quotations about hope
One day of good fortune is better than ten of hope.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Hope is the spur of life.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.
LIN YUTANG
The Wisdom of China
None are completely wretched but those who are without hope.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Hope, whose whisper would have given
Balm to all my frenzied pain,
Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven,
Went, and ne'er returned again!
EMILY BRONTE
Hope
I plant a seed of Hope, and ere the tread
Of nimble-footed Day has run the hours,
The seed has grown a tree that woos the skies,
Its verdant branches starred with golden flowers.
LOUISE AYRES GARNETT
"The Tree of Hope"
Hope roves in a future of fame and wealth.
ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO
"Maternal Dream"
Hope is, indeed, a deceitful enchantress; but she sheds a sweet radiance on the stream of life, and never exerts her magic except to our advantage. We seldom attain what she beckons us to pursue; but her deceptions resemble those which the dying husbandman in the fable practiced upon his sons, who, by telling them of a hidden mass of wealth, which he had buried in a secret place in his vineyard, led them so sedulously to delve the ground, and turn up the earth about the roots of the vines, that they found, in deed, a treasure, though not in gold, in wine.
WILLIAM MATHEWS
Hints on Success in Life
Do not invest your whole life in one hope.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Cut the Wings of your Hens and Hopes, lest they lead you a weary Dance after them.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1754
All hope is prayer; who calls it hope no more,
Sends prayer footsore forth over weary wastes,
While he who calls it prayer, gives wings to hope.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Immortality"
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Work Without Hope
Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.
LEMONY SNICKET
The Beatrice Letters
Hope is sweet-minded and sweet-eyed. It draws pictures; it weaves fancies; it fills the future with delight.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
We watch our hopes, far flickering in the night,
Once radiant torches, lighted in our youth,
To guide, through years, to some broad morn of truth;
But these go out and leave us with no light.
HENRY ABBEY
"While the Days Go By"
In hopelessness there is always hope.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
Better hope deferred than none.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Company
What doctor possesses such curative resources as those latent in a spark of happiness or a single ray of hope?
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime