#cynicism

What were you like," I asked her. "we're you happy? Or were you smiling because they told you to? ↗

— Gabrielle Zevin

#memoir

To be cynical is to be distant. While offering a false intimacy of being "in the know," cynicism actually destroys intimacy. It leads to a creeping bitterness that can deaden and even destroy the spirit... A praying life is just the opposite. It engaged evil. It doesn't take no for an answer. The psalmist was in God's face, hoping, dreaming, asking. Prayer is feisty. Cynicism, on the other hand, merely critiques. It is passive, cocooning itself from the passions of the great cosmic battle we are engaged in. It is without hope. ↗

— Paul E. Miller

#prayer #dreams

If only media people would stop reaching for the low-hanging fruit, which is cynicism and pessimism, and stopped trying so hard to be hip and cool and have a swagger. ↗

— Emilio Estevez

#cynicism #fruit #hard #hip #media

I don't think you lead by pessimism and cynicism. I think you lead by optimism and enthusiasm and energy. ↗

— Patricia Ireland

#energy #enthusiasm #i #i think #lead

Cynicism is humor in ill health. ↗

— H. G. Wells

#health #humor #ill

Personally, I've always found the study of life incredibly boring – I much prefer to just live it. I do enjoy speculating on life, though. But to go and ruin that speculation by checking it against facts, it's terribly disappointing. I'm afraid it would turn me into a cynic. ↗

— Bauvard

#cynicism #empiricism #funny #humor #life

Dantes had entered the Chateau d’If with the round, open, smiling face of a young and happy man, with whom the early paths of life have been smooth. and who anticipates a future corresponding with his past. This was now all changed. The oval face was lengthened, his smiling mouth had assumed the firm and marked lines which betoken resolution; his eyebrows were arched beneath a brow furrowed with thought; his eyes were full of melancholy, and from their depths occasionally sparkled gloomy fires of misanthropy and hatred; his complexion, so long kept from the sun, had now that pale color which produces, when the features are encircled with black hair, the aristocratic beauty of the man of the north; the profound learning he had acquired had besides diffused over his features a refined intellectual expression; and he had also acquired, being naturally of a goodly stature, that vigor which a frame possesses which has so long concentrated all its force within itself. ↗

— Alexandre Dumas

#maturity #optimism #beauty

You're such a cynic," Molly said. "I think cynics are playful and cute. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#harry-dresden #humor #molly-carpenter #change

These leaders are like the drug lords who ruled America’s ghettos in the crack age, men (and some women) interested in just two things: staying in power, and hoovering up enough of what’s left of the cash on their blocks to drive around in an Escalade or a 633i for however long they have left. ↗

— Matt Taibbi

#money #power #age

Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true. ↗

— Glen Cook

#dreams #poor #poor-people #rich-people #dreams