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pessimistic
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  • Optimists and pessimists — not to mention the realists —air their opinions with unflagging energy, and as with everything else, they're all certain that they have a monopoly on the truth.†   (source)
  • But this was just his daily pessimism.†   (source)
  • Quite often social contrariness and a generally pessimistic outlook are observed.†   (source)
  • That same pessimistic voice in my mind spoke up then, reminding me that I probably wouldn't have a chance against one of them, and there were four.†   (source)
  • Against many pessimistic forecasts, we all woke up and carried the boats to breakfast.†   (source)
  • But you must stop being so pessimistic, Hannah, and learn to trust those around you.†   (source)
  • "It's not like you to be a pessimist," Quentin said coldly.†   (source)
  • I told her about the computer technician, the way he'd tapped into my history to produce a pessimistic massive tally.†   (source)
  • CHAPTER 13 — THE PESSIMIST AND THE OPTIMIST.†   (source)
  • Very interesting you should have been so pessimistic about her.†   (source)
  • Despite my fevered rush to her house, my pessimistic side assumed that Carey would be the one who opened the door for me.†   (source)
  • Most of us, apart from a few hopeless pessimists, were convinced they would enter the war any moment now, and a number of us thought the United States would declare war on Germany too.†   (source)
  • As pessimistic as I was about the eventual outcome of the surgery, I still felt a glow of pride in being able to work side by side with the best men and women in the medical field.†   (source)
  • Late Antiquity was generally characterized by religious doubts, cultural dissolution, and pessimism.†   (source)
  • Writing my article about Haiti, I came to share the pessimism of the soldiers I'd stayed with.†   (source)
  • On the other hand, a pessimist was someone with expectations lower than reality, a fraction of diminishing returns.†   (source)
  • I set the dials at 1-1-7 and pushed pessimistically at the buttons.†   (source)
  • But Winnie is a determined person, and I suspect my pessimistic reaction only strengthened her resolve.†   (source)
  • "No worry, no worry," Generose said in her sparing English, and raising her hands to stifle the pessimistic conversation about money.†   (source)
  • By the window, even Bert, pessimist of pessimists, was smiling.†   (source)
  • To Johnnie, weary to the point where aching muscles and blood charged with uneliminated waste spelled pessimism, that high board fence seemed to make of the pretty place a prison yard.†   (source)
  • Fox proposed optimistic and pessimistic scenarios.†   (source)
  • He was a generally pessimistic person, but he seemed to make an exception for Katherines: he always felt they would come back to him.†   (source)
  • I was pessimistic of finding anything hidden in any of the seamed walls of the maze.†   (source)
  • "Maybe we were too pessimistic, Alex," Pelt chirped up.†   (source)
  • When dusk arrived, a faint spark of optimism leavened his pessimism, for all of a sudden, the preparations began to come together with unexpected speed.†   (source)
  • It was enough to make a man a pessimist, that such things had started occurring regularly.†   (source)
  • As determined as I was, I was also a bit pessimistic about my odds.†   (source)
  • I had thought of all these possibilities and more, but never that of Rosa's death, despite my proverbial pessimism, which always leads me to expect the worst.†   (source)
  • 'I may not live through sixty,' he wheedled in a flat, pessimistic voice.†   (source)
  • A pessimist is one who thinks otherwise.†   (source)
  • As for theories of conspiracy and the most terrible pessimism, surely they'd cornered the world market on those.†   (source)
  • Lucien, the pessimist, was convinced the damage was irreparable, but Jake wasn't so sure.†   (source)
  • The truce with pessimism-bordering-on-nihilism was a very tenuous one.†   (source)
  • Besides, there was his ingrained pessimism, which never deserted him.†   (source)
  • But this did not mean they would vote for him, and Thomas was pessimistic.†   (source)
  • Every endeavor is at some point troubled by pessimists.†   (source)
  • Such a pessimist.†   (source)
  • You're a pessimist, Eddie.†   (source)
  • Baz Dreisinger, who teaches at Queens College, New York, speaks of "a new racial frontier that shaped American culture and especially American music-- the frontier that optimists call racial hybridity and pessimists call cultural theft."†   (source)
  • Should the witches threaten Rowan or its interests, I can promise an outcome so swift and severe that it will shock even the greatest pessimists among you.†   (source)
  • As if history were not the steady alternation of the dark and the light, people become resigned and pessimistic, and when the fields are left open, in rush the lunatics and idiots.†   (source)
  • Don't give happy answer, nor pessimistic; don't shove curves at us.†   (source)
  • Forgive the pessimism, if not the sonority.†   (source)
  • I was almost ready to accept the pessimistic statement in the manual and give up the attempt as hopeless when I caught the faint echo of a human voice above the whistle and rustle of static in the earphones.†   (source)
  • You know, for someone who got brought back to life, you sure are pessimistic.†   (source)
  • I began to hope that I had been overly pessimistic, that we might be able to live in Mansfield in an atmosphere of peace and understanding after all.†   (source)
  • It was an end that no prophet had ever foreseen-an end that repudiated optimism and pessimism alike.†   (source)
  • You're a good deal of a pessimist, sweetheart.†   (source)
  • My own pessimism, my insecurity, was a more terrestrial affair.†   (source)
  • He gave the source the cover name of "Mayfair" and sent a pessimistic letter to London.†   (source)
  • Devil take your pessimism.†   (source)
  • So don't worry — you're just experiencing post-graduation pessimism.†   (source)
  • I'll admit to the generally pessimistic outlook.†   (source)
  • No, replied her pessimistic side, afraid not.†   (source)
  • Pete was an Optimist and Stuart was a Pessimist.†   (source)
  • Don't be so pessimistic," he complained.†   (source)
  • More pessimistic than Latino immigrants, many of whom suffer unthinkable poverty.†   (source)
  • I could leave the office a pessimist and take my survey with me.†   (source)
  • She's such a pessimist," Emmett muttered to himself.†   (source)
  • Quite often social contrariness and a generally pessimistic outlook are observed.†   (source)
  • There is no group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites.†   (source)
  • But I wish you could control the pessimism, Bella.†   (source)
  • Don't be such a pessimist—I'll be fine.†   (source)
  • Where she would worry, he would shrug; in her pessimistic moments, he remained unconcerned.†   (source)
  • I like it when pessimism goes unrewarded," Jeb mused.†   (source)
  • Many people expressed the pessimistic opinion that the government had run out of ammunition.†   (source)
  • You might be a loner or a visionary or a pessimist.†   (source)
  • SHIVA WAS UNAFFECTED BY COLD, fog, mist, or wetness, while I became morose and pessimistic.†   (source)
  • By the window, even Bert, pessimist of pessimists, was smiling.†   (source)
  • " "Go back to sleep, if all you can do is be pessimistic," Augustus said.†   (source)
  • "What if they don't pay us here?" the pessimistic Needle asked one night.†   (source)
  • I realized that I was growing more pessimistic, more bitter, more frantic with each passing day.†   (source)
  • " Jasper was impatient with Lippy's pessimism.†   (source)
  • Both those pessimists seemed to think that it would work, so we got started.†   (source)
  • In some cities I was called "unduly pessimistic" only weeks before the explosions occurred.†   (source)
  • As it was only 2:25, and Chef Zhukovsky had yet to turn the corner from pessimist to optimist, he curtly replied: "Of course not!"†   (source)
  • The pessimists thought otherwise: they believed the war would last for some time yet, but at least there could no longer be the slightest doubt of its ultimate outcome.†   (source)
  • The islanders often made gloomy predictions about what Mother Nature had in store for Cairnholm—they were at the mercy of the elements, after all, and pessimistic by default—but this time their worst fears were confirmed.†   (source)
  • That's pessimistic.†   (source)
  • But as the day unfolded, hour by hour Emile's pessimism would slowly give way to the possibility that all was not lost.†   (source)
  • A pessimist?†   (source)
  • How very pessimistic.†   (source)
  • Philosophic insight, it was now thought, did not only have its own reward; it shold also free mankind from pessimism and the fear of death.†   (source)
  • As it turns out, I did,— more literature than boyfriends lately, but I guess you can't have everything ("a generally pessimistic outlook is observed").†   (source)
  • More pessimistic than black Americans, whose material prospects continue to lag behind those of whites.†   (source)
  • What is more surprising is that, as surveys have found, working-class whites are the most pessimistic group in America.†   (source)
  • The incredible optimism I felt about my own life contrasted starkly with the pessimism of so many of my neighbors.†   (source)
  • Maybe we were naturally pessimistic, and our chances of success had seemed so tiny that we'd never bothered to wonder what we'd do if we actually fixed Miss Peregrine—or maybe the crises of the past few days had been so constant and pressing that we'd never had a chance to wonder.†   (source)
  • And then I was a little angry, because he was darkening this most perfect of all mornings with his pessimistic assumptions.†   (source)
  • I believe, therefore, that it is important for a man to announce that he is happy even though such an announcement is less dramatic and less entertaining than the cries of his pessimistic opposite.†   (source)
  • Don't be so pessimistic.†   (source)
  • Not, of course, that they'll do any good," he said, with the familiar wry, pessimistic look on his face.†   (source)
  • You are far too pessimistic.†   (source)
  • Yossarian turned away and trudged through the apartment with a gloomy scowl, peering with pessimistic curiosity into all the rooms.†   (source)
  • He was neither optimistic nor pessimistic of his chances, having learned that in dangerous initiatives, battle, and escape, optimism and pessimism have no place.†   (source)
  • In the optimistic scenario, he believed, the rate of teen homicides would rise another 15 percent over the next decade; in the pessimistic scenario, it would more than double.†   (source)
  • "You're very pessimistic, Jacob.†   (source)
  • Amanda had a very pessimistic view of the world, and to get through her depressions she smoked hashish.†   (source)
  • Only from the perspective of such a utopia is it possible to use the concepts of pessimism and optimism with full justification: an optimist is someone who thinks that on planet number five the history of mankind will be less bloody.†   (source)
  • Bram was deeply pessimistic.†   (source)
  • I'm pessimistic, you think.†   (source)
  • His foreman was a man defeated by his own pessimistic views, and his news was mostly a series of misfortunes: the strawberries froze, the chickens caught the pip, the grapes rotted.†   (source)
  • He was neither optimistic nor pessimistic of his chances, having learned that in dangerous initiatives, battle, and escape, optimism and pessimism have no place.†   (source)
  • Where's pessimistic?†   (source)
  • Never pessimist.†   (source)
  • Pessimistically?†   (source)
  • …them all the way to nirvana but that generally had the opposite effect, and they would wind up slipping out of other people's sight, stretched out beneath the tall reeds in the garden, desperately making love; the books they had read by candlelight, drowning in passion and smoke; the interminable gatherings during which they discussed the pessimistic postwar philosophers or concentrated on trying to move the three-legged table—two taps for yes, three for no—while Clara laughed at them.†   (source)
  • But Hamid was pessimistic.†   (source)
  • You're a pessimist.†   (source)
  • On and on I went, the repetition of the task helping to pass the dreary time, but also promoting a sense of pessimism.†   (source)
  • Medical techniques had developed in two years, not a pessimistic twenty; it had been possible to relax the stasis, operate, and restore Mr. Walker to the world.†   (source)
  • But me — well, I'm a natural non-com, with the proper pessimistic attitude to offset the enthusiasm of the likes of you.†   (source)
  • To direct a war, or even to plan a single battle and mount the operation, you have to have theory of games, operational analysis, symbolic logic, pessimistic synthesis, and a dozen other skull subjects.†   (source)
  • The insecurity I felt was due to my lack of true religion, and was like the small change of the exalted pessimism of our faith, the pessimism that can drive men on to do wonders.†   (source)
  • Filth and despair and pessimism!†   (source)
  • And yet I was well aware as I stood between them with the water running over my toes, he the optimist was the one who was prepared for the worst, and she the pessimist was the daredevil: he the one who on our trip carried chains and a coil of rope and an ax all upstairs to our hotel bedroom every night in case of fire, and she the one—before I was born—when there was a fire, had broken loose from all hands and run back—on crutches, too—into the burning house to rescue her set of…†   (source)
  • In every city the local community leaders who had brought me in nevertheless felt that they lived there and knew better and said that I was being "unduly pessimistic."†   (source)
  • "That's about as bad a witness as you'll find," he remarked pessimistically.†   (source)
  • The loveless and faithless ones are compelled by their pessimism to attack.†   (source)
  • There was a great contrast between his world pessimism and personal cheeriness.†   (source)
  • Not that she herself was "pessimistic," as he accused her of being.†   (source)
  • But this gloom was the form of her emotion and not any radical pessimism.†   (source)
  • That's done it," he added in tones of anguished pessimism.†   (source)
  • He was a large, fleshy man, with a hard-bitten face in which good-humored wrinkles were not quite offset by pessimistic pouches.†   (source)
  • There's a good deal of silly talk about these days—but—and I speak as a hard-headed business man, who has to take risks and know what he's about—I say, you can ignore all this silly pessimistic talk.†   (source)
  • The effect of this regrettable event, which, sensational as it was, actually proved nothing, was to make our authorities swing back to pessimism as inconsequently as they had previously indulged in optimism.†   (source)
  • But something held him, as the fatalist can always be held: by curiosity, pessimism, by sheer inertia.†   (source)
  • Not that stupid shrewdness half instinct and half belief in luck, and half muscular habit of the senses and nerves of the gambler waiting to take what he can from what he sees, but a certain reserved and inflexible pessimism stripped long generations ago of all the rubbish and claptrap of people (yes, Sutpen and Henry and the Coldfields too) who have not quite yet emerged from barbarism, who two thousand years hence will still be throwing triumphantly off the yoke of Latin culture and…†   (source)
  • In the course of the next fortnight distaste for Mr. Samgrass came to be a little unspoken secret throughout the house; in his presence Sir Adrian Porson's fine old eyes seemed to search a distant horizon and his lips set in classic pessimism.†   (source)
  • I saw at the same time that the root of his pessimism was not world-contempt but self-contempt; for however mercilessly he might annihilate institutions and persons in his talk he never spared himself.†   (source)
  • …resolved on the paper the instant before he looked at it and which might fade, vanish, at any instant while he still did: the dead tongue speaking after the four years and then after almost fifty more, gentle sardonic whimsical and incurably pessimistic, without date or salutation or signature: You will notice how I insult neither of us by claiming this to be a voice from the defeated even, let alone from the dead In fact, if I were a philosopher I should deduce and derive a curious…†   (source)
  • The reason was this: when the most pessimistic had fixed it at, say, six months; when they had drunk in advance the dregs of bitterness of those six black months, and painfully screwed up their courage to the sticking-place, straining all their remaining energy to endure valiantly the long ordeal of all those weeks and days-when they had done this, some friend they met, an article in a newspaper, a vague suspicion, or a flash of foresight would suggest that, after all, there was no…†   (source)
  • If he says it's wrong to be pessimistic probably it is wrong, she thought; the marriage will turn out all right.†   (source)
  • But through the crepuscular walls of their intimacy, for they were drawing together, involuntarily, coming side by side, quite close, she could feel his mind like a raised hand shadowing her mind; and he was beginning, now that her thoughts took a turn he disliked—towards this "pessimism" as he called it—to fidget, though he said nothing, raising his hand to his forehead, twisting a lock of hair, letting it fall again.†   (source)
  • Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles.†   (source)
  • And you—why, once you were an old pessimist!†   (source)
  • Of this he was very proud, and it made him more disposed than ever to laugh at the pessimists.†   (source)
  • I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things.†   (source)
  • Silverton was in a mood of Titanic pessimism.†   (source)
  • "Bad business," said Follonsbee, shaking his head pessimistically.†   (source)
  • He would show those pessimists that they were wrong.†   (source)
  • Raoul, with pessimistic foreboding, was convinced that there were only girls next door.†   (source)
  • I suppose that's my pessimism or materialism.†   (source)
  • ] No, Lady Chiltern, I am not a Pessimist.†   (source)
  • A. OR C.S. Marilla pessimistically expected more trouble since Anne had again begun to go to school.†   (source)
  • It is not until the Gothic that tastes turn to true pessimistic asceticism.†   (source)
  • When Macalister saw Philip he was pessimistic.†   (source)
  • Indeed I am not sure that I quite know what Pessimism really means.†   (source)
  • But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist?†   (source)
  • Perhaps I am a pessimist, but you have agreed to forgive me.†   (source)
  • The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism,[140] never a Pessimism.†   (source)
  • "I think you're giving way to pessimism.†   (source)
  • The pessimist still maintained a negative.†   (source)
  • So she took herself away, somewhat to Marilla's relief, for the latter felt her doubts and fears reviving under the influence of Mrs. Rachel's pessimism.†   (source)
  • I read Dickens and Shakespear without shame or stint; but their pregnant observations and demonstrations of life are not co-ordinated into any philosophy or religion: on the contrary, Dickens's sentimental assumptions are violently contradicted by his observations; and Shakespear's pessimism is only his wounded humanity.†   (source)
  • The gods, too, loved him and put into his heart all manner of wisdom; then, fearing lest he should become a pessimist, they spanned his mind with a rainbow of love and faith.†   (source)
  • …a strange, hidden orthodoxy, who would accept for themselves only what could be accepted for all men—incurable romanticists who never, for all their efforts, could enter the labyrinth as stark souls; there were on the other hand sword-like pioneering personalities, Samuel Butler, Renan, Voltaire, who progressed much slower, yet eventually much further, not in the direct pessimistic line of speculative philosophy but concerned in the eternal attempt to attach a positive value to life….†   (source)
  • Lane, you're a perfect pessimist.†   (source)
  • Is not this pessimism of the blackest?†   (source)
  • Yet they were right who called him "pessimist," for this man who, as much as any other, will have been the cause of reducing infectious diseases to almostzero often doubted the value of reducing infectious diseases at all.†   (source)
  • And when it comes to these blab-mouth, fault-finding, pessimistic, cynical University teachers, let me tell you that during this golden coming year it's just as much our duty to bring influence to have those cusses fired as it is to sell all the real estate and gather in all the good shekels we can.†   (source)
  • These particular Emersons consisted of a father and a son--the son a goodly, if not a good young man; not a fool, I fancy, but very immature--pessimism, et cetera.†   (source)
  • The pessimism of the subject attracted his youth; and he believed that the world he was about to enter was a place of pitiless woe and of darkness.†   (source)
  • You say that no one knows when I'll get away and start work on the docks, but you say it from the pessimistic point of view.†   (source)
  • For all his devotion to Max Gottlieb's pessimistic view of the human intellect, Martin had believed that there was such a thing as progress, that events meant something, that people could learn something, that if Madeline had once admitted she was an ordinary young woman who occasionally failed, then she was saved.†   (source)
  • He had heard it said that "conditions" in the County Jail and the Zenith City Prison were not very "scientific;" he had, with indignation at the criticism of Zenith, skimmed through a report in which the notorious pessimist Seneca Doane, the radical lawyer, asserted that to throw boys and young girls into a bull-pen crammed with men suffering from syphilis, delirium tremens, and insanity was not the perfect way of educating them.†   (source)
  • He was evidently in a pessimistic mood.†   (source)
  • Those in the civil station kept watch a little, fearing an attack, but presently they too entered the world of dreams—that world in which a third of each man's life is spent, and which is thought by some pessimists to be a premonition of eternity.†   (source)
  • After half an hour of such depressing conversation, they had their minds quite made up that they had been saved at the brink of a precipice; but then Szedvilas went away, and Jonas, who was a sharp little man, reminded them that the delicatessen business was a failure, according to its proprietor, and that this might account for his pessimistic views.†   (source)
  • He moved in the most intellectual circles: he read Browning with enthusiasm and turned up his well-shaped nose at Tennyson; he knew all the details of Shelley's treatment of Harriet; he dabbled in the history of art (on the walls of his rooms were reproductions of pictures by G. F. Watts, BurneJones, and Botticelli); and he wrote not without distinction verses of a pessimistic character.†   (source)
  • …to them about his cousin's condition; he was rebuked by the Italian, however, for observing that there was an underlying error in the conventional notion that philosophical credulity and sanguine trust in the good are expressions of health, whereas pessimism and condemnation of the world are signs of illness; because otherwise the bleak final state could not bring forth an optimism, compared to whose awful rosiness the preceding gloom seemed a coarse, but healthy expression of life.†   (source)
  • …of the sort called "practical"; not once did he cease warring on the post hoc propter hoc conclusions which still make up most medical lore; not once did he fail to be hated by his colleagues, who were respectful to his face, uncomfortable in feeling his ironic power, but privily joyous to call him Mephisto, Diabolist, Killjoy, Pessimist, Destructive Critic, Flippant Cynic, Scientific Bounder Lacking in Dignity and Seriousness, Intellectual Snob, Pacifist, Anarchist, Atheist, Jew.†   (source)
  • Anne was conscious of a pang of loneliness when she found herself in a room with fifty other students, not one of whom she knew, except the tall, brown-haired boy across the room; and knowing him in the fashion she did, did not help her much, as she reflected pessimistically.†   (source)
  • And I could see Charley Furuseth, as I had said good-bye to him that morning, lounging in a dressing-gown on the be-pillowed window couch and delivering himself of oracular and pessimistic epigrams.†   (source)
  • As he had read pessimism into Omar, so now he read triumph, stinging triumph and exultation, into Swinburne's lines.†   (source)
  • He would never exactly reply to Philip's eager questioning, but with a merry, rather stupid laugh, hinted at a romantic amour; he quoted a few lines of Rossetti, and once showed Philip a sonnet in which passion and purple, pessimism and pathos, were packed together on the subject of a young lady called Trude.†   (source)
  • Are you a Pessimist?†   (source)
  • You call me a pessimist.†   (source)
  • "Why, good God! you will be deceived just the same," said Athos, who was an optimist when things were concerned, and a pessimist when men were in question.†   (source)
  • With the superfluous securities of hope at his command, there was no reason why he should not have increased other people's liabilities to any extent, but for the fact that men whose names were good for anything were usually pessimists, indisposed to believe that the universal order of things would necessarily be agreeable to an agreeable young gentleman.†   (source)
  • Conscious of his impotence, and pessimistic, he often becomes bitter and vindictive; and his religion, instead of a worship, is a complaint and a curse, a wail rather than a hope, a sneer rather than a faith.†   (source)
  • "If he's conceived at all," I said pessimistically.†   (source)
  • They called each other names—opportunist, cynic, pessimist—and I found myself frightened.†   (source)
  • It inspired and perhaps excused the pessimism of such men as Burr.†   (source)
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