quotations about hope
Hope deceives more men than cunning can.
MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflecions et Maximes
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always To Be Blest.
ALEXANDER POPE
Essay on Man
Blind hope faces a blank wall waiting for a door in it to open. Doors might be nearby, but blind hope keeps you from locating them.
REBECCA SOLNIT
Hope in the Dark
Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see--in the mind's eye--a path to a better future.
JEROME GROOPMAN
The Anatomy of Hope
But what is hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.
LORD BYRON
letter, Oct. 28, 1815
We postpone the finality of heartbreak by clinging to hope. Though this might be acceptable during early or transitional stages of grief, ultimately it is no way to live. We need both hands free to embrace life and accept love, and that's impossible if one hand has a death grip on the past.
KRISTIN ARMSTRONG
O Magazine, Feb. 2007
Hope is a pickpocket with both fists full.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
Who turns away from gazing at the sun
Sees its dusk images fill all the air.
It is not otherwise when Hope is done:
Her darkling phantoms make the heaven of Despair.
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
"When Hope Is Done"
Hope is the best possession.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Our noblest hopes grow teeth and pursue us like tigers.
JOHN GARDNER
In the Suicide Mountains
We should expect hope's reciprocity as a natural flowering of the life of hope. Helping others and nurturing hope is expressive of hopefulness itself. It is an extension of the hopeful self to reach out to others, promoting the connection of agency and the enrichment of horizons of meaning. Hope's reciprocity grows out of the very social nature of hope; we thus frequently see it live in family relations, in intimacy, in love. And so hope spreads. This spreading should not surprise us; like love, it is freely given, fostered, and nurtured.
PATRIC SHADE
Habits of Hope
There is always hope...only because it's the one thing that no one has figured out how to kill yet.
GALEN
Crusade
Any little thing can give hope, like a candle in the dark.
CHRISTIAAN MOSTERT
Hope: Challenging the Culture of Despair
Hope never abandons you; you abandon it.
GEORGE WEINBERG
Self Creation
At home or abroad, on land, on sea, in prosperity or in adversity, hope's beaming star ever lights us, sometimes feeble, but oftener bright; sometimes weak, but oftener strong. Hope is the murderer's cell, and with the shipwrecked mariner on the desert isle; in the palace, and in the cot; it is shining with surpassing splendour by the dying bed of the Christian, and flickering round the couch of the infidel. Hope met our first parents in Eden, and will be with the last man on earth. Hope is part of our immortality; we hope on, and we hope ever.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Hope", Short Essays
In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Human
Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause. Hope is what led me here today--with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have courage to remake the world as it should be.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, Jan. 3, 2008
He who has never hoped can never despair.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Caesar and Cleopatra
We all hope. It's what keeps us alive.
DAVID MAMET
Speed-the-Plow
The most tragic form of loss isn't the loss of security; it's the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different.
ERNST BLOCH
The Principle of Hope