SO GOOD QUOTES

In the end, both the optimist and the pessimist have it wrong, because each is looking at only part of the evidence. When we open our eyes to the fullness of reality, what we find is a chiaroscuro canvas of both darkness and light. The totality of evidence elicits in us something like ‘melancholic joy’: a grateful and uninhibited joy for the goodness of being, but one tinged by sadness at the pervasiveness of evil and melancholy because it all comes to an end. Seeing the evil in the world helps us to live well while we can, because death is coming for us all, and entropy is gnawing at the fringes of our existence. And seeing the goodness helps us to live gratefully, softening the sting of reality.

The ‘melancholic joy’ of living in our brutal, beautiful world