Nietzsche once defined “not being able to wait” as one of our most typically human qualities. In culture as in history, all tragedies and comedies are simply the result of someone not being able to wait. If Medea had simply taken the day off? If Hamlet had put things off for even longer? If Arjuna has called the whole thing off? But not being able

For optimists, the most perplexing question is how one becomes a pessimist – if one is not born one.

Pessimism is the most generous of thoughts; it includes everyone, if only by virtue of their existing. ~ * ~

that the whole book be called an Afterword, since none of it is important.

pessimism also has its own ontological argument: existence is that beyond which nothing worse can be conceived.

“…the stammerings of an old man who does not seem to have achieved a full psychic victory over an awkward adolescence…”

Sometimes I’m asked if I’m a pessimist. I need to find a clever answer to this question. Or make up a good joke. But the truth is that I am a pessimist… except when writing about pessimism. I’ve managed to make pessimism a form of therapy.

Knowledge exists in inverse proportion to meaning. ~

There is a special kind of Purgatory that involves waiting for something not to happen.