quotations about hope
A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope.
EPICTETUS
fragment
Hope is a day the end of which we may never see.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
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
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
What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Do not invest your whole life in one hope.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
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 roves in a future of fame and wealth.
ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO
"Maternal Dream"
We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken.
JOHN GREEN
Looking for Alaska
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"
Cut the Wings of your Hens and Hopes, lest they lead you a weary Dance after them.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1754
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 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
In hopelessness there is always hope.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
One day of good fortune is better than ten of hope.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
That which obstructs hope often increases it.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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"
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Work Without Hope