I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you.
Conan O’Brien’s ‘Tonight Show’ Farewell Speech
Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.
Noam Chomsky
Source: quote-book
Knowing there is a light at the end of the tunnel keeps us going through it, but understanding the darkness in the tunnel helps us negotiate it. The full truth is that power comes with pain. Hardship is the neglected and misunderstood second half of the truth, and it completes the view. True spirituality is not about making you feel good. It is about making you feel real.
Andrew Holecek, The Power and the Pain (via walkwhilereading)
Source: walkwhilereading
Are you upset little friend? Have you been lying awake worrying? Well, don’t worry…I’m here. The flood waters will recede, the famine will end, the sun will shine tomorrow, and I will always be here to take care of you.
Charles Schutz, Charlie Brown
I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.
When I buy a new book, I read the last page first. That way, in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.
Billy Crystal, When Harry Met Sally
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Howard Zinn
I have a theory that now and then a person should get what they want, when they want it. Keeps you optimistic.
Ben Foster, Six Feet Under
Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.
Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters
If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.
George Bernard Shaw
lines, lyrics and literary fragments that call for a pause