quotations about hope
Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don't know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it's not. It's a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it.
ANN PATCHETT
State of Wonder
Every dead hope is a phantom that grimaces over its tomb.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The White Feet of the Morrow"
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always To Be Blest.
ALEXANDER POPE
Essay on Man
We all hope. It's what keeps us alive.
DAVID MAMET
Speed-the-Plow
Hope is a waking dream.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
Once you lost all hope, time began to go faster and the senseless days deadened your soul.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Prisoner of Heaven
There is always hope...only because it's the one thing that no one has figured out how to kill yet.
GALEN
Crusade
A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Diary of a Country Priest
Hope is really just a variety of fear, all the more painful because it twitches a chance of escape in front of your nose as it slides by.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
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
How can hope be false when it is as much a part of the human experience as birth or death?
LORI HOPE
Help Me Live
A man begins to die when he ceases to expect anything from Tomorrow.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
It all depends whether hope is in front or behind you.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Usurper
Never give out while there is hope; but hope not beyond reason, for that shows more desire than judgment.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
The absence of hope can rot a society from within.
BARACK OBAMA
Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2009
He who has never hoped can never despair.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Caesar and Cleopatra
Men of warm imaginations and towering thoughts are apt to overlook the goods of fortune which are near them, for something that glitters in the sight at a distance; to neglect solid and substantial happiness for what is showy and superficial; and to contemn that good which lies within their reach, for that which they are not capable of attaining. Hope calculates its schemes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin, and dishonour.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Nov. 13, 1712
Hope is the most universal of human possessions.
THALES
fragment
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
Hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky.... hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency.
REBECCA SOLNIT
Hope in the Dark