quotations about hope
Those who live for hope alone find that the immediate future always slips from their grasp.
SENECA
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
Without a minimum of hope, we cannot so much as start the struggle.
PAULO FREIRE
Pedagogy of Hope
If you have a dream, live it. If you have a hope, chase it.
EARL PFEIFFER
Clash by Night
Cut the Wings of your Hens and Hopes, lest they lead you a weary Dance after them.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1754
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.
ANNE LEMOTT
Bird by Bird
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
That which obstructs hope often increases it.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The quality of our expectations determines the quality of our actions.
ANDRÉ GODIN
In Thought
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
VACLAV HAVEL
Disturbing the Peace
Hope is not a strategy.
RICK PAGE
Hope Is Not a Strategy
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
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Work Without Hope
While there is life there is hope--and while there is hope there is life.
E. E. HOLMES
Joyful Through Hope
The mind which renounces, once and forever, a futile hope, has its compensations in ever-growing calm.
GEORGE GISSING
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
Hope is delicate suffering.
AMIRI BARAKA
Cold
Hope joined us in the cradle, and will be with us at the last.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Hope", Short Essays
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
We are promised abundance of all good things--yet we are rich only in hunger and thirst. What would become of us if we did not take our stand on hope, and if our heart did not hasten beyond this world!
JEAN CALVIN
Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul
Hope is the only method of recapturing hope.
HIROKAZU MIYAZAKI
The Method of Hope