Hope quotes page 2
“It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.”
John Guare Landscape of the Body
Source: Landscape of the Body
“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) American author and journalist
“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.”
Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist
"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.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher
Variant: There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.
“I inhale hope with every breath I take.”
Sharon Kay Penman book When Christ and His Saints Slept
Source: When Christ and His Saints Slept
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.”
Ann Brashares book Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
Source: Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
“All human wisdom is contained in these words: Wait and hope!”
Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo
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". <br class="br"> Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117 <br class="br">Variant: All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope <br class="br">Source: The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”
Helen Keller book Optimism
Optimism (1903)
Variant: Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement
“Hope is the last thing a person does before they are defeated.”
Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter
“The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin
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.
Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace
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.
“It's the possibility that keeps me going, not the guarantee.”
Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook
Source: The Notebook
Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo
Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117 <br class="br">The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)
Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet
The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968)
“Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist
Variant: Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. It's what the sunflowers do.
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer
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.”
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Source: The Toilers of the Sea
“It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.”
Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer
“Hope is not an emotion; it's a way of thinking or a cognitive process.”
Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor
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.”
Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire
Variant: As long as there is love and memory, there is no true death,” he said. He
Source: City of Heavenly Fire
“Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.”
Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games
Source: The Hunger Games
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.”
Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian
“This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.”
David Nicholls book One Day
Source: One Day
“We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.”
Albert Pike (1809–1891) Confederate States Army general and Freemason
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
“That was all a man needed: hope. It was a lack of hope that discouraged a man.”
Charles Bukowski book Factotum
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.”
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author
No. 36
Apophthegms (1624)
Variant: Money is a great servant but a bad master.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
Stephen King book It
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.
“God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless.”
Chester W. Nimitz (1885–1966) United States Navy fleet admiral
Appended to a variant of the Serenity Prayer in The Armed Forces Prayer Book (1951)
“One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.”
Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet
Se vive con la esperanza de llegar a ser un recuerdo.
Voces (1943)
Mary Pickford (1892–1979) Canadian-American actress
"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.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther (King's namesake)
Misattributed
“You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream.”
Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist
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.”
Billy Corgan (1967) American musician, songwriter, producer, and author
From the Pisces Iscariot liner notes.
Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst
The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968)
“In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.”
János Arany (1817–1882) Hungarian writer
As quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893) by James Wood, p. 11
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India
Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World (1954), by Louis Fischer, p. 177 <br class="br"> 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 <br class="br">Posthumous publications (1950s and later)
“There are things worth fighting for.”
Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer
Rand al'Thor
(15 October 1994)
“There is no knowledge that is not power.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Old Age
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
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
Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …
Characterizations of Existentialism (1944)
Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman
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
Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
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. <br class="br">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). <br class="br">""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 <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
“For hope is but the dream of those that wake.”
Matthew Prior (1664–1721) British diplomat, poet
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.”
Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York
On his presidential plans New York Times (14 September 1986)
“There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way.”
Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism
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”
Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland
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.”
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist
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.”
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist
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.”
Robert L. Heilbroner book The Worldly Philosophers
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. ”
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …
“And you do not think that this is possible?”
Alastair Reynolds book Terminal World
“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.”
Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer
“It always seems impossible until it's done.”
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist
“All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.”
Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist
Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul
“Hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible.”
William Sloane Coffin (1924–2006) American activist
