652 Quotes About Pessimism

When we think of the Berlin salons in the Romantic period, of the role played in them by a Henrietta Herz or a Rachel Levin, of the friendship between the latter and Crown Prince Louis-Ferdinand; and when we then think that if such women had lived in this century they would have died in some gas chamber, we cannot help considering the belief in progress as the falsest and stupidest of superstitions.

We should have been excused from lugging a body: the burden of the self is enough.

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.

In the end, every startup is different. But in the beginning every startup is the same.

No autocrat wields a power comparable to that enjoyed by a poor devil planning to kill himself.

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.

The only value of this world lay in its power - at certain times - to suggest another world.

Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.

What some people regard as freedom is slavery wearing makeup … a push-up bra … and a corset.