cynicism

Everyone is a little bitter. We're born bitter. The personality itself is really just a very complex defense mechanism. A reaction to the first time someone said, "No you can't.

I never feel unsafe except for when the majority is on my side.

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.

Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage-however often we are hurt as a result of it.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. . . . And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money. I Corinthians xiii (adapted)

Music _ good music, great music _ had a hard, irreducible purity to it. It might be bitter and despairing and pessimistic, but it could never be cynical. If music is tragic, those with asses_ ears accuse it of being cynical. But when a composer is bitter, or in despair, or pessimistic, that still means he believes in something.

The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.

The virtues about marriage were mostly negative virtues. Being unmarried in a man's world was such a hassle that anything had to be better. Marriage was better. But not much. Damned clever, I thought, how men had made life so intolerable for single women that most would gladly embrace even bad marriages instead.

His friend laughed. 'You missed your calling, Freddie,' he said. 'You should have been one of the aforementioned clergy. Is this what marriage does to you? One shudders at the very idea.

It's weird, marriage. It's like this license that gives a person the legal right to control their spouse / their 'other half.

You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one's nature. What would become of me, if I tried to escape pain? Scorn and cynicism would be my only opium; unless I could fall into some kind of conceited madness, and fancy myself a favourite of Heaven because I am not a favourite with men.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth,That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape and tears.

Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle__hat is, being human.

The atmosphere was electrified by the orgasm with which the strong and secure are overcome when confronted with the visible frailty of someone worse off than themselves.

Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren__ treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making certain you__e on the right side?

In the depths of my heart I can__ help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.

To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this:1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason.2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right.3. Charity is immoral.4. Pay for your own fucking schools.

She (historian Barbara Tuchman) draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human ability as amused and saddened by human folly.