Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.


Ambrose Bierce

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Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
AMBROSE BIERCE
Optimism, n. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
AMBROSE BIERCE
OPTIMISM, n. The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everythi...
AMBROSE BIERCE
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.” ~ Ambrose ...
J.J. MCAVOY
No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar ...
H. P. LOVECRAFT
Ques eso? Queso?
NOLAN J. VANDER HAAGEN
What Fucks me... is that we both are the same... we all walk on the same path... but everything is a...
DEYTH BANGER
See the world for what it is.
BEAUTIFUL!
ANTHONY T. HINCKS
When push comes to shove would people do what they felt was right, to get justice done or would they...
GARY F EVANS...
PANTHEISM, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is ...
AMBROSE BIERCE
Only the beautiful can acknowledge all that is beautiful, and only the ugly can acknowledge all that...
SUZY KASSEM
It is what it is, it is what you make it.
JAMES DURBIN
Godliness is not just a doctrine, a belief or a principle, it has a personality.
SUNDAY ADELAJA
It is what it is, and it ain't nothin' else... Everything is clearly, openly, plainly delive...
DAN FLAVIN
When you add love to sex, it feels as if your soul is being drawn from the chains of gravity into th...
CHLOE THURLOW
Love? I always thought love was just something that ate away your sanity, left you with an inferiori...
TOMOKO HAYAKAWA
How do you love your children?
By doing what's best for them.
Then how would you love your...
J. GRANT HOWARD
Life may not be party you hoped for,But that doesnt mean u should stop dancing!Remember you are the ...
ANMOL P. JAORA
Beautiful is he who recognizes what is truly beautiful even if the surface is ugly. Truthful is he w...
SUZY KASSEM
Be a good guide, tell me what you see, are sure is that?
Please try to describe the picture as ...
DEYTH BANGER
Einmal hat ihm einer im Schlaf die Schuhe ausgezogen, reingeschissen und wieder angezogen. Um diese ...
HEINZ STRUNK
But I do not do these things because we are a family. I do them because they are common decencies. T...
JOHNATHAN SAFRAN FOER
He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as sim...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
Our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
They do not desire anything more than everything they have known.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
What is being awake if not interpreting our dreams, or dreaming if not interpreting our wake?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
She buys "mixed salad greens" for seven dollars a bag, triple-washed with who knows what. And to get...
RUDOLPH DELSON
How do you know if something is real? That’s easy. Does it change you? Does it form you? Does it g...
C. JOYBELL C.
Integrity is not everything, but it is the only thing that matters.
JEFFREY FRY
Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintainin...
VOLTAIRE
I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is.
TED TURNER
The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible s...
WILFRID SELLARS
FOOTBALL IS A DECISION GAME BASED ON QUICK THINKING IN RELATION TO WHAT IS HAPPENING AROUND YOU AND ...
LERCHE NJANG
The opportunity to decieve others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance of deception...
SAM HARRIS
What we have and what is our strength, is our joy in life; our interest in life, in all it moral asp...
ASGER JORN
Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful.
SOPHIA LOREN
People are so worried about being beautiful, they forgot what real ugly is.
SONYA.E.WILLIAMS
Timing is everything.
MOLLY SIMS
Timing is everything.
TOMMY SHAW
Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes cert...
ROBERT WILSON
Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes cert...
ROBERT ANTON WILSON
Nothing humbles a beautiful woman better than not being wanted by a man whose girlfriend or wife is ...
MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA
The world is beautiful. It's the things in it that are ugly.
AERIAL NICOLE MITCHELL
What motivates me in art is the ugly and beautiful nature of the truth. It has to be truthful and ho...
CORIN NEMEC
Relax! Life is beautiful!
DAVID L. WOLPER
Beautiful. And ugly. The world is always both.
ANN AGUIRRE
Money is not everything.
BEN OAK
I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
Life is a beautiful disease. Death is the ugly cure.
WOHI PURANA
Our life is a series of moments. Let them all go. Moments. All gathering towards this one.
NOW IS GOOD
The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make. �...
VICE PRESIDENT DAN QUAYLE
What is sin?
It is the glory of God not honored.
The holiness of God not reverenced.
...
JOHN PIPER
Love is insanity, apparently.
COREY ANN HAYDU
Love, real love, the kind that you fall in, isn’t like Corinthians. The “suffereth long” and �...
JULIE ANNE LONG
Love without reason is fleeting; love without emotion, dry.
J.R. MORALES
Szerzetesek, vannak tanulatlan, közönséges emberek, akik nem gondolnak a nemes dolgokkal, nem hal...
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
És Brahmá, a Teremtő, felső ruháját fél vállán átvetve, összetett kézzel meghajolt a Mag...
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful an...
MICHAEL ENDE
Timing is everything with relationships.
RASHIDA JONES
Unpredictability means what it means. I don't know how you define it. It is what it is.
MICHAEL KEATON
Courage is feeling justly afraid and yet still doing what is right.
SHANNON HALE
Life is a beautiful disease. Death is an ugly cure.
WOHI PURANA
Life is beautiful, but it is also so damn ugly.
MOMMY MOO MOO
Love is a beautiful feeling.
KABIR BEDI
Do what is best for you; it will be the best for the world.
DEBASISH MRIDHA
Life is beautiful but people are crazy.
CHARLES OSGOOD
Life is beautiful because it doesn't last.
BRIT MARLING
Open your mind to fill it with everything that is beautiful. Ignore the rest.
DEBASISH MRIDHA
A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.
KARL KRAUS
Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief tha...
JANE MCGONIGAL
I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just...
JOHN FOWLES
To search the sands of a lost desert for truth and justice in this world today you might as well be ...
GARY F EVANS...
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
OSCAR WILDE
Love makes a beautiful girl think that her ugly guy is a cute gorilla
SHKELQIM ZILBEARI
What if — is more complicated than that? What if maybe opposite is true as well? Because, if bad c...
DONNA TARTT
There is a law of the natural worlds (the spiritual and the physical) and this is something I have u...
C. JOYBELL C.
Ultimately love is everything.
M. SCOTT PECK
sometimes the most simple things in the world can be the most beautiful.
ROWENA BEAUMONT CHERRY
This is the sixty-nine,” I told him,
presenting the magazine in front of him. I put my finger...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
With '10,000,' our aim was to make a film that was entertaining and a roller-coaster ride; i...
STEVEN STRAIT
When you think that you are beautiful, you are liable to think that you are more beautiful than othe...
CHRISTIAN D. LARSON
We come now to the question: what is a priori certain or necessary, respectively in geometry (doctri...
ALBERT EINSTEIN
So, although my story is sometimes ugly, it's also beautiful.
NIKI KRAUSS
Blind faith in belief-system, ideologies, doctrine or dogma can never set us free. Only the knowledg...
BANANI RAY
Real love is feeling so loved and so secure that even your name feels safe in his mouth.
CJ HECK
There is no beauty that is more beautiful than a kind heart for the ugliest are always the ugly hear...
ARES E. R. BAES
I'm probably the least harsh on myself, and I try not to scrutinize everything about my body. As...
KOURTNEY KARDASHIAN
You know, I don't think my music is important, I don't think it's changing the world, I ...
SUFJAN STEVENS
Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not.
SONYA.E.WILLIAMS
Art is not just a display of beauty. Art also reflects what is ugly, and it celebrates the grotesque...
KILROY J. OLDSTER
Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C.
Faith is just a belief or a disbelief, and they have the same magnitude of everything.
EPHDAN
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault...
OSCAR WILDE
Truth is not beautiful, neither is ugly, Why should it be either? Truth is Truth.
OWEN C. MIDDLETON
We still have to overcome the notion that a clarinet squeaks. People need to remember what a beautif...
ANAT COHEN
Don’t ever let a guy make you feel ugly because no matter what you are beautiful with or without h...
ZAYN MALIK
SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest. Denial of this momentous do...
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Master made it his task to destroy systematically every
doctrine, every belief, every conce...
ANTHONY DE MELLO
Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. It is the belief that God will do what is ri...
MAX LUCADO
Everything is relative, including relativity.
CHRIS MATAKAS

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An acquaintance is someone we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
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A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
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Admiration; is our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
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A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.
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An optimist is a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
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Egotist. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
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An egotist is a person interested in himself than in me!
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A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.
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Physician -- One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
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Confidante. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
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The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
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To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
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Habit is a shackle for the free.
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Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
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The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
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When in Rome, do as Rome does.
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To be positive: to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
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Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
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Absurdity. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
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Abstainer. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
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Woman absent is woman dead.
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The covers of this book are too far apart.
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A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
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The Senate is a body of old men charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
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Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserte...
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ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply in...
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Acquaintance is a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor and obscure, and intima...
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ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn."Eat ...
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Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction o...
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Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
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International arbitration may be defined as the substitution of many burning questions for a smoulde...
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DIPLOMACY, n. Lying in state, or the patriotic art of lying for one's country.
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Calamities are of two kinds. Misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
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Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
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A bride is a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
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Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
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There are 4 kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
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FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
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ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly ("Mus...
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ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A m...
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YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the So...
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Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo
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Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscie...
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One who is in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
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OBSESSED, p.p. Vexed by an evil spirit, like the Gadarene swine and other critics. Obsession was onc...
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Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
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Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.
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Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
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When you are ill make haste to forgive your enemies, for you may recover.
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Electricity seems destined to play a most important part in the arts and industries. The question of...
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Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else.
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The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
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Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
AMBROSE BIERCE
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
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Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affai...
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Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
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Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
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Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
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Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.
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Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
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Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
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Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake ...
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Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth ke...
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Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the wor...
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Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
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Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
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Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities ...
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Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the...
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Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
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Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction ...
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The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
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TELEPHONE n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeab...
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Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
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Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
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Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
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Sweater, n. Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
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Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and wa...
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The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
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