"I'm a great optimist, but we're now caught in a downward spiral, economically and socially," he said.

A great optimist by nature - that's why failure came so hard to him.

"Michael was one of the great optimists," Jackson said.

They wouldn't be where they are if they weren't great optimists.

Nanny Ogg, one of life's great optimists, stepped out to take whatever the future had to offer.

In other words, it isn't what an asset may earn that counts, but what it might fetch in a sale to even greater optimists.

"You are a great optimist," his deputy interrupted.

He was a great optimist.

But it is equally true that men flee from the embrace of a great optimist as from the embrace of a bear.

In bed I read a letter from my own father, the dentist, one of the world's great optimists, a master of the conjunction.