Hope quotes
page 2
“It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.”
Source: Landscape of the Body
“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.”
"Dreams," from the anthology Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers, ed. Arna Bontemps (1941)
“There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”
Variant: There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.
“I inhale hope with every breath I take.”
Source: When Christ and His Saints Slept
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.”
Source: Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
“All human wisdom is contained in these words: Wait and hope!”
Also: Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,— "Wait and hope".
Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117
Variant: All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”
Optimism (1903)
Variant: Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement
“Hope is the last thing a person does before they are defeated.”
“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”
Source: The Road
“The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.”
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 40 The Martyr
Context: The longest day must have its close — the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day.
Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5 : The Politics of Hope
Variant translation or similar statement: Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.
Context: Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117
The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)
Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968)
“Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.”
Variant: Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. It's what the sunflowers do.
Source: Letter to My Daughter
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
Variant: Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Source: The Citizen of the World, Or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the Country, by Dr. Goldsmith
“In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clinched fist none.”
Source: The Toilers of the Sea
“It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.”
“Hope is not an emotion; it's a way of thinking or a cognitive process.”
Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
“As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.”
Variant: As long as there is love and memory, there is no true death,” he said. He
Source: City of Heavenly Fire
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.”
“This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.”
Source: One Day
“We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.”
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
“That was all a man needed: hope. It was a lack of hope that discouraged a man.”
Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 29
Context: That was all a man needed: hope. It was a lack of hope that discouraged a man. I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax.
“Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.”
No. 36
Apophthegms (1624)
Variant: Money is a great servant but a bad master.
Page 1087
Source: It (1986)
Context: Not all boats which sail away into darkness never find the sun again, or the hand of another child; if life teaches anything at all, it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question...So drive away quick, drive away while the last of the light slips away...drive away from Derry, from memory...but not from desire. That stays, the bright cameo of all we were and all we believed as children, all that shone in our eyes even when we were lost and the wind blew in the night. Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand. All the rest is darkness.
Context: So you leave, and there is an urge to look back, to look back just once as the sunset fades, to see that severe New England skyline one final time... Best not to look back. Best to believe that there will be happily ever afters all the way around - and so there may be; who is to say there will not be such endings? Not all boats which sail away into darkness never find the sun again, or the hand of another child; if life teaches anything at all, it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question... So drive away quick, drive away while the last of the light slips away... drive away from Derry, from memory... but not from desire. That stays, the bright cameo of all we were and all we believed as children, all that shone in our eyes even when we were lost and the wind blew in the night. Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand. All the rest is darkness.
Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989)
“God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless.”
Appended to a variant of the Serenity Prayer in The Armed Forces Prayer Book (1951)
“One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.”
Se vive con la esperanza de llegar a ser un recuerdo.
Voces (1943)
"Why Not Try God?", Chapter 6 (newspaper serial), appeared in St. Petersburg Times, 25 January 1936, sect. 2, p. 3 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=SQxPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=500DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4725,3554118&dq=pickford+not-the-falling-down&hl=en
“Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.”
Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther (King's namesake)
Misattributed
“You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream.”
Unknown, but also attributed to Les Brown, a motivational speaker. Commonly attributed to C.S. Lewis, but never with a primary source listed.
Misattributed
“Life is everything and nothing all at once.”
From the Pisces Iscariot liner notes.
The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968)
“In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.”
As quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893) by James Wood, p. 11
Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World (1954), by Louis Fischer, p. 177
Mahatma Gandhi to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, August 29, 1947 https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/ghp_booksection_detail/Ny0yMzUtMg==#page/258/mode/2up. In Letters to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. 1st edition (April, 1961), p. 246
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)
“There are things worth fighting for.”
Rand al'Thor
(15 October 1994)
“There is no knowledge that is not power.”
Old Age
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)
Widely quoted as an Addison maxim this is actually by the American clergyman George Washington Burnap (1802-1859), published in Burnap's The Sphere and Duties of Woman : A Course of Lectures (1848), Lecture IV.
Misattributed
Characterizations of Existentialism (1944)
This is presented as a statement of 1877, as quoted in From Telegraph to Light Bulb with Thomas Edison (2007) by Deborah Headstrom-Page, p. 22.
1800s
This quote is commonly attributed to Churchill, but appears in the "Red Herrings: False Attributions" appendix of Churchill by Himself : The Definitive Collection of Quotations (2008) by Richard Langworth, without citation as to where it originates.
In American Character, a 1905 address by Brander Matthews, a similar quotation is attributed to L. P. Jacks ( link http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015059451156?urlappend=%3Bseq=238).
""Our civilization is a perilous adventure for an uncertain prize... Human society is not a constructed thing but a human organization... We are adopting a false method of reform when we begin by operations that weaken society, either morally or materially, by lower its vitality, by plunging it into gloom and despair about itself, by inducing the atmosphere of the sick-room, and then when its courage and resources are at a low ebb, expecting it to perform some mighty feat of self-reformation... Social despair or bitterness does not get us anywhere... Low spirits are an intellectual luxury. An optimist is one who sees an opportunity in every difficulty. A pessimist is one who sees a difficulty in every opportunity... The conquest of great difficulties is the glory of human nature." L. P. Jacks, quoted in American character, by Brander Matthews, 1906
Misattributed
Variant: A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
B 832-833
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)
“For hope is but the dream of those that wake.”
Solomon on the Vanity of the World, book iii, line 102; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“I have no plans, and no plans to plan.”
On his presidential plans New York Times (14 September 1986)
“There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way.”
The source is likely to be either modern Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, or Calvinist clergyman Abraham Johannes Muste. The phrase appears in Thich Nhat Hanh's writings; but it also appears in a volume of US senate hearings from 1948, when Thich Nhat Hanh had not yet been ordained as a monk. Muste is known to have used a variant of the phrase – "'peace' is the way" in 1967, but this was not the first time he had used it, and he had a connection with the 1948 hearing.
Misattributed
“The grand essentials of life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for”
actually a quote from The Sphere and Duties of Woman: A Course of Lectures by George Washington Burnap (1848) (p.99 Lecture IV)
Misattributed
“Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward.”
1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
Context: I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.
“I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”
1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
Context: I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.
“Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter II, The Economic Revolution, p. 15
Context: It may strike us as odd that the idea of gain is a relatively modern one; we are schooled to believe that man is essentially an acquisitive creature and that left to himself he will behave as any self-respecting businessman would. The profit motive, we are constantly being told, is as old as man himself.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
“He that lives upon hope will die fasting. ”
“And you do not think that this is possible?”
“I’ll believe in anything when I see evidence for it.”
Chapter 12 (p. 188)
Terminal World (2010)
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
“It always seems impossible until it's done.”
“All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.”
“Hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible.”
