"There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist." Mark Twain.
My own gloss-for-today on this would be to substitute the word "smoker" for pessimist. In my youth, we all did because it was a rite de passage & a near-universal usage and slightly eccentric not to; and we didn't know what the idiot habit could do to you. Now we do know, but so many young people will still do it ~~ Tears & alas! (And, BTW, unhappily, some older people who should know better, as an, IMO, idiot gesture of delayed-adolescent bravado and an empty gesture they mistake for a snook cocked at the "nanny state"; many of whom will write in a self-consciously & self-righteously defiant tone about it on this forum & in the pages of The Spectator.)
A dual thread this, really, as two separate ?s arise from the quote & my response.
1. What do you think of my comments on young people smoking?
2. What would be your nomination, in the same spirit as the original, for Twain's "no sadder sight"?