quotations about hope
Hope never abandons you; you abandon it.
GEORGE WEINBERG
Self Creation
Hope is the soul's best bower anchor let go in good holding ground. Through every trial, through every woe, in health, in sickness, in poverty, and in want, hope, like a bright fixed star of promise, shines aloft, and bids us not despair.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Hope", Short Essays
Hope is the best possession.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Hope is a waking dream.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
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
Hope is a flatterer; but the most upright of parasites; for she frequents the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
Glittering hope is immemorial and beckons many men to their undoing.
EURIPEDES, Iphigenia in Tauris
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
What makes hope such an intense pleasure is the fact that the future, which we dispose of to our liking, appears to us at the same time under a multitude of forms, equally attractive and equally possible. Even if the most coveted of these becomes realized, it will be necessary to give up the others, and we shall have lost a great deal.
HENRI BERGSON
Time and Free Will
We postpone the finality of heartbreak by clinging to hope. Though this might be acceptable during early or transitional stages of grief, ultimately it is no way to live. We need both hands free to embrace life and accept love, and that's impossible if one hand has a death grip on the past.
KRISTIN ARMSTRONG
O Magazine, Feb. 2007
We all hope. It's what keeps us alive.
DAVID MAMET
Speed-the-Plow
To the last moment of his breath
On hope the wretch relies;
And e'en the pang preceding death
Bids expectation rise.
Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,
Adorns and cheers our way;
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Captivity
Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Conversations with Goethe
The near cousin of optimism is hope: knowing the steps needed to get to a goal and having the energy to pursue those steps. It is a primal motivating force, and its absence is paralyzing.
DANIEL GOLEMAN
Working With Emotional Intelligence
The absence of hope can rot a society from within.
BARACK OBAMA
Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2009
Take hope from the heart of man, and you make him a beast of prey.
OUIDA
A Village Commune
One thing you cannot know:
The sudden extinction of every alternative,
The unexpected crash of the iron cataract.
You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it.
You only know what it is not to hope:
You do not know what it is to have hope taken from you
Or to fling it away, to join the legion of the hopeless
Unrecognized by other men, though sometimes by each other.
T. S. ELIOT
The Family Reunion
Hope was a dangerous emotion that more often than not led men into foolishness and peril, made them risk their lives and lose their wives and part with fortunes that they never recovered.
BENTLEY LITTLE
The Policy
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always To Be Blest.
ALEXANDER POPE
Essay on Man
Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.
SAMUEL SMILES
Self-Help