A part of what we might term the optimist's philosophy is—If you can mend a situation mend it; if you can't mend it forget it.—Ralph Waldo Trine.
If your confidence needs buttressing, just stop for a moment and consider that this old world in which we have found such happiness has throughout the past ages been visited by every catastrophe of which the human mind can conceive, and from each of these dark periods it has emerged always and eternally a progressive world.
Finally, I say, cheer up. Let's look on the bright side rather than the dark side, and above all let us understand that there are no insurmountable obstacles standing in the path of our progress, that we are competent to solve the things that confront us, that they will be solved, and that humankind will be benefited by the virtue of our assuming an optimism in which we are fully justified.—Lewis L. Clark.
LANDLADY—"Just when are you going to pay your arrears of room rent?"
HARD-UP AUTHOR—"As soon as I receive the check which the publisher will send me if he accepts the novel I am about to commence when I have found a suitable subject and the necessary inspiration."
An optimist is anybody who thinks he can write a new humorous definition of an optimist or a pessimist. A pessimist is the same person after he has made a serious attempt to do so.