Optimism

“ Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts, “the source and centre of all minds, their only point of rest.” ”

“ I look upon optimism as a most quaint disease, an eruption that breaks out upon the soul, and destroys all its interest, all its beauty. The optimist dresses up the amazing figures of life like Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses, and pipes a foolish tune—the Old Hundredth or some such thing—for them to dance to. ”

“ Thus my optimism is grounded in two worlds, myself and what is about me. I demand that the world be good, and lo, it obeys. I proclaim the world good, and facts range themselves to prove my proclamation overwhelmingly true. To what is good I open the doors of my being, and jealously shut them against what is bad. Such is the force of this beautiful and wilful conviction, it carries itself in the face of all opposition. I am never discouraged by absence of good. I never can be argued into hopelessness. ”

“ There is good and there is hope in the world which holds such men and such things—and because of you I have kept my optimism. I seem to have a perfect torrent of talk, but I have been so much alone to think—and you are going away. ”

“ My whole philosophy, which is very real, teaches acquiescence and optimism. Sure I am that the right word will be spoken, though I cut out my tongue.’ In his old age, with 195 friends dying and life failing, his tone of cheerful, forward-looking hope is still the same. ”

“ The majority of us, I apprehend, profess neither pessimism nor optimism. We hold that the world is neither so good, nor so bad, as it conceivably might be; and, as most of us have reason, now and again, to discover that it can be. ”

“ You may say such ideas bring gloominess, pessimism into our lives. What difference does it make if we become a little gloomy, or if we become pessimistic? What has your optimism given us? What do the passing joys bring us? They bring us nothing but reaction. So-called optimism does not land us anywhere. It rather leads us into complex situations and conditions. ”

“ Personally I incline to optimism—that is, I think that this world, if not exactly ‘the best of all possible worlds,’ is yet on the whole a very tolerable world, and that life to the majority, and on the average, is worth living. ”

“ The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience. ”

“ It is the optimism of simple, shrewd, sane common sense, the optimism of the poor, the optimism of sound nerves, the optimism of cab-men and bus drivers, of fishermen and gardeners, of "tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors, apothecaries and thieves." ”

“ It sounds hopeful. I confess that you're more optimistic about the ultimate result than I am—or should be if I stopped to consider it—but optimism costs no more than pessimism, and I guess it wears better. ”

“ He found that the business of optimism was no mean task. ”

“ No one can exactly know with what births, monstrous or beautiful, the future may teem. Admitting a certain point of view—that of almost unrestrained optimism—the predictions here offered will, it is believed, be found to be along the line of existing progress. ”

“ There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness. ”

“ It is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it is our optimism or our pessimism, of physiological or perhaps pathological origin, as much the one as the other, that makes our ideas. ”

“ This system is wholly and exclusively compacted of optimism: “Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.” “Thoughts are things,” as one of the most vigorous mind-cure writers prints in bold type at the bottom of each of his pages; and if your thoughts are of health, youth, vigor, and success, before you know it these things will also be your outward portion. No one can fail of the regenerative influence of optimistic thinking, pertinaciously pursued. Every man owns indefeasibly this inlet to the divine. ”

“ Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. ”

“ Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope. ”

“ They tell of the supremacy of the ideal, of vastness, of union, of safety, and of rest. They offer us hypotheses, hypotheses which we may voluntarily ignore, but which as thinkers we cannot possibly upset. The supernaturalism and optimism to which they would persuade us may, interpreted in one way or another, be after all the truest of insights into the meaning of this life. ”

“ But the optimism that consists in putting evil facts up into a kind of outdoors in our minds and in giving them room to exercise in our thoughts and feelings, the optimism that consists in having one's brain move vigorously through disagreeable facts—organize them into the other facts with which they belong and with which they work—is worthy of consideration. ”

“ Essential human nature, it seems clear, does not and happily cannot change. Spiritual progress, in this ultimate optimism, means simply clearer vision, completer knowledge, and a less petulant and self-assertive habit of insistence upon the details of particular purposes as individual "impulse" and "idiosyncrasy" define them. We fortunate beings of today have available, in the various departments of our life, certain instrumentalities, and to these our interests attach. ”

“ It lets us into the soul of things and teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to coöperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life. ”

“ Logically regarded, it savours of the most audacious optimism, arguing, or rather sentimentalizing, after this fashion: "It would be so immensely inconvenient if Nature were every moment changing her rules without notice! ”

“ One, for example, is to the general effect that optimism is a virtue in itself—that there is a mysterious merit in being hopeful and of glad heart, even in the presence of adverse and immovable facts. ”

“ But now it can not escape the careful observer that there is at the opening of this century a third kind of optimism appearing, which we may call the new optimism. It might also be called dynamic, or practical, or psychological optimism. It concerns itself with no theoretical questions as to whether this world is the best possible one or not. It has for its motto—The world is pretty good, and we will make it better. ”

“ The true similitude between nature and revelation consists in this—that they each bear strong marks of their original, that they each also bear appearances of irregularity and defect. A system of strict optimism may, nevertheless, be the real system in both cases. ”

“ Hope, or Optimism, when highly developed [Pg 96] causes one to look on the bright side of things, expect favorable outcomes, look confidently forward, and expect much from the future. Its perversion manifests in visionary dreams and castle-building. ”

“ Leaving out of view the question as to the exact interpretation of the facts of life, this optimism is ethically useful as giving cheerfulness and enthusiasm to moral life, with power of enduring ills through the conviction of the ultimate triumph of the right. ”

“ The optimism which represented man to be the sport of mechanical laws, of deteriorating changes in the physical system, and of blind, ungovernable chance, was not an optimism to clear away difficulties, and silence objections. ”

“ Representatively, then, and symbolically, and apart from the vagaries into which the unenlightened intellect of former times may have let it wander, asceticism must, I believe, be acknowledged to go with the profounder way of handling the gift of existence. Naturalistic optimism is mere syllabub and flattery and sponge-cake in comparison. ”

“ VI WE are confirmed optimists and sow optimism broadcast. We have optimistic clubs and mental scientists and Christian scientists,―all afflicted with incurable ophthalmia to surrounding evil and misery. We are scientific, we are evolutionists, we have faith in the sort of optimism taught by Leibnitz in bis famous Theodicea. ”

“ Inspired by a wholesome optimism, sound common sense, and a reverent recognition of the higher truths of existence. Just the volume that needed to be written on a subject full of vital interest to every thoughtful man and woman. ”

“ This world is good, we must say, since it is what we make it,—and we shall make it good. How can we exclude from the cognition of a truth a faith which is involved in the creation of the truth? M has its character indeterminate, susceptible of forming part of a thorough-going pessimism on the one hand, or of a meliorism, a moral (as distinguished from a sensual) optimism on the other. ”

“ One can but recognize in such writers as these the presence of a temperament organically weighted on the side of cheer and fatally forbidden to linger, as those of opposite temperament linger, over the darker aspects of the universe. In some individuals optimism may become quasi-pathological. ”

“ Happiness, Goodness, Beauty, and Knowledge are each presented as ideals of life and the pessimist's arguments for their impossibility given. Particularly interesting in contrast with the optimism of Spencer's Data of Ethics are the pessimistic conclusions here drawn from the doctrine of Evolution. ”

“ If I should try to say anew the creed of the optimist, I should say something like this: “I believe in God, I believe in man, I believe in the power of the spirit. I believe it is a sacred duty to encourage ourselves and others; to hold the tongue from any unhappy word against God’s world, because no man has any right to complain of a universe which God made good, and which thousands of men have striven to keep good. ”

“ The main thesis of the present book is indicated by the title, namely, that man is creating, out of the divine potentialities of his own nature, the social life and institutions which are, for a large body of thinkers to-day, the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ upon earth. The book is also understood to embody the author’s religious beliefs.... Everywhere we find optimism—evil interpreted as good in the making, and the future heralded as a mighty advance upon the present.”—Dial. ”

“ If we give the two types close analytical consideration, we shall discover that behind the optimistic self-confidence of the former there is hidden a just as deep, or rather a far deeper, helplessness; a helplessness to which the conscious optimism acts as an unsuccessful effort at compensation. ”

“ What one desires, then, is an optimism which arises from taking a wide view of things as they are, and taking the worst side into account, not an optimism which is only made possible by wearing blinkers. I was reading a day or two ago a suggestive and brilliant book by one of our most prolific critics, Mr. ”

“ The confidence and trust which these conceptions inspire teach me to rest safe in my life as in a fate, and protect me from spectral doubts and fears. Verily, blessed are ye that have not seen, and yet have believed. ”

“ There is more wisdom in shutting one’s eyes than your copybook philosophers will allow.”
Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the world at a standstill. ”

“ No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit. ”