"A pessimist is a person who has not had enough experience to be a cynic."

Mary Pettibone Poole, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe & Mail July 27, 2001

“family: the thing on which all civilization is built; the idea that a man and a woman should live largely for the next generation and that they should, to some extent, defer their personal amusements, such as divorce and dissipation, for the benefit of the next generation.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 22, 1911, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 6 #5 (March 2003)

“The pessimists who attack the Universe are always under this disadvantage. They have an exhilarating consciousness that they could make the sun and moon better; but they also have the depressing consciousness that they could not make the sun and moon at all.”

G.K. Chesterton in Charles Dickens, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 3 No. 4 (Jan.-Feb. 2000)

“Dare to be naive."

R. Buckminster Fuller, quoted on www.goodreads.com/quotes/37173-dare-to-be-naive

“I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.”

Roberto Rossellini, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail July 7, 2004

“Nobody really believes in anything anymore, and everyone spends his life in frenzied work and frenzied play so as not to face the fact, not to look into the abyss.”

Allan Bloom The Closing of the American Mind (discussing Nietzsche’s views)

“‘The center of every man’s existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.”

G.K. Chesterton, “Sir Walter Scott,” in Twelve Types, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #4 (1-2/05)

“It seems to be the great business of life to create wants as fast as they are satisfied."

Samuel Johnson Adventurer 119 quoted in a footnote to my edition of Samuel Johnson The History of Rasselas