quotations about hope
Hope is tenacious. It goes on living and working when science has dealt it what should be its deathblow.
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories
Even if in the building of mere castles in the air the total expenditure one way or the other scarcely matters, from which misdirected and ultimately fraudulently used wishful dreams then result, hope with plan and with connection to the due Possible is still the most powerful and best thing there is. And even if hope merely rises above the horizon, whereas only knowledge of the Real shifts it in solid fashion by means of practice, it is still hope alone which allows us to gain the inspiring and consoling understanding of the world to which it leads.
ERNST BLOCH
The Principle of Hope
It is better to hope than to mope!
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
The season of bereavement becomes the seed-time of hope.
HARRY GREY
Sorrow Not Without Hope
Hope gives us the courage to confront our circumstances and the capacity to surmount them.
JEROME GROOPMAN
The Anatomy of Hope
False hope can lead to intemperate choices and flawed decision making. True hope takes into account the real threats that exist and seeks to navigate the best path around them.
JEROME GROOPMAN
The Anatomy of Hope
Hope is the spur of life.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Hope is not a strategy.
RICK PAGE
Hope Is Not a Strategy
Hope is symbolized in Christian iconography by an anchor. And what does an anchor do? It keeps the ship on course when wind and waves rage against it. But the anchor of hope is sunk in heaven, not on earth.
GREGORY FLOYD
A Grief Unveiled
Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Power and the Glory
Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Hope is the beacon which points to prosperity.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Hope is a day the end of which we may never see.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
And then the spirit brings hope, hope in the strictest Christian sense, hope which is hoping against hope. For an immediate hope exists in every person; it may be more powerfully alive in one person than in another; but in death every hope of this kind dies and turns into hopelessness. Into this night of hopelessness (it is death that we are describing) comes the life-giving spirit and brings hope, the hope of eternity. It is against hope, for there was no longer any hope for that merely natural hope; this hope is therefore a hope contrary to hope.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
For Self-Examination
A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope.
EPICTETUS
fragment
For hope will cull a withered flower
And tune a harp with a broken string;
And hope will shed a glimmering ray
Of light on pleasure's ruined shrine.
For mouldering columns still look gay
When summer sunbeams o'er them shine.
ROSA VERTNER JEFFREY
"Hopes and Fears"
What heart has not false Hope misled?
WILLIAM B. TAPPAN
"What Heart Has Not False Hope Misled"
Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.
GENE WOLFE
The Shadow of the Torturer
Hope is the destroyer of things.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
Hope entered the dark chambers of our childish hearts, and has ever since been the sun of our existence, shining day and night, never dark, never extinguished.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Hope", Short Essays