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Literary notes about Optimism (AI summary)

Literary usage of the word "optimism" ranges from earnest declarations of hope to pointed critiques of naïve idealism. At times, it functions as a marker of positive force or a philosophical stance that anticipates inevitable progress ([1], [2], [3]), while in other instances it is wielded with irony or disdain to highlight hypocrisy or unbridled self-complacency ([4], [5], [6]). Moreover, authors juxtapose optimism with its antithesis, pessimism, to underscore debates about moral order, reality, and human endeavor ([7], [8], [9]). Thus, the term serves not only as a description of hope but also as a tool for dissecting the complexities of human perception and cultural ideology ([10], [11], [12]).
  1. M. I. Swift on the optimism of idealists.
    — from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James
  2. Optimism in turn would be the doctrine that thinks the world's salvation inevitable.
    — from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James
  3. To be necessarily what it is, to be impossibly aught else, would put the last touch of perfection upon optimism's universe.
    — from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James
  4. His attack on optimism is one of the gayest books in the world.
    — from Candide by Voltaire
  5. I have the greatest contempt for optimism.
    — from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  6. —Away with the disgustingly over-used words optimism and pessimism!
    — from Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
  7. Optimism and pessimism, 101 . Is this a moral universe?—what does the problem mean?
    — from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James
  8. How far I had leaped in either case beyond the smug shallow-pate-gossip of optimism contra pessimism!
    — from The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
  9. Absolute pessimism and absolute optimism are opposite sentiments attached to a doctrine identically the same.
    — from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
  10. What is meant by the optimism of his poetry?
    — from English Literature by William J. Long
  11. His strength, his joy of life, his robust faith, and his invincible optimism enter into us, making us different and better men after reading him.
    — from English Literature by William J. Long
  12. May not religious optimism be too idyllic?
    — from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James

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