quotations about hope
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
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"
Hope is the destroyer of things.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
In hopelessness there is always hope.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
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 is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.
GENE WOLFE
The Shadow of the Torturer
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
We can have hope even while maintaining a negative--or sometimes simply realistic--attitude. For instance, if you're dying of cancer, you can still hope for pain relief. If you have a difficult-to-treat cancer, you can still hope for new treatments.
LORI HOPE
Help Me Live
Hope roves in a future of fame and wealth.
ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO
"Maternal Dream"
A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope.
EPICTETUS
fragment
Hope hath a large mouth.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
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
Better hope deferred than none.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Company
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
Do not invest your whole life in one hope.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
One day of good fortune is better than ten of hope.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
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"