Stephen Spender Quotes

Cynicism stems from disappointment. Cynical and faithless people were not always like that. They were filled with possibilities and hope as kids. But they tried and perhaps failed.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Oftentimes when you see adaptations of books you like, you're let down. As an author, you assume that they are going to suck. A little bit of hope is dangerous.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future.

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young.

Hope is tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment.

Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend.

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.

Things always look better when you haven't seen them.

I believed, up to last week, that Adam was somehow coming back. But I wouldn't trade that optimism for anything, because the other option is no fun.

When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith; when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two that's science.

Waiting and hoping are the whole of life, and as soon as a dream is realized it is destroyed.

Expectation loiters in the DNA of every sentient being; when you tell yourself or a loved one, 'Don't get your hopes up,' you're fighting ancient genetic programming.

Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.

Blessed are those that nought expect, for they shall not be disappointed.

We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears.

I'm not by nature a cynical person. But sometimes your expectations are different from reality.

Hope is in some respects a thing more brilliant, more vivifying, than fruition. What we have looked forward to with eager and earnest aspiration is never in all respects equal to the picture we had formed of it. The very uncertainty enhances the enjoyment.

I've got to be honest, with every job I do there's a part of me, that child in me, that goes, 'This is the one.' And it rarely actually is.

The devastating scale and frequency of my disappointment was proof of how much I still expected and wanted from the world, of what high hopes I still had for it.

I just never count on anything. You can't.

I actually think I'm still quite childishly optimistic in a certain way, which is maybe why I find life quite shocking.

I think a pessimist is just an optimist who has had their heart repeatedly broken.