"Pessimistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the record of public opinion, and from time to time have invoked the aid of psychometry, which has dissipated every fear and contradicted all the pessimistic notions of politicians and newspaper correspondents ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... thorough Frenchmen and their critical sense must be unbridled. They love their ideas and their systems. They would doubtless not hesitate to advise Foch. Personally, if I were Foch, I should turn a deaf ear. But if I were a timid, vacillating, pessimistic spirit, still in doubt as to the final outcome, I should most certainly seat myself at a neighbouring table and listen to their conversation that I might come away imbued with a little of their patience, ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... and in quite a valorous spirit. The party I was at was neither very large nor very small; we were eighteen, to be exact, and the political situation was represented in all its gravity by the presence of a Minister and his spouse. The former has always been pessimistic, and so we had Boxers for soup, Boxers with the entrees, and Boxers to the end. In fact, if the truth be told, the Boxers surrounded us in a constant vapour of words so formidable that one might well have reason to be alarmed. P——, the Minister, was, indeed, very talkative and gesticulative; ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... that they take seriously those jeremiads over our decay which are characteristic of our people, and very especially of many of our military thinkers. I have never been able to understand why they should be of so pessimistic a turn of mind, unless it be a sort of exaltation of that grumbling which has always been the privilege of the old soldier. Croker narrates how he met Wellington in his later years, and how the Iron Duke told him that he was glad he was so old, as he would not live to see the dreadful military ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... the people's enduring pluck, this dogged resolution of no surrender. Not that they felt conscious of any particular heroism; the thought of capitulation as a means of escape from discomfort suggested itself to nobody. In moments of mental depression it might have crossed an ultra-pessimistic mind and been brooded over as a consummation that no Spartan bravery could enable us to avert. But to the masses the notion was unthinkable; the idea of surrender would not bear discussion; it was never discussed. Against Martial Law as such we did not ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
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