Pollyanna Quotes

• 'Oh, yes,' nodded Pollyanna emphatically. 'He said he felt better right away, that first day he thought to count 'em. He said if God took the trouble to tell us eight hundred times to be glad and rejoice, He must want us to do it - some.

  Eleanor Porter

  Father, Eight, Ems

  "Pollyanna".

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• ... there is something about everything that you can be glad about, if you keep hunting long enough to find it.

  Eleanor Porter

  Hunting, Long, Enough

  Eleanor Porter (2003). “Pollyanna”, ePenguin

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• My relationship with "Pollyanna" is a very personal one, because Pollyanna got me through my childhood.

  Eleanor Porter

  Relationship, Childhood

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• Look, I hate to sound like Pollyanna, but I literally can't wait to get to work in the morning. I've got steady jobs, I've got my health, and I'm here in the greatest city in the world. I'd be a pig not to be grateful

  Christopher Meloni

  Morning, Jobs, Hate

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• If the prime directives were followed a little more accurately here on earth, I mean it sounds somewhat Pollyanna, but I think people would certainly get along better.

  Jonathan Frakes

  Mean, Thinking, People

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• ... if God took the trouble to tell us eight hundred times to be glad and rejoice, He must want us to do it—SOME.

  Eleanor Porter

  Eight, Want, Trouble

  Eleanor Porter (2003). “Pollyanna”, ePenguin

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• Whenever someone calls me a Pollyanna, I consider it to be the highest of compliments. This courageous girl finds a community that has been torn apart with hate, fear, and pain and brings it love, courage and healing. Isn't that what our world today needs more than anything?

  Joe Tye

  Girl, Pain, Hate

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• What men and women need is encouragement. Their natural resisting powers should be strengthened, not weakened ... Instead of always harping on a man's faults, tell him of his virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut ... Hold up to him his better self, his real self that can dare and do and win out! ... People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts.

  Eleanor Porter

  Encouragement, Real, Heart

  Eleanor Porter (2003). “Pollyanna”, ePenguin

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• Be a balanced optimist. Nobody is suggesting that you become an oblivious Pollyanna, pretending that nothing bad can or ever will happen. Doing so can lead to poor decisions and invites people to take advantage of you. Instead, be a rational optimist who takes the good with the bad, in hopes of the good ultimately outweighing the bad, and with the understanding that being pessimistic about everything accomplishes nothing. Prepare for the worst but hope for the best - the former makes you sensible, and the latter makes you an optimist.

  Dale Carnegie

  Optimistic, Poor Decisions, Accomplish Nothing

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• Wonder is not a Pollyanna stance, not a denial of reality; wonder is an acknowledgement of the power of the mind to transform, to notice, to decide what experience shall mean.

  Christina Baldwin

  Inspirational, Mean, Reality

  Christina Baldwin (1991). “Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest”, Bantam

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• The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious. ... People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts.

  Eleanor Porter

  Beautiful, Heart, Character

  Eleanor Porter (2003). “Pollyanna”, ePenguin

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• Oh, yes; the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about—no matter what 'twas

  Eleanor Porter

  Games, Matter, Glad

  Eleanor Porter (2003). “Pollyanna”, ePenguin

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• I prefer to see myself as the Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps living too much in the past - a combination of both.

  Ray Bradbury

  Past, Two, Half

  "Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction No. 203". Interview with Sam Geller, www.theparisreview.org. 2010.

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• To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful.

  Brennan Manning

  Beautiful, Reality, Evil

  Brennan Manning (2009). “The Furious Longing of God”, p.59, David C Cook

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• Consider the "new" woman. She's trying to be Pollyanna Borgia, clearly a conflict of interest. She's supposed to be a ruthless winner at work and a bundle of nurturing sweetness at home.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Home, Trying, Winner

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• Millions of Americans would still despair in the eight long years of the Depression that lay ahead and many of their individual dreams would be dashed on the rocks of economic hardship. But collectively, the country was in a new place, with a new confidence that the federal government would actively try to solve problems rather than fiddle or cater to the rich. Hope was no longer for Pollyannas; the cynics about the American system were in retreat.

  Jonathan Alter

  Dream, Country, Eight

  Jonathan Alter (2007). “The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope”, p.306, Simon and Schuster

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• That's the way I look at things - if you focus on the worst case scenario and it happens, you've lived it twice. It sounds like Pollyanna-ish tripe but I'm telling you - it works for me.

  Michael J. Fox

  Worst Case Scenario, Focus, Sound

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• Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven't left me any time at all just to- to live.

  Eleanor Porter

  Aunt, Havens, Left

  Eleanor Porter (2003). “Pollyanna”, ePenguin

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• There are really two kinds of optimism. There's the complacent, Pollyanna optimism that says "don't worry - everything will be just fine" and that allows one to just lay back and do nothing about the problems around you. Then there's what we call dynamic optimism. That's an optimism based on action.

  Ramez Naam

  Two, Optimism, Worry

  "Q&A with Ramez Naam: Dialogues on the Environment". Interview with Mark Tercek, bigthink.com.

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• In all probability the Human Genome Project will, someday, find that I carry some recessive gene for optimism, because despite all my best efforts I still can't scrape together even a couple days of hopelessness. Future scientists will call it the Pollyanna Syndrome, and if forced to guess, I'd say that mine has been a way-long case history of chasing rainbows.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Couple, Best Effort, Chasing Rainbows

  "Damned". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, 2011.

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• I long ago discovered that you can't TELL about Pollyanna. The minute you try to, she sounds priggish and preachy, and--impossible. Yet you and I know she is anything but that.

  Eleanor Porter

  Long Ago, Trying, Sound

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• I hate the pollyanna pest who says that all is for the best.

  Franklin P. Adams

  Hate, Pests, I Hate

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I'm an optimist in my heart - I'm a hopeless pollyanna just like my mother - but a pessimist in my head. I think that's the dialectic we all need to be in.

  Bill Ayers

  Mother, Heart, Thinking

  "The Rumpus Long Interview with Bill Ayers". Interview with Scott Hutchins, therumpus.net. February 20, 2009.

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• The influence of a beautiful, helpful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town.

  Graham Collier

  Beautiful, Character, Volunteer

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• I have been accused of being a Pollyanna, but I think there are plenty of people dealing with the darker side of human nature, and if I am going to write about people who are kind and generous and loving and thoughtful, so what? In my life I have met astonishingly good people.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Thoughtful, Thinking

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