Cautiously Optimistic Quotes

I always try to be cautiously optimistic. ~ David Walton

In politics, you also have to be cautiously optimistic. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

All that is required to become an optimist is to have the goal and to practice it. The more you rehearse optimistic thoughts, the more 'natural' and 'ingrained' they will become. With time they will be part of you, and you will have made yourself into an altogether different person. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

If you're not hopeful and optimistic, then you just give up. You have to take the long hard look and just believe that if you're consistent, you will succeed. ~ John Lewis

Halfway through the day, the phone rang, and I saw Jack's number on the caller ID.
I reached for the phone, snatched my hand back, then reached again cautiously. "Hello?"
"Ella, how's it going?" Jack sounded relaxed and professional. An office voice.
"Pretty good," I said warily. "You?"
"Great. Listen, I made a couple of calls to Eternal Truth this morning, and I want to bring you up to date. Why don't you meet me for lunch at the restaurant?"
"The one on the seventh floor?"
"Yeah, you can bring Luke. Meet me there in twenty minutes."
"Can't you just tell me now?"
"No, I need someone to eat with."
A slight smile rose to my lips. "Am I supposed to believe that I'm your only option?"
"No. But you're my favorite option."
I was glad he couldn't see the color that swept over my face. "I'll be there."
-Ella & Jack ~ Lisa Kleypas

To be joyous of heart is to hold an optimistic outlook, to see adversity as opportunity, to see failure as the starting point of success, to view our stubbed toes as the release of acupuncture points, to wake with a feeling of gratitude, and to sleep with a sustaining, unfaltering trust in the Universe of which we are a part. The person with a joyous heart is a treasure to be with, a wellspring of inspiration, and a fit companion. When we are joyous of heart, we hear a resonance in the songs of the birds, see resonance in the opening of a flower, and feel it in the pressure of a friend's hand. ~ Wu Wei

I've been moving a little to the music while I worked ... and then I realize I am actually dancing. It feels wonderful, though I can feel how stiff my muscles are, how rigidly I've been holding myself ... Mostly I've been moving cautiously, numbly, steeled because I know, at any moment, I may be ambushed by overwhelming grief. You never know when it's coming, the word or gesture or bit of memory that dissolved you entirely ... It happens every day at first, then not for a day or two, then there's a week when grief washes in every morning, every afternoon. ~ Mark Doty

Instead of being disappointed about where you are, be optimistic about where you are going. ~ Jon Gordon

And in that moment he felt- for the first time that optimistic and cheerful boy allowed himself to feel- how badly made life was, how flawed. No matter how richly furnished you made it, with all the noise and variet of Something, Nothing always found a way in, seeped through the cracks and patches. Mr. Feld was right; life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game in which even champions lost almost as often as they won and even the best hitters were put out 70 percent of the time ~ Michael Chabon

We must choose our personal viewpoint. We can embrace a sense of weighty heaviness that comes from knowing that our fate is one of deterioration and death, and our suffering is interminable. Alternatively, we can choose to believe in the unbearable lightness of our being and embrace a world of high-minded thoughts and ideals. The decisions we make are significant regardless if we only have one life to live. We weave our life story out of the choices that we make when confronted with the inevitable opportunities to experience love and friendship and heartache and suffering. During our life, we encounter goodness and evilness, and hope and despair. We must decide whether we accept reality. Alternatively, do we seek to escape the pain that comes from acknowledging the paucity of human existence? ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

We don't bolt, Ensign ... We advance cautiously to the front and quickly to the rear. ~ Evan Currie

When forecasting the outcomes of risky projects, executives too easily fall victim to the planning fallacy. In its grip, they make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than on a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities. They overestimate benefits and underestimate costs. They spin scenarios of success while overlooking the potential for mistakes and miscalculations. As a result, they pursue initiatives that are unlikely to come in on budget or on time or to deliver the expected returns - or even to be completed. In this view, people often (but not always) take on risky projects because they are overly optimistic about the odds they face. I will return to this idea several times in this book - it probably contributes to an explanation of why people litigate, why they start wars, and why they open small businesses. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Cautiously his foot explored, wiggled as it could, and finally felt warm flesh under the pants leg. ~ David Leavitt

I used desperately to want to be a brooding hero from literature, but I'm optimistic, healthy and fair-haired. ~ Nick Harkaway

I'm an optimistic believer in good deeds, surprise endings, and the pleasant twists of life. ~ Josh Walker

G Genuine Gorgeous
O Original Optimistic
O Organized Owning Your Power
D Decisive Determined


P Poised Positive
O Outstanding Organized
S Stylish Self-esteem
T Tenacity Transform
U Ultimate Useful
R Radiant Resilient
E Empowered Exceptional ~ Cindy Ann Peterson

I'm optimistic about the country; I'm optimistic about the American people. ~ Howard Schultz

There's something really happening and really moving, and it's exciting and it makes me very optimistic because it is going to be the engine for how we really combat climate change. Which is strong communities. ~ Josh Fox

Designers are inherently optimistic people who try to make the world a better place ~ William McDonough

It is always difficult to escape from youth; its hopefulness, its optimistic belief in the privileges of desire, its despair, and its sense of outrage and injustice at disappointment, all these spring on a man inflicting indelicate agony when he is no longer prepared. ~ Margery Allingham

So, once Petrakov wanted to go to sleep but, lying down, missed the bed. He hit the floor so hard he lay there unable to get up.

So Petrakov mustered his remaining strength and got on his hands and knees. But his strength abandoned him and he fell on his stomach again, and he just lies there.

Petrakov lay on the floor about five hours. At first he just lay there, but then he fell asleep.

Sleep refreshed Petrakov's strength. He woke up invigorated, got up, walked around the room and cautiously lay down on the bed. "Well," he thought, "now I'll get some sleep." But now he's not feeling very sleepy. So Petrakov keeps turning in his bed and can't fall asleep.

And that's it, more or less. ~ Daniil Kharms

When I was a student, I studied philosophy and religion. I talked about being patient. Some people say I was too hopeful, too optimistic, but you have to be optimistic just in keeping with the philosophy of non-violence. ~ John Lewis

They feed back exactly what is given them. Because they do not believe in words - words are for "typeheads," Chester Anderson tells them, and a thought which needs words is just one more of those ego trips - their only proficient vocabulary is in the society's platitudes. As it happens I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language, and I am not optimistic about children who will settle for saying, to indicate that their mother and father do not live together, that they come from "a broken home." They are sixteen, fifteen, fourteen years old, younger all the time, an army of children waiting to be given the words. ~ Joan Didion

In those days before the Great War when the events narrated in this book took place, it had not yet become a matter of indifference whether a man lived or died. When one of the living had been extinguished another did not at once take his place in order to obliterate him: there was a gap where he had been, and both close and distant witnesses of his demise fell silent whenever they became aware of his gap. When fire had eaten away a house from the row of others in a street, the burnt-out space remained long empty. Masons worked slowly and cautiously. Close neighbors and casual passers-by alike, when they saw the empty space, remembered the aspect and walls of the vanished house. That was how things were then. Everything that grew took its time in growing and everything that was destroyed took a long time to be forgotten. And everything that had once existed left its traces so that in those days people lived on memories, just as now they live by the capacity to forget quickly and completely. ~ Joseph Roth

So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible. ~ Norton Juster

On one hand, I'm an optimistic pessimist. On the other, I'm a pessimistic optimist. But while there's life, there's still hope, and I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I didn't think there was still hope. ~ Helen Caldicott

I am not a naturally optimistic person. I'm too in my own head to be a constant source of cheer. I have to work at happy. Dark and twisty is where my brain likes to settle. So I can use some reminders of what is good and optimistic and glass-half-full about this world. And nothing does that for me like the faces and souls of my tiny humans. ~ Shonda Rhimes

We are running ourselves into a damaged earth. But I am optimistic. I believe that we can change; we must change. As a human race, we are very young and quite primitive. The sooner we learn the greatness of humanity the better off we will all be. ~ John Astin

However it might go, I should have no regrets. If I should be reduced to begging in the street, then I should enjoy the feel of pavement beneath my feet and the odors of asphalt and automobile exhausts. Good and bad fortune were equally attractive when viewed in such a context. Hunger was as interesting as satiety. A life without sight was as interesting as life with sight. Who was to say different? Society? The bulk of humanity?
They were living their first lives, cautiously aware that someday they would die. They had everything to lose. They could not take the risks. But I had been through death, had my insides burned out by it twice.
I was living a second life, freed of those cautious awarenesses.
I had nothing to lose. I could take all the risks. ~ John Howard Griffin

Well I DO want to go up into space, but more than that, I'm dissatisfied with the fact that humans have only gone to the moon. I want to go to Mars! I want to eventually go beyond the solar system! ~ Takafumi Horie

I'm a happily married man and I think to get married you have to be optimistic. ~ Patrick Marber

I call white the most powerful non-color; it's clean, optimistic, powerful. ~ Jason Wu

There is a dark side. I tend not to be as optimistic as Mary Richards. I have an anger in me that I carry from my childhood experiences - I expect a lot of myself and I'm not too kind to myself. ~ Mary Tyler Moore

Each time a thought came knocking on the door of her mind, she viewed it cautiously. Was it true? Was it honorable? Was it pure or lovely? Was it of good repute? ~ Francine Rivers

I don't feel very optimistic in London. ~ David Bailey

I am long term optimistic and short term pessimistic on immigration. Long term, I'm optimistic because there's a lotta bipartisan agreement outside of Washington on immigration. There's overwhelming bipartisan agreement, number one, that we need to secure the borders. That we need to finally do something to stop illegal immigration. ~ Ted Cruz

If you'll just settle down and listen, I'll explain." Cautiously, he turned her around so she faced him. Then, before she could protest, he looked at her mouth, appeared drawn there and he started kissing her again, light, teasing kisses. "I swear, Frannie, you have the sexiest mouth."

"In about two seconds, I'm going to unman you with my knee." He released her and stepped back so quickly, she almost smiled. "Now, if you insist, you can explain while you help me move my stuff."

-Booker and Frannie ~ Lori Foster

When God is involved, anything can happen. Be open. Stay that way. God has a beautiful way of bringing good vibrations out of broken chords. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

I think happiness is a choice. I believe luck is your attitude. It sounds like a really annoying bumper sticker. But there is such a great truth in that. You choose how you want to feel about what happens to you. I could have been a miserable failure. I haven't had anybody looking over me, and I've found my own way through optimistic exploration and fire-burning mistakes. I am a very happy person with an extraordinary life, so I must be doing a lot of things right. I really believe when you peel away the layers, the worlds is a beautiful place filled with beautiful people. ~ Drew Barrymore

I examined it cautiously. On the opposite side of the chain from the wolf, there now hung a brilliant heart-shaped crystal. It was cut in a million facets, so that even in the subdued light shining from the lamp, it sparkled. I inhaled in a low gasp ... "
"But I thought it was a good representation,' he continued. 'It's hard and cold.' He laughed. 'And it throws rainbows in the sunlight.'
'You forgot the most important similarity,' I murmured. 'It's beautiful.'
'My heart is just as silent,' he mused. 'And it, too, is yours. ~ Stephenie Meyer

The planet is ill, everyone knows that. But I need to be optimistic, otherwise I would just be adding to the negativity. So every night I come on Madrid TV and read a piece of good news. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

I cautiously approach him on the bed, thinking about all the times I've been taught what to do when approaching a wounded animal. ~ Kimberly Lauren

Of this you may be certain: The Lord especially loves righteous women-women who are not only faithful but filled with faith, women who are optimistic and cheerful because they know who they are and where they are going, women who are striving to live and serve as women of God. ~ M. Russell Ballard

But while I'm realistic about our challenges, I'm optimistic about our future. There are a few things, and if we do them, we're going to have the greatest era in our history. And I have detailed what those things are specifically. ~ Marco Rubio

Drunk Rachel sees no consequences, she is either excessively expansive and optimistic or wrapped up in hate. She has no past, no future. She exists purely in the moment. ~ Paula Hawkins

Thus heaven's gift to us is this:
That habit takes the place of bliss. ~ Alexander Pushkin

I always remain optimistic. There are three levels of music production: the majors, indies, and what I call "inties," music distributed via the Internet. The Internet is one area that I have used pretty effectively to break free of corporate control. ~ Chuck D

I think all Americans should be hopeful, and try to be optimistic. ~ John Lewis

Since unfortunately we cannot, I believe, spare [our children] the shocking truth about the century of the 'mystery of evil,' knowledge that is even beyond the endurance of adults, let us proceed cautiously so that the knowledge will not damage them but will, like a vaccination, immunize them against evil. Is that possible? I don't know. In Holocaust education the outcomes are unknown, after all; only the aim is clear. We teach so that genocide on a mass scale, the specialty of the past century, can be circumvented in the future. ~ Bogdan Michalski