For that is meaningless; it is like calling everything right and nothing left.

Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.

It would be unfair to omit altogether from the list the mysterious but suggestive definition said to have been given by a little girl, "An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist is a man who looks after your feet." I am not sure that this is not the best definition of all.

There is even a sort of allegorical truth in it.
For there might, perhaps, be a profitable distinction drawn between that more dreary thinker who thinks merely of our contact with the earth from moment to moment, and that happier thinker who considers rather our primary power of vision and of choice of road.
But this is a deep mistake in this alternative of the optimist and the pessimist.

The assumption of it is that a man criticises this world as if he were house-hunting, as if he were being shown over a new suite of apartments.