Optimistic Quotes

[miguel1984]

I am a pretty pessimist person myself, but I thought this thread would be useful to the optimist flock here at TLO. I hope the pessimist ones can have a laugh at the corniness of it all. First two:

"You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down."

-Charles Chaplin

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

-Oscar Wilde

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[miguel1984]

Another one:

"There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for."

-J.R.R. Tolkien

[ToALonelyPeace]

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”

― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

[Frater_Tsalal]

“Something was coming. This moment, this very experience of it, seemed only the thinnest gauze. She sat in the audience thinking--someone here has cancer, someone has a broken heart, someone's soul is lost, someone feels naked and foreign, thinks they once knew the way but can't remember the way, feels stripped of armor and alone, there are people in this audience with broken bones, others whose bones will break sooner or later, people who've ruined their health, worshipped their own lives, spat on their dreams, turned their backs on their true beliefs, yes, yes, and all will be saved. All will be saved. All will be saved.”
-Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Here below, everything is ruined, everything is dead,
but up above! Ah, I swear to you, the effusion of the Holy Spirit,
the coming of the Divine Paraclete has been long awaited.
The texts that announce Him are inspired, the future is thus assured.
There will be a clear dawn.”
-J.K. Huysmans, Là-Bas

Chorus:
Do you hear the people sing?
Lost in the valley of the night

It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light

For the wretched of the earth there is a flame that never dies
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.
They will live again in freedom in the garden of the Lord
They will walk behind the ploughshare, the will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken and all men will have their reward!
Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing? Say do you hear the distant drums
It is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes
Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing? Say do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes!
Tomorrow comes!”

-from the “Epilogue” of Les Misérables (the musical)

“I feel knocked down but I won’t be broken, I won’t be broken/ My spirit’s reeling, but my arms are open, I won’t be broken.”
-from Keane's "Won't be Broken"

[Frater_Tsalal]

"While I agree with Ligotti that the universe is, on the face of it, a blind emergent process, driven by chance over billions of years of trial and error to ultimately produce creatures capable of little more than flamboyant expressions of the agonizing awareness of their own imminent deaths, I don’t share his slightly huffy disappointment at this state of affairs.

If the universe is intrinsically meaningless, if the mindless re-arrangement of atomic debris into temporarily arising then dissipating forms has no point, I can only ask, why do I see meaning everywhere, why can I find a point in everything? Why do other human beings like me seem to see meaning in everything too? If the sun is only an apocalyptic series of hydrogen fusion reactions, why does it look like an angel and inspire poetry? Why does the flesh and fur-covered bone and jelly of my cat’s face melt my heart? Is all that surging, roaring incandescent meaning inside me, or is it out there?"
-Grant Morrison

(seriously, not trolling here).

[qcrisp]

Here are a couple of my favourite optimistic quotes:

"If you're going through hell, keep going."

Winston Churchill.

"There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe... but not for us."

Franz Kafka

There are some similarly perky passages from the writing of Schopenhauer that I like, but last time I quoted them on these boards I was severely chastised for being too cheerful, so I'll refrain.

[orwell84]

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.

William Blake.

[orwell84]

This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality.

Embrace this moment. Remember.

We are eternal.

All this pain is an illusion.


Tool. Parabola.

[gveranon]

In my giddier moments, I often think of Albert Camus' quote "Happiness, too, is inevitable."

It should be remembered that Beckett's characters sometimes manage to look on the bright side:

"...no one's going to love you, don't be alarmed."

"Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end."

"...it's always good to have a change of muck..."

(and many other chipper examples passim)

[ChildofOldLeech]

(I'm not sure if this qualifies as optimistic, but personally I find it inspiring)

“You'll always be a pretty unhappy man if you are always going to insist on digging and getting beneath things, instead of viewing just the surface. Excavations of thought and reason are always deadly, and always followed by a landslide. We can't both live and think too much; we must renounce either one or the other. How could one support existence if, like you, he were always reflecting on things? For, only a little thought is needed to urge us on to death. Look at a star in the sky and ask what it is: then our misery, our low estate, our limited and thin intelligence, appear in all their splendor. In disgust, we pity ourselves; weak and ashamed of ourselves, who were once stupidly arrogant, we call for the relief of oblivion, even more incomprehensible . We must fix things so that they glance off us, like so many strikes off armor. Accept everything cheerfully. Laugh at it all.”
- Petrus Borel, Champavert