Quotations about Hope
Today is filled with opportunity, — and Hope helps and beckons us to partake thereof. ~Ellsworth R. Bathrick (1863–1917), "Don't Worry Book," 1909
Hope is our friend when every other friend has fled. ~Charles F. Raymond, Just Be Glad, 1907
What does hope get you? It gets you a hopeful life — and what better thing might you have had in mind? ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
The Pleasures of Memory are nothing to the Pleasures of Hope. Memory presents you with hard historical facts that, if they are displeasing, you can do nothing with but kick out of the way; but the regions of Fancy are all your own. ~Thomas Clark Henley, A Handful of Paper Shavings, 1861
What is Hope? a star that gleaming
O'er the future's troubled sky,
Struggles, tremulously beaming,
To reveal what there may lie.
~R.A.P., "Hope," in Southern Literary Messenger, December 1840
Hope may play traitor at times, but she is so agreeable that we forgive her offences for the sake of her company. ~Minna Thomas Antrim (1861–1950), Phases, Mazes, and Crazes of Love, 1904
You find hope the way you find happiness — you give it to someone else and borrow a little of it back. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
The oil of hope makes life's machinery run smoothly. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher's Stone, 1882
Hope on, hope ever! though
The sweet sunburst may smile on thee
Hope on, hope ever! after darkest night
Comes, full of loving life, the laughing Morning;
Hope on, hope ever! Spring-tide, flushed with light,
Aye crowns old Winter with her rich adorning.
Hope on, hope ever! yet the time shall come,
When man to man shall be a friend and brother;
And this old world shall be a happy home,
And all Earth's family love one another!
Hope on, hope ever.
~Gerald Massey (1828–1907)
Over the distance, the pain and the tears,
Over the mist of the vanishing years,
Over the heartache and pitiless pain,
Over the pleasure that woos us in vain,
Over the clouds that are heavy with sorrow,
Watch we in hope for the dawn of to-morrow.
~Lizzie Marshall Berry (1847–1919), "To-morrow," Heart Echoes: Original Miscellaneous and Devotional Poems, 1886
[A]mong the decay of expectations and the mangled relics of happiness, hope blossoms and shines at once a flower and a star. ~Henry James Slack (1818–1896), The Ministry of the Beautiful, "Conversation I: The Cavern," 1850
Where hope would otherwise become hopelessness, it becomes faith. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Hope whispers from every hyacinth-bell... ~Elizabeth Holmes, 1830
When darkness gathers round the soul,
Deep melancholy black as night,
Ev'n then Hope whispers thro' the gloom,
Fear not, for it will yet be light.
~David Thomson (1806–1870), "Hope"
"Hope" is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all....
~Emily Dickinson, c.1861
The wings of hope carry us, soaring high above the driving winds of life. ~Ana Jacob, @anajacob, May 2011 entry to The Quote Garden create your own quote contest on Twitter, @quotegarden
Hope is the gardener of the heart. ~J. De Finod
The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.
~William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, c.1604
If you knew that hope and despair were paths to the same destination, which would you choose? ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1963
Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope-tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. ~Mark Twain, letter to Joe T. Goodman, 1891
When hope is hungry, everything feeds it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1963
I will never willingly destroy a solitary human hope. ~Robert G. Ingersoll
Here's to Hope! — the child of Care,
And pretty sister of Despair,
Here's hoping that Hope's children shan't
Take after their Grandma or Aunt!
~Oliver Herford, c.1903
How much longer will Hope dance on my intellect? ~Thomas Edison, diary, 1885
It is the first purpose of hope to make hopelessness bearable. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Life wears away, 'mid smiles and tears,—
The wedding peal, the funeral toll;
But though o'ershadowed still by fears,
Hope is the sunlight of the soul.
~Rosa Vertuer Johnson, "Hopes and Fears," 1853
HOPE is a draft on the future. Sometimes honored, but usually extended indefinitely. ~Josh Billings, revised by H. Montague
Five of the sweetest words in the English language begin with H, which is only a breath — Heart, Hope, Home, Happiness, and Heaven. Heart is a hope-place, and home is a heart-place; and that man sadly mistaketh, who would exchange the happiness of home for anything less than heaven. ~The Youth's Companion, 1853
There is a state of denial called hope which is usually more productive than the state of denial called despair. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
If the worst seems imminent, meet it bravely and with the fortitude of a heart steeled to meet any fate. Ah, that is the greatest of all! A stout heart.
From sunshine to shadow and back again, Fate leads and Hope ever holds us by the hand. Hope is the twin sister to Courage and so long as the latter is with us Hope will be there also. ~Ellsworth R. Bathrick (1863–1917), "Don't Worry Book," 1909, as quoted by Mill Supplies, 1915
All it takes is one bloom of hope to make a spiritual garden. ~Terri Guillemets
HOPE.—A Phœnix singing upon its funeral pile. ~"A Chapter of Definitions," Daily Crescent, 1848
Hope rises like a phoenix from the ashes of shattered dreams. ~S. A. Sachs
everything would
be all right —
from the ashes
hope was aflame
~Terri Guillemets, "From the ashes," 2019, blackout poetry created from Rafe Martin, Birdwing, 2005
Take heart, little sister, twilight is but the short bridge, and the moon stands at the end. ~Emily Dickinson, 1861
Hope springs eternal in the human breast... ~Alexander Pope (1688–1744), Essay on Man
Hope is a roving gypsy
With laughter on her tongue,
And the blue sky and sunshine
Alone, can keep her young;
And year by year she lingers
Under a budding tree...
~Dora Read Goodale, "The Chorus," in Country Life in America: A Magazine for the Home-maker, the Vacation-seeker, the Gardener, the Farmer, the Nature-teacher, the Naturalist, 1902
Life without hope is a year without spring. ~William Arthur Ward (1921–1994)
'Tis a wreath of sunny flowers;
On the future's brow it twines;
Culled in love's own roseate bowers,
Fresh with sparkling dew it shines.
~R. A. P., "Hope," in Southern Literary Messenger, December 1840
The wings of hope belong to a dove best left to fly free. ~Taylor Schwab, @taylorloverobot, May 2011 entry to The Quote Garden create your own quote contest on Twitter, @quotegarden
Hope, not fear, is the creative principle in human affairs. All that has made man great has sprung from the attempt to secure what is good, not from the struggle to avert what was thought evil. It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves a great result. The wish to preserve the past rather than the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young. Education should not aim at a passive awareness of dead facts, but at an activity directed towards the world that our efforts are to create. It should be inspired, not by a regretful hankering after the extinct beauties of Greece and the Renaissance, but by a shining vision of the society that is to be, of the triumphs that thought will achieve in the time to come, and of the ever-widening horizon of man's survey over the universe. Those who are taught in this spirit will be filled with life and hope and joy, able to bear their part in bringing to mankind a future less somber than the past, with faith in the glory that human effort can create. ~Bertrand Russell, "Education," Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel, 1917
We make our lives out of chaos and hope. And love. ~Bones, "Mother and Child in the Bay," original airdate 2006 September 6th, spoken by the character Angela Montenegro, writing credits S. Nathan, H. Hanson, K. Reichs, and N. Hawley
Many an angel, with its needle, toils beneath the snow. ~Emily Dickinson, 1875
...although I feel ill, and am ground into the very dust with poverty, there is a sweet hope in the bottom of my soul. ~Edgar A. Poe, letter, 1846
Hope.— Pandora brought the box containing evils and opened it. It was the gift of the gods to men, a gift of most enticing appearance externally and called the 'box of happiness.' Thereupon all the evils, (living, moving things) flew out: from that time to the present they fly about and do ill to men by day and night. One evil only did not fly out of the box: Pandora shut the lid at the behest of Zeus and it remained inside. Now man has this box of happiness perpetually in the house and congratulates himself upon the treasure inside of it; it is at his service: he grasps it whenever he is so disposed, for he knows not that the box which Pandora brought was a box of evils. Hence he looks upon the one evil still remaining as the greatest source of happiness — it is hope.— Zeus intended that man, notwithstanding the evils oppressing him, should continue to live and not rid himself of life, but keep on making himself miserable. For this purpose he bestowed hope upon man: it is, in truth, the greatest of evils for it lengthens the ordeal of man. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, No. 71, "History of the Moral Feelings," Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, 1878, translated by Alexander Harvey, 1908
God sends the dawn
that we might see
the might-have-beens
that still might be.
~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
The birds of hope are everywhere — listen to them sing. ~Terri Guillemets
Who thinks, at night, that morn will ever be?
Who knows, far out upon the central sea,
That anywhere is land? And yet, a shore
Has set behind us, and will rise before:
A past foretells a future...
~Bayard Taylor, "First Evening"
Hope rests on the shadow
Of the mighty wings of Faith.
~Julia Cooley Altrocchi (1893–1972), "Sentences That I Make Up," The Poems of a Child, Being Poems Written Between the Ages of Six and Ten, 1904
It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate. ~Eric Hoffer, "Popular Upheavals in Communist Countries," The Ordeal of Change, 1952
Hope is a strange invention –
A Patent of the Heart –
In unremitting action
Yet never wearing out....
~Emily Dickinson, c.1877
The destruction of ideals, whether those ideals were right or wrong, must also have been a shock to the mind and the heart. Life without idealism is empty indeed. We must have hope as we must have bread; to eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death. ~Pearl S. Buck
Hope is a walk through a flowering meadow. One does not require that it lead anywhere. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Hope is grief's best music. ~Proverb
Hope is an inconstant pleasure, arising from the idea of something past or future, whereof we to a certain extent doubt the issue. Fear is an inconstant pain arising from the idea of something past or future, whereof we to a certain extent doubt the issue. From these definitions it follows, that there is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope. ~Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677), translated from the Latin by R.H.M. Elwes, 1889
Hope is that lone bloom in the desert when you can see nothing else but sand. ~Terri Guillemets
Hope and fear are Siamese twins. ~Charles Searle, Look Here!, 1885
Hope peers beyond the sunset gate,
And sees heaven ope, with clearest eye;
In Sorrow's sombre vale we wait,
Till Love translates us to the sky...
~Luther G. Riggs, "Hope and Fear," c.1884 [Riggs was an editor and the poet-paragrapher of the Chicago Daily Sun.
Hope is wingèd —
one wing faith-patience
the other action-effort:
and we must fly with both!
~Terri Guillemets
Though you lose all hope, there is still hope, and it loves to surprise. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Believe me... your fair discourse hath been as sugar,
Making the hard way sweet and delectable...
...what a weary way ...sweetened with... hope...
And hope to joy is little less in joy
Than hope enjoy'd...
~William Shakespeare, Richard II, c.1595
...but what is Hope? nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off... ~Lord Byron
Hope is a great perspective picture-painter, whose work appears dauby and unfinished when submitted to Reason's close inspection. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897
Hope is the silver lining of dreams. ~Terri Guillemets
I believe in faith and hope, although as the years go by, I find myself putting a little less faith in hope and a little more hope in faith. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Hope being the best of all the Affections, and Passions, is very powerfull to prolong Life, if like a nodding Nurse it doe not often fall asleepe, and languish, but doe continually feed the fancy with beholding good objects. ~Francis Bacon (1561–1626), The Historie of Life and Death, 1638
We assuredly do not deny that the physiological observer would have seen there an irremediable misery; he would probably have pitied this patient of the law, but he would not have even attempted a cure: he would have turned away from the caverns he noticed in this soul, and, like Dante at the gates of the Inferno, he would have effaced from this existence that word which GOD, however, has written on the brow of every man: hope! ~Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, 1862, translated by Lascelles Wraxall, 1887
I still believe in some faraway place where it's all okay. ~Terri Guillemets, "Beyond the horizon," 1989
Good Friday, and again we are reminded to never lose hope — or at least give it the weekend. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com