Pessimistic Passage of the Day...

[Bleak&Icy]

Just imagine it: an online anthology of pessimistic quotations, assembled by Ligottians, growing daily like a (insert horrible simile here)... A collection of quotations devoted entirely to negativity! Taken from literature, philosophy, science, art -- any place where a solitary neigh-sayer has expressed the wretchedness of life, who has recorded the nightmares of the organism. I humbly submit the first quotation, to get things rolling doomward:

"The idea of a world where human life might be artificially prolonged has a nightmare quality yet gives no glimpse of anything beyond that slight delay. Death is waiting in the long run, made necessary by multiplying and teeming life."
-- Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death & Sensuality

[gveranon]

Quote Originally Posted by Bleak&Icy

a solitary neigh-sayer

The only one I can think of is Eeyore. But can donkeys neigh?

Yes, I'm making fun of your spelling.

[Bleak&Icy]

Can donkeys neigh? Nay. But what of mules, which is how I feel? gveranon, you are a terrible terrible terrible person, and for that very reason I refuse to edit my post. Let my equine cry stand as a testimony to your meanness (and my drunkennessness).

If possible my pessimism has deepened.

[Bleak&Icy]

"Not to be born is the most to be desired; but having seen the light, the next best is to die as soon as possible"
-- Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

[gveranon]

Well, I guess I should make a constructive contribution to this thread. Here are three quotations by Nicolas de Chamfort. I got these off the internet and don't know who the translator was.

"It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyze before we can live happily in the world."

"Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death."

"The world either breaks or hardens the heart."

[Bleak&Icy]

Quote Originally Posted by gveranon

The remedy is death.

That would make a brilliant title for a movie. The Remedy is Death.

I forgive you for making fun of my spelling now.

[Bleak&Icy]

"Men are wretched by necessity, and determined to believe themselves wretched by accident."
-- Giacomo Leopardi, Thoughts (trans. J.G. Nichols)

[paeng]

“'Droll think life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be.’”--Joseph Conrad, from Heart of Darkness

[Nemonymous]

"From the cosmic point of view, to have opinions or preferences at all is to be ill; for by harbouring them one dams up the flow of the ineluctable force which, like a river, bears us down to the ocean of everything's unknowing. Reality is a running noose, one is brought up short with a jerk by death. It would have been wiser to co-operate with the inevitable and learn to profit by this unhappy state of things - by realising and accommodating death! But we don't, we allow the ego to foul its own nest. Therefore we have insecurity, stress, the midnight-fruit of insomnia, with a whole culture crying itself to sleep."
From 'The Avignon Quincunx' by Lawrence Durrell ('Constance' 1982)

“The paradise garden is a magical place. We can only dream when there, but we cannot dream of it.”
--D.F. Lewis (Weirdtongue 2006)

==============

A great idea for a thread, b&i.
The most depressing/pessimistic thing that happened to me today was finding myself quoting from myself. Sad, indeed.

des

[Nemonymous]

"The most depressing/pessimistic thing that happened to me today was finding myself quoting from myself."
Nemonymous - TLO 13/5/08