quotes, quotations and passages on hope

Everything that is done in this
world is done by hope.

Martin Luther

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of the human become in its long journey toward the stars? Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Hope is a vigorous principle. . . it sets the head and heart to work, and animates a person to do his or her utmost. Jeremy Collier Without hope people are only half alive. With hope they dream and think and work. Charles Sawyer

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate. Eric Hoffer

I have always felt that the moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there. Monica Baldwin

"Hope" is the thing with feathers--
That perches in the soul--
And sings the tunes without the words--
And never stops--at all.

Emily Dickinson

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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.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Hope is outreaching desire with expectancy of good. It is characteristic
of all living beings. Birds, beasts, and people are always alert and striving
for the fulfillment of their hungers. They are impelled forward in a ceaseless
quest for satisfaction. The antennae of insects relentlessly explore
and feel their way ahead, and the imagination of humans functions
in the same manner, ranging through wide areas and far futures
in search of the good which hope ever promises.

Edward S. Ames

Hope is wanting something so eagerly that--in
spite of all the evidence that you're not going
to get it--you go right on wanting it.

Norman Vincent Peale

All human wisdom is summed up in two words--wait and hope.

Alexander Dumas

What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life.

Emil Brunner

There is nothing so well known as that we should not
expect something for nothing--but we all do and we call it Hope.

Edgar Watson Howe

There is a law in life: When one door closes to us another one opens.

Andre Gide

We stand in life at midnight; we are always
at the threshold of a new dawn.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are haunted by an ideal life, and it is because
we have within us the beginning and the possibility of it.

Phillips Brooks

Humans are, properly speaking, based upon hope,
we have no other possession but hope;
this world of ours is emphatically the place of hope.

Thomas Carlyle

The natural flights of the human mind are not
from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Samuel Johnson

It is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded;
for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however
frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.

Samuel Johnson

hope 2

The well-known maxim, "While there is life there is hope," has a
deeper meaning in reverse: "While there is hope there is life."
Hope comes first, life follows. Hope gives power to life. Hope
rouses life to continue, to expand, to grow, to reach out, to go on.
Hope sees a light where there isn't any.
Hope lights candles in millions of despairing hearts.
Hope is the miracle medicine of the mind. It inspires the will to
live. Hope is the physician's strongest ally.
Hope is our shield and buckler against defeat.
"Hope," wrote Alexander Pope, "springs eternal in the human
breast." And as long as it does we will triumph and move forward.
Hope never sounds retreat. Hope keeps the banners flying.
Hope revives ideals, renews dreams, revitalizes visions.
Hope scales the peak, wrestles with the impossible, achieves
the highest aim.
"The word which God has written on the brow of every person,"
wrote Victor Hugo, "is Hope." As long as we have hope
no situation is hopeless.

Wilferd A. Peterson

Hope itself is like a star--not to be seen in the sunshine of
prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity.

Charles H. Spurgeon

Hope is like a road in the country; there never was a road,
but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.

Lin Yutang

Never give out while there is hope; but hope not beyond reason,
for that shows more desire than judgment.

William Penn

If we were logical, the future would be bleak indeed. But we
are more than logical. We are human beings, and we
have faith, and we have hope, and we can work.

Jacques Cousteau

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the
certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Vaclav Havel

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Articles and book excerpts on hope:

Can a Caterpillar Fly? Release from Clinical Depression      Lori Dickerson
The "I Can't" Funeral      Author Unknown
I Have a Dream (excerpt)      Martin Luther King, Jr.

Honor begets honor, trust begets trust,
faith begets faith, and hope is the mainspring of life.

Henry L. Stimson

Give humanity hope and it will dare and suffer joyfully, not counting
the cost--hope with laughter on her banner and on her face
the fresh beauty of morning.

John Elof Boodin

There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, no tonic
so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow.

Orison Swett Marden

It is doubtful whether hope—or any of the other manifestations of creativity—can sustain itself without an impulse injected by love. So absurd and indefensible is hope. Sophia’s was nourished by love of her mother and sisters, but above all by love of those two distant outcasts, her father and her brother.

So defenseless is hope before the court of reason that it stands in constant need of fashioning its own confirmations. It reaches out to heroic song and story; it stoops to superstition. It shrinks from flattering consolations; it likes its battles hard won, but it surrounds itself with ceremonial and fetish. Sophia slept with the three green arrowheads beside her. There are no rainbows in the narrow gorge at Coaltown, but she had seen two in her life on picnics along the Old Quarry Road. She knew their promise. Above the secret hiding place for her money she lightly drew an arc and wrote “J.B.A.” and “R.B.A.” Because it is irrational, hope rejoices in evidence of the marvelous. She drew strength from the inexplicable mystery of her father’s rescue. Hope—the daring—is subject to intermittent overthrow, to black hours. Sophia drew into herself, lowered her head and waited, like an animal in a snowstorm.

Thornton Wilder
The Eighth Day

Take from people their wealth, and you hinder them;
take from them their purpose, and you slow them down.
But take from them their hope, and you stop them.
They can go on without wealth, and even without purpose,
for awhile. But they will not go on without hope.

C. Neil Strait

Do not look forward to the changes and chances of this life in fear;
rather look to them with full hope that, as they arise, God,
whose you are, will deliver you out of them. He is your keeper.
He has kept you hitherto. Do you but hold fast to his dear hand,
and he will lead you safely through all things; and, when you
cannot stand, he will bear you in his arms. Do not look forward
to what may happen tomorrow. Our Father will either shield you
from suffering, or he will give you strength to bear it.

St. Francis of Sales

When we have hope, we are showing that we trust God to work
out the situation. Trust is the only way we're going to make it through
and be a part of God's marvelous plan for His child.

Barbara Johnson

hope 2

We must become good plowers. Hope is the prerequisite of plowing.
What sort of farmer plows the furrow in the autumn but has no hopes
for the spring? So, too, we accomplish nothing without hope, without
a sure inner hope that a new age is about to dawn. Hope is strength.
The energy in the world is equal to the hope in it. And even if only a
few people share such hopes, a power is created which nothing can
hold down-- it inevitably spreads to others.

Albert Schweitzer