United States or Ethiopia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And all this time I had not even thought of Christian theology. When I was a boy there were two curious men running about who were called the optimist and the pessimist. I constantly used the words myself, but I cheerfully confess that I never had any very special idea of what they meant.
How slight is the evidence on which men base their gloomy conclusions! The pessimist always argues from a single instance to a general law. If he strikes a poor peach on top he throws the whole basket away or sells them as soon as he can. He insists on sitting square on the cactus bunch when there is only one on the whole bench-land. He then becomes an authority on cactus.
One also realized that he was not the pessimist that he was once believed to be, but a writer who suffered for his ideal and who awakened by his works a desire to emerge from the twilight of life that he depicted. To some he even appeared as an enchanted admirer of the future progress of humanity.
The whole purpose of the deed was to demonstrate this one truth, that it is quite unnecessary to take a pessimist seriously; the most vapid sophisms become justified, provided they show that, in regard to a philosophy as "unhealthy and unprofitable" as Schopenhauer's, not proofs but quips and sallies alone are suitable.
"It doesn't seem a week since we unpacked our trunks after vacation, and before we know it we shall be packing them again for Christmas." "Yes; and before we know it we'll be unpacking them again, with examinations three weeks ahead," said Georgie the pessimist.
Montresor will scarcely come again." "What do you mean? Ungrateful lady! Montresor! who has already sacrificed Lady Henry and the habits of thirty years to your beaux yeux!" "That is what he will never forgive me," said Julie, sadly. "He has satisfied his pride, and I have lost a friend." "Pessimist! Mrs. Montresor seemed to me most friendly." Julie laughed. "She, of course, is enchanted.
But it is only fair to bear in mind that the Lay is less a poem than an enchiridion, a sort of Emersonian guide to the conduct of life rather than an exquisitely-presented summary of the thoughts of an Eastern pessimist. FitzGerald's poem is an unbroken lament. Burton, a more robust soul than the Woodbridge eremite, also has his misgivings.
There were still some traces of the handsome Jim Bolivar with whom pretty, romantic Helen Bladen had eloped, though the intermediate years of sorrow and misfortune had changed that dapper young beau into a careless, hopeless pessimist. What the end might have been but for Peggy is hard to guess, but the past two years had made him think and think hard too.
You can't go up against the professionals. I tell you, it's a park bench for yours in this romance business." Mack, the pessimist, laughed harshly. "I'm afraid I don't see the parallel," I said, coldly. "I have only a very slight acquaintance with the prize-ring." The derelict touched my sleeve with his forefinger, for emphasis, as he explained his parable.
Dad was not a pessimist when he had two hundred pounds. "Say what they like," he held forth to Anderson and two other men across the rails one evening "talk how they will about it, there's money to be made at farming. Let a man WORK and use his HEAD and know what to sow and when to sow it, and he MUST do well." "Why, once a farmer gets on at all he's the most independent man in the whole country."
Word Of The Day