A Quote by Rex Stout

[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.

Rex Stout

Quote Topics

Gets Nothing Optimist Pessimist Pleasant Pleasant Surprises Surprises Unpleasant

Quote Author

Rex Stout
American - Writer
December 1, 1886 - October 27, 1975

But I am an optimist about Britain; and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is not that the optimist believes the world is wonderful and the pessimist believes it's beset by challenges; the difference is the pessimist believes we will be defeated by them; the optimist thinks the challenges can be overcome.

Tony Blair

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live. Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom. Only a person who risks is free. The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; and the realist adjusts the sails

William Arthur Ward

It might interest you to know that the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary identifies the optimist in complimentary terms, but says nothing about the pessimist. The word 'pessimist' was not in our vocabulary at that time. It's a modern 'invention' which I believe we should 'dis-invent.'

Zig Ziglar

Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.

Robert A. Heinlein

The difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist laughs to forget, but a pessimist forgets to laugh.

Tom Bodett

Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!

Oscar Wilde

You know, you have to be an optimist, a pessimist, sarcastic and pleasant all at the same time to be a photographer.

Rondal Partridge

Better to be an optimist who gets disappointed than a pessimist who has no hope.

Robin Sharma

There's nothing else as pleasant as being unpleasant when there's nothing else to do, and there's usually nothing else to do.

Charles Bukowski

Nothing is in reality either pleasant or unpleasant by nature but all things become so through habit

Epictetus

Nothing erases unpleasant thoughts more effectively than conscious concentration on pleasant ones.

Hans Selye

There's no question that a Democratic Congress plus a Trump presidency would equal gridlock. Nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing gets accomplished, nothing gets reformed. Voters know this.

Kristen Soltis Anderson

Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? A pessimist says ‘Oh dear, things can’t possibly get any worse.’ And an optimist says, ‘Don’t be so sad. Things can always get worse.

Steven Galloway

Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing more courageous, nothing higher, nothing wider, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller nor better in heaven and earth; because love is born of God, and cannot rest but in God, above all created things.

Thomas a Kempis

The optimist sees a light at the end of the tunnel, the realist sees a train entering the tunnel, the pessimist sees a train speeding at him, hell for leather, and the machinist sees three idiots sitting on the rail track. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true."