It's better... and worse than you think

The professional pessimist sees one half the picture, the professional optimist the other. The former calls the latter superficial and is in turn pronounced defeatist. Each possesses a distorted fragment of the Christian truth. The Bible's realism exceeds that of the worst cynic, for it know what man has done to God. At the same time its hope surpasses the wildest utopian fantasy, for it has concrete experience of what this same God will do for man.

- Edmon LA B. Cherbonnier, cited on p. 101 of Seeing through Cynicism