PESSIMISM
A pessimist is a man who lives with an optimist.—Francis Wilson.
How happy are the Pessimists!
A bliss without alloy
Is theirs when they have proved to us
There's no such thing as joy!
—Harold Susman.
A pessimist is one who, of two evils, chooses them both.
"I had a mighty queer surprise this morning," remarked a local stock broker. "I put on my last summer's thin suit on account of this extraordinary hot weather, and in one of the trousers pockets I found a big roll of bills which I had entirely forgotten."
"Were any of them receipted?" asked a pessimist.
To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair.—Fronde.
With earth's first clay they did the last man knead,
And there of the last harvest sowed the seed:
And the first morning of creation wrote
What the last dawn of reckoning shall read.
Yesterday this day's madness did prepare;
Tomorrow's silence, triumph, or despair.
Drink! For you know not whence you came, nor why;
Drink! For you know not why you go, nor where.
—Omar Khayyam