Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I have earned my disillusionment.

Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.

My friends are so cynical, they refuse to keep the faith.

I have no faith in the sense of comforting beliefs which persuade me that all my troubles are blessings in disguise.

A cynic sees little to admire in the world, while the world sees even less to admire in him.

Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honourable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them.

Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.

He who trusts the world, the world betrays him.

If you believe in love, you're setting yourself up to be disappointed.

Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.

I used to be an optimist, but now I know that nothing is going to turn out as I expect.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

There is nothing that you could say to me now that I could ever believe.

Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.

I don't like being disappointed by somebody I trust. Fortunately, it rarely happens.

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

For years we have been giving their political leadership the benefit of the doubt, and now only doubt remains.

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

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

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

It's become hard for me to trust people and though I'm the type to go, 'everybody is born good,' you come to question that.

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.

Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision

I am disabused of all faith, and see too clearly.

This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you aren’t as devastated.