The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead.
~Robert Brault

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.
~Gil Stern

A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
~Elbert Hubbard, The Note-Book, 1927

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
~George F. Will, The Leveling Wind

A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them.
~Leonard Louis Levinson

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.
~Bill Vaughan

An optimist is the human personification of spring.
~Susan J. Bissonette

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.
~Harry Truman

An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.
~Irv Kupcinet

Optimist: someone who figures that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it's a cha-cha.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Being an optimist after you've got everything you want doesn't count.
~Kin Hubbard

Optimists are nostalgic about the future.
~Chicago Tribune

Optimism is the foundation of courage.
~Nicholas Murray Butler

An optimist is someone who figures that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's the bluebird of happiness.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Of course I look at the glass half full. The only time I would look at it half empty is when I think about how good the first half tasted.
~Drew Deyoung

I am one of those people who just can't help getting a kick out of life - even when it's a kick in the teeth.
~Polly Adler

Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half-way to meet it.
~Douglas Jerrold, "Meeting Troubles Half-Way," 1859

In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.
~Daniel L. Reardon

It doesn't hurt to be optimistic. You can always cry later.
~Lucimar Santos de Lima

It's still possible to be a cockeyed optimist these days - you just have to be a little more cockeyed.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
~James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion, 1926

Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant - the digitalis of failure.
~Elbert Hubbard

An optimist is merely an ex-pessimist with his pockets full of money, his digestion in good condition, and his wife in the country.
~Helen Rowland

How do you tell an optimist that he or she has lived a happy life by mistake?
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
~Oscar Wilde

A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is a man who hopes they are.
~Chauncey Mitchell Depew

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
~Mark Twain

The realist sees reality as concrete. The optimist sees reality as clay.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice, "Well, this isn't too bad. I don't have my left arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed," but most of us would say something more along the lines of "Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!"
~Lemony Snicket

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
~Oscar Wilde

How many pessimists end up by desiring the things they fear, in order to prove that they are right?
~Robert Mallett, Apostilles, 1972

an optimist is a guythat has never hadmuch experience.
~Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel, 1927

It can be said of optimism that while sometimes mistaken, it is never sadly mistaken.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
~Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923

Always borrow money from a pessimist, he doesn't expect to be paid back.
~Author Unknown

After 5000 years of recorded human history, you wonder, What part of 2,000,000 sunrises doesn't a pessimist understand?
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com