Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle.
If you're regularly willing to give a critique, but not willing to take one, you're not a leader, you're a cynic.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Someone once said a cynic is just a disappointed romantic. That really, really sums me up.
"Cynic" is a word invented by optimists to put down realists.
[in the]. . curious way that my idealism has been mixed with my fatalism, so that I can possess the soul of a dreamer and that of a cynic at the same time. . . . . . I possess a power of magic. . . [to] destroy the balance of a well-designed destiny with my diabolical mind.
Woman: the peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch and the sinner his justification.
It is good to be a cynic it is better to be a contented cat and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.
A cynic by experience, a romantic by inclination and now a hero by necessity.
I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist.
who was the cynic who had defined gratitude as thanks for favors to come?
Idealist: a cynic in the making.
The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer.
You're a cynic," Urgit accused. Silk shook his head. "No, Your Majesty. I'm a realist.
No man ever raised a monument to a cynic or wrote a poem about a man without faith.
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.
You're such a cynic," Molly said. "I think cynics are playful and cute.
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
The cynic who twitted Aristippus by observing that the philosopher who could dine on herbs might despise the company of a king, was well replied to by Aristippus, when he remarked that the philosopher who could enjoy the company or a king might also despise a dinner of herbs.
A cynic sees little to admire in the world, while the world sees even less to admire in him.