quotations about hope
Hope is delicate suffering.
AMIRI BARAKA
Cold
The quality of our expectations determines the quality of our actions.
ANDRÉ GODIN
In Thought
Thou beautiful unknown! Hope gilds thy couch
With bright enchanting hues, and gleaming crown,
As if man sees in thee a proper child,
And wraps thee lovingly, with tender care,
Watching thy young existence with delight,
And, with exceeding joy, and warm caress,
Offers thee early worship, praise, and pray'r.
C. B. LANGSTON
"The New Year's Wreath"
Hope is a prodigal young heir, and Experience is his banker; but his drafts are seldom honoured, since there is often a heavy balance against him, because he draws largely on a small capital, is not yet in possession, and if he were, would die.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Hope, the magician, charms the distant prospect,
And fancy pictures all the world as good!
C. B. LANGSTON
"Youth"
Hope is what keeps you going, but hope keeps you focused on the future, and this continued focus perpetuates your denial of the Now and therefore your unhappiness.
ECKHARD TOLLE
The Power of Now
When you are well and truly screwed, either you just sit pissing yourself or you invent some reason to hope.
JAMES ALAN GARDNER
Ascending
Hope is carefully to be distinguished, on the one hand from optimism (which springs from prediction of what the future will bring), and on the other hand from wishful thinking (which is unconstrained by the probabilities of what that future might bring). Hope is based neither on certainty, as if it were simply extrapolation of the present, nor on fantasy, as if its object bore only a tenuous relation to the present. Once again, we encounter the eschatological dialectic of continuity and discontinuity. In relation to hope, failure to respect this balance can lead either to despair that anything will ever change for the better, or to violent imaginings of apocalyptic destruction in which the future can be attained only by the annihilation of the past.
JOHN POLKINGHORNE
The God of Hope and the End of the World
Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Heretics
Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Letter, Jun. 8, 1762
Help, then, is the ballast that keeps us steady, that recognizes where along the path are the dangers and pitfalls that can throw us off; hope tempers fear so we can recognize dangers and then bypass or endure them.
JEROME GROOPMAN
The Anatomy of Hope
Hope is fragile and needs to be tended and renewed.
PATRIC SHADE
Habits of Hope
Shame on the man who goes to his grave escorted by the miserable hopes that have kept him alive.
EMIL CIORAN
The Temptation to Exist
As long as hope does not embrace and transform the thought and action of men, it remains topsy-turvy and ineffective.
JÜRGEN MOLTMANN
Theology of Hope
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Work Without Hope
Hope--it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness.
THE ARCHITECT
The Matrix Reloaded
Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
No joy for which thy hungering heart has panted,
No hope it cherishes through waiting years,
But if thou dost deserve it, shall be granted
For with each passionate wish the blessing nears.
Tune up the fine, strong instrument of thy being
To chord with thy dear hope, and do not tire.
When both in key and rhythm are agreeing,
Lo! thou shalt kiss the lips of thy desire.
The thing thou cravest so waits in the distance,
Wrapt in the silences, unseen and dumb:
Essential to thy soul and thy existence--
Live worthy of it--call, and it shall come.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Desire"
To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.
PEARL S. BUCK
To My Daughters
To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another--that is surely the basic instinct. Baser even than hate, the thing with teeth, which can be stilled with a tone of voice or stunned by beauty. If the whole world of the living has to turn on the single point of remaining alive, that pointed endurance is the poetry of hope. The thing with feathers.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
High Tide in Tucson