“The sad thing about the optimist is his state of mind concerning himself.”
A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911)
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Elbert Hubbard 141
American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el … 1856–1915Related quotes
Source: On Representative Government (1861), Ch. II: The Criterion of a Good Form of Government (p. 167)
Source: Everything Is Illuminated
“He dooms himself. He is his own sad jest.”
Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)
Context: And from above a voice fused half in iron
Half in irony gives man a dreadful choice.
The role is his, it says, Man makes and loads his own strange dice,
They sum at his behest,
He dooms himself. He is his own sad jest.
Let go? Let be?
Why do you ask this gift from Me?
When, trussed and bound and nailed,
You sacrifice your life, your liberty
You hang yourself upon the tenterhook.
Pull free!
I should not like to be merely a great doctor, a great lawyer, a great minister, a great politician.—I should like to be, also, something of a man.
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors, Both Ancient and Modern (1891) edited by Tryon Edwards. p. 326.
“Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.”
Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“You should be concerned about the state of your soul, not the state of your bank account.”
Source: Little Earthquakes
Interview with James Keating, Purdue University (7 May 1961), printed in Lord of the Flies: The Casebook Edition (1964)
Context: Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose.
To Captain Konrad Patzig. Quoted in "The Game of the Foxes" - Page 5 - by Ladislas Farago - 1972