Francis Bacon Quotes

An optimist is a fellow who believes what's going to be will be postponed.

I wouldn't say that I relax and enjoy anything. But I think my pessimism helps. I never really expect anything good to happen, so when it does, it's a nice surprise.

Our thoughts about an event can have a dramatic effect on how we go through the event itself. When our expectations are low, it's easy to be pleasantly surprised. When they're not, we're vulnerable to painful disappointment. Because of this, many people spend a good deal of effort trying to avoid developing high hopes about anything.

I don't have expectations. Expectations in your life just lead to giant disappointments.

When I first started coaching, one of the worst things that I think I heard was 'It will be O.K.' I would wonder, 'How the hell is it going to be O.K.?' The worst word in the English language is 'hope.'

I'm completely optimistic - I know the end is coming!

Hope is the only good that is common to all men; those who have nothing else possess hope still.

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

The world gets better every day - then worse again in the evening.

If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way.

I'm a born, cautious optimist.

My father told me once not to expect anything from anybody so I wouldn't be disappointed. If somebody was nice and did nice things for me, I should be overjoyed, but I shouldn't go through life expecting it, which is very good advice.

I don't always expect good from people. I always expect the bad and I am pleasantly surprised when they are nice.

It's good to be a cynic. I'm a cynic. But the best part of being a cynic is somebody proving you wrong.

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

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

Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long in disappointment and bitterness at the closed door that we do not expectantly look for and therefore see with pleasure and gratitude the one which has been opened for us.

Hope's one thing, expectation's quite another.

He who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any other effect than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation.

At first we hope too much and later on, not enough.

It is much more sensible to be an optimist instead of a pessimist, for if one is doomed to disappointment, why experience it in advance?

That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.

Pessimists fear becoming the dupes of Hope. Optimists enjoy Hope's company, and consider being duped no great matter.

Without dreams, there could be no despair.