Famous quotes containing the words pessimistic, explanatory and/or style:
“Under the influence of fear, which always leads men to take a pessimistic view of things, they magnified their enemies’ resources, and minimized their own.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“Although philosophers generally believe in laws and deny causes, explanatory practice in physics is just the reverse.”
—Nancy Cartwright (b. 1945)
“We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)