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The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl vigilant in darkness and blind to light mousing for vermin and never seeing noble game. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl vigilant in darkness and blind to light mousing for vermin and never seeing noble game. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.

Approximate author period: c. 1850 AD · industrial

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Henry Ward Beecher
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1850 AD · industrial
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1813 to 1887; Wikidata Q1607404, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1607404 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 399752; supplied attribution, independently unverified

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.