“Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.”

— Václav Havel

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Václav Havel 126

playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of … 1936–2011

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“Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.”

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“Measure the hope of that moment, that feeling. Everything else will be measured against it.”

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“I hope the good feeling inaugurated may continue to the end.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Conclusion
1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)
Context: I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great harmony between the Federal and Confederate. I cannot stay to be a living witness to the correctness of this prophecy; but I feel it within me that it is to be so. The universally kind feeling expressed for me at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last, seemed to me the beginning of the answer to "Let us have peace."
The expression of these kindly feelings were not restricted to a section of the country, nor to a division of the people. They came from individual citizens of all nationalities; from all denominations — the Protestant, the Catholic, and the Jew; and from the various societies of the land — scientific, educational, religious or otherwise. Politics did not enter into the matter at all.
I am not egotist enough to suppose all this significance should be given because I was the object of it. But the war between the States was a very bloody and a very costly war. One side or the other had to yield principles they deemed dearer than life before it could be brought to an end. I commanded the whole of the mighty host engaged on the victorious side. I was, no matter whether deservedly so or not, a representative of that side of the controversy. It is a significant and gratifying fact that Confederates should have joined heartily in this spontaneous move. I hope the good feeling inaugurated may continue to the end.

“Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent.”

Jean Kerr (1922–2003) Irish-American author and playwright

In Finishing Touches (1973), Act III, Kerr borrows this line (changing "we" to "you") from Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook (1963), ch. 5
Misattributed