a moment, turns pale, and then, with an oath, strikes his more clear-headed neighbor in the face! And the excited crowd behind, with the blind instinctive feeling that, somehow, he has robbed them of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... I think," put in Billie, always the optimist of the quartette. "We'll all just have a small private school of four and jump in and work together. To me, working together is almost as nice as playing together. I suppose I appreciate it more than the rest of you because I had to work and play ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... like the fissures at San Francisco or Kingston, and poor little Peggy has tumbled into it. A teacupful of "management" might have prevented it; an ounce of worry would have saved it all. I lacked that teacupful; I missed that ounce. The veriest popular optimist could have done no worse. I am smothered with my own stupidity. I have borne this humiliating condition of things as long as I can. I propose to go over to that house and take the helm in this emergency. I don't care whether I am popular or unpopular for it. But something ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... the conclusion that the upper grades of skilled labour have made considerable advances, and that the lower grades of regular unskilled labourers have to a less degree shared in this advance, they do not warrant the optimist conclusion often drawn from them, that poverty is a disease which left alone will cure itself, and which, in point of fact, is curing itself rapidly. Before we consent to accept the evidence of improvement in the average condition of the ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... accept the suggestion that Cabinet Ministers were collectively responsible for one another's speeches—"they had far more serious things to think of." The phrase seems a little depreciatory, but as Mr. LLOYD GEORGE, according to his candid colleague, is "constitutionally an optimist" he will no doubt make the best ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... with the papers in her lap. She was more frightened at her mother's news than she would show. They were mere girls, she and Mollie, and their little mother had no knowledge of business. She shook herself impatiently. Barbara was an optimist—things ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... is an utter absence of worry, because in truth there is nothing left to worry about, since he knows that all must be well. His higher Science makes him a confirmed optimist, for it shows him that whatever of evil there may be in any person or in any movement, it is of necessity temporary, because it is opposed to the resistless stream of evolution; whereas whatever is good in any person ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... "The optimist believes in the regeneration of the race, in its ultimate perfectibility, the synthesis of humanity, the providential idea, and the path of the future; he therefore puts on a shovel hat, cries out against lust, and ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... grew angry, and remarked, in Sophronia's hearing, that we were a couple of fools, to take a house without first proving whether the agent had told the truth. But Sophronia, who is a consistent optimist, rebuked me for my want of ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... business. The book market is fickle to the utmost degree. The books that should sell sometimes do not "move" at all, and those that apparently have but little to recommend them turn out to be the best of the bunch so far as sales are concerned. A jobber has to be something of an optimist; he must keep his ear to the ground, and, like certain types of politicians, must be prepared to give the people what they want when they want it. He can of course help along the demand for good books and check that ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... small boy is a subject remains what it always was. Nature, who is a well-meaning blunderer, has tried to set things right, first by planting some natural affection for his small boy into the stony heart of the parent, and, second, by making the small boy himself an optimist. Happily, there is always a silver lining to the cloud that hovers over the small boy, even when the cane is descending upon him. Trifles please the poor little fellow and help him to forget the gloom which surrounds him. Coventry Patmore, in that most touching poem, "The Toys," tells of a father ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... marching Indians, his exhibition was received either in ominous silence or, in some quarters, with something like derision. As I have said before, there comes a time when the best-disposed debtors do not regard themselves as being repaid by promises, and when the most enthusiastic optimist desires to see something more than samples. It was only old Colon going round with his show again—flamingoes, macaws, seashells, dye-woods, gums and spices; some people laughed, and some were angry; but all were united in thinking that the ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... she would adopt. Then Carew called from the camp and she went back, while Millicent sat still with grave doubts in her heart. Bella's faith in her husband was warranted, and Millicent was enough of an optimist to believe that such men were not uncommon—there was Lisle, for example, and Nasmyth. With them one would undoubtedly have something to build a happy and profitable life upon—but what could be done with one in whom there was no foundation, only the shifting sands of impulses, or, perhaps, ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Arnold is a profound optimist, and apparently not a little proud of it. He recently said to ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Optimist, that is to be. You're taking the wrong turn, comrade. Come away from the down to 'has been,' and climb to 'will be,' ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... an optimist, and an incorrigible old fool, if you like, but I am certain that the spirit which won the War is not going to fail us at this second call. Perhaps we have only been waiting for the actual consummation of Peace to settle down to our new and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... who lives like the angels and dies like the brutes—the mortal paradox that has puzzled all thinkers from the Psalmist to Pascal. For the unbeliever this must ever be the ugly reverse of all glories that are merely material, though the sensuous optimist need not allow the skeleton at the feast ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill |
