To live without Hope is to Cease to live.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81) Russian Novelist, Essayist, Writer
Hope, of all passions, most befriends us here; joy has her tears, and transport has her death; hope, like a cordial, innocent though strong, man’s heart at once inspirits and serenes, nor makes him pay his wisdom for his joys.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
—Barbara Kingsolver (b.1955) American Novelist, Essayist, Poet
The wind was cold off the mountains and I was a naked man with enemies behind me and nothing before me but hope.
—Louis L’Amour (1908–88) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
Hope is putting faith to work when doubting would be easier.
—Anonymous
Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory.
—Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American Clergyman, Self-Help Author
Hope is a waking dream.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Hope is nature’s veil for hiding truth’s nakedness.
—Alfred Nobel (1833–1896) Swedish Inventor, Humanitarian
Hope—fortune’s cheating lottery, where for one prize, a hundred blanks there be.
—Abraham Cowley (1618–67) English Poet, Essayist
True hope dwells on the possible, even when life seems to be a plot written by someone who wants to see how much adversity we can overcome True hope responds to the real world, to real life; it is an active effort
—Walter Anderson
Hopes are but the dreams of those that wake.
—Matthew Prior (1664–1721) English Poet, Diplomat
Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
—Pope John XXIII (1881–1963) Italian Catholic Religious Leader, Pope
We must have hope or starve to death.
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American Novelist, Human Rights Activist
Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American Novelist, Human Rights Activist
The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
For hope is but the dream of those that wake.
—Matthew Prior (1664–1721) English Poet, Diplomat
To be happy, the temperament must be cheerful and gay, not gloomy and melancholy.—A propensity to hope and joy, is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, is real poverty.
—David Hume (1711–76) Scottish Philosopher, Historian
The mighty hopes that make us men.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) British Poet
He who has never hoped can never despair.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Hope is one of the principal springs that keep mankind in motion.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
Faith, hope, and charity—if we had more of the first two we’d need less of the last.
—Unknown
For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope.
—Christina Rossetti (1830–94) English Poet, Hymn Writer
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always To be Blest.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity.
—Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali Poet, Polymath
I claim to be an average man of less than average ability. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader
A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.
—Grandma Moses (1860–1961) American Painter, Artist
Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–99) American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic
I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes indeed sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
You’ve gotta have hope. Without hope life is meaningless. Without hope life is meaning less and less.
—Anonymous
He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American First Lady, Diplomat, Humanitarian
Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.
—Jean Kerr (1922–2003) Irish-American Author, Playwright
Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend, not the man for your banker, though he may do for a traveling companion.
—Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian Author, Humorist, Businessperson, Judge
Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.
—Elie Wiesel (b.1928) Romanian-born American Writer, Professor, Political Activist
It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
—Anne Frank (1929–45) Holocaust Victim
You convey too great a compliment when you say that I have earned the right to the presidential nomination. No man can establish such an obligation upon any part of the American people. My country owes me no debt. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope. My whole life has taught me what America means. I am indebted to my country beyond any human power to repay.
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st American President
Hope is the golden thread that should be woven into every experience of life.
—Unknown
Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work – the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside – the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within – that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick – the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed. Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation – the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.
—Lu Xun (1881–1936) Chinese Writer
He that waits for a dead man’s shoes may long go barefoot.
—French Proverb
Under the storm and the cloud today, and today the hard peril and pain—tomorrow the stone shall be rolled away, for the sunshine shall follow the rain.
—Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American Poet, Journalist
Hope, deceitful as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring.
—Bert Williams
Hope is love’s happiness, but not its life.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38) English Poet, Novelist
Hope warps judgment in council, but quickens energy in action.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
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 (1910–97) French Oceanographer, Documentary Director
Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist