That odious pessimism!

The high hopes and the ardency of the reign of Elizabeth saddened into a profound pessimism and gloom in that of James.

Lest I be accused of undue pessimism, let me cite as a witness one who, of all men, is probably best equipped to express an opinion upon the moral state of the world.

If it were true, as too many preachers take for granted, that we have all, whatever our difference of physical and mental equipment, an equal sense of moral responsibility, the result would be to plunge us into hopeless pessimism.

But when Boswell suggested that perhaps experience might increase our estimate of human happiness, Johnson returned to his habitual pessimism.

SALTUS, EDGAR, an interesting American writer, born in New York; a busy writer in fiction, biography (Balzac), and philosophy, e. g. "The Philosophy of Disenchantment" and "The Anatomy of Negation," studies in a somewhat cheerful pessimism; b. 1858.

So the Hairy Jocks trudged along the long, straight, nubbly French road, well content, speculating with comfortable pessimism as to the character of the billets in which they would find themselves.

They were both philosophers, but Mrs. Tucker's serene and languid optimism would not tolerate the compassionate and kind-hearted pessimisms of the lawyer.

His novels brought into England the contemporary pessimism of Schopenhaur and the Russians, and found a home for it among the English peasantry.

Her mother, Valentine, had just emerged from a frightful crisis, her final rupture with Santerre, who had made up his mind to marry a very wealthy old lady, which, after all, was the logical destiny of such a crafty exploiter of women, one who behind his affectation of cultured pessimism had the vilest and greediest of natures.

And he, also, who invented the saying that the world is going to the bow-wows, lodged his deplorable pessimism in fitting words.

He was her teacher and constant companion, and she passed as his wife; so it is probable that he strengthened in her mind that dreary pessimism which appeared in her later writings.

The empirical preponderance of pain over pleasure, which can be shown by calculation, proves that the world is evil, that its non-existence were better than its existence; the purposiveness everywhere perceptible in nature and the progress of history toward a final goal (it is true, a negative one) proves, nevertheless, that it is the best world that was possible (reconciliation of eudemonistic pessimism with evolutionistic optimism).

Sudden changes from extreme pessimism to an equally extreme optimism would occur, and these violent oscillations of the barometer did not always correspond with the course of events.

Johnson has something in common with the fashionable pessimism of modern times.

Nay, rather let it be said that they still live in the ever fresh and graphic pages of contemporary critics, and thus refute the gentle pessimism of Mr. Henley when he asks so gracefully: "Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed For laughing worlds to see and know? Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe?

"Rub off some of your gloomy pessimism and cultivate a little more healthy girlish vanity, and you will do very well," she would say.

He noticed that she skipped a phrase in which Mairet expressed his heroic pessimism, and when he remarked on it she appeared vexed.

The acceptance of this change was facilitated by the historical pessimism of Islâm, which makes the mind prepared for every sort of decay, and by the true Moslim habit of resignation to painful experiences, not through fatalism, but through reverence for Allah's inscrutable will.

That which follows speaks of age and sadness; even its brightest hours are followed by gloom, and by the pessimism inseparable from the passing of old standards.

Our highest Idea is the All, which is conformed to law, and instinct with life and reason, and our feeling toward the universethe consciousness of dependence on its lawsexercises no less of ethical influence, is no less full of reverence, and no less exposed to injury from an irreverent pessimism, than the feeling of the devout of the old type toward their God.

But all this literary pessimism did not trouble Mathieu.

The melancholy pessimism of this essay led to some remonstrance from robuster readers of the London Magazine.

The veil of morbid pessimism that came before my eyes during the weary days I had spent upon the beach at Levuka was torn aside, and a wave of gladness entered my being.

The popularity of pure and unadulterated pessimism is an oddity; it is almost a contradiction in terms.