“A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.” — Owen Seaman | V2Melody

“A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.”

A wry reflection on how timing can make unwelcome realism seem like pessimism; the attribution is commonly reported but the original source is unclear. · Quotation attributed to Owen Seaman

About Owen Seaman

Owen Seaman

18 September 1861–2 February 1936

Owen Seaman, born on 18 September 1861 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and dead on 2 February 1936, occupied an unusually influential place in British literary culture for a man whose name is now less familiar than the names of many writers he parodied, edited, or helped to popularize. Poet, humorist, classicist…

More by Owen Seaman

Poems by Owen Seaman

More remarks by Owen Seaman

“For, though the subject deals with a serious problem of the hour, it can be treated, and is treated, with a very permissible humour that just stops short of farce.”

A working rule for joking about grave public matters · Theatre notice, Punch, 16 December 1914

“To the authors, many of them my friends, whose methods I have here attempted to imitate.”

A parodist's courtesy to the writers he mimics · Dedication, Borrowed Plumes

“I understand, on good authority, that the tendency of the public at this juncture of the War is to demand light refreshment. Well, they have it here.”

Wartime taste for amusement treated without apology · Theatre notice, Punch, 16 December 1914