“Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be.”

“...I can't answer that," replied the werewolf. "Like all good dogs, I'm a cynic, and therefore a little blind. I can only see things as they are, not as they ought to be...”

“Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.”

“Youthful dreams are precious things. They ought not to be dashed as foolish and unrealistic just because they are young dreams. Innocence ought not to be destroyed from any callous conviction that a realistic sort of cynicism is better.”

“vision is an idle dream at best and a cynical delusion at worst - but not an achievable end”

“Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.”