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hope quotes

  • It must be soPlato, thou reason'st well! Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!

    -Joseph Addison
      Cato, act 5, sc.1, l.1^10.

  • Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade.

    - Matthew Arnold
      Poems:  A New Edition,'The Scholar-Gipsy', l.211^12.

  • The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, The heart less bounding at emotion new, And hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again.

    - Matthew Arnold
      New Poems,'Thyrsis', l.138^40.

  • Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Apophthegms.

  • Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free, How shall we extol thee who are born of thee? Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set; God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.

    - A(rthur) C(hristopher) Benson
      'Land of Hope and Glory'.

  • Why art thou cast down,O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 42:5.

  • Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Proverbs13:12.

  • And Isaid,My strengthand my hope isperished fromthe L: Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDLamentations 3:18^19.

  • But thesouls of therighteous are inthehand of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery, And their going from us to be utter destruction: but theyare in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality. And having beena little chastised,theyshall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them, and found them worthy for himself.

    -Bible (Apocrypha)
    Wisdom of Solomon 3:1^5.

  • Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Romans 4:18.

  •    Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and havenotcharity,Iam becomeassounding brass, ora tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all mygoodstofeed thepoor, and though Igivemy body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not herown, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Corinthians13:1^13.

  • If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Corinthians15:19.

  • Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there; Let them go to the fire, with never a look behind. The world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.

    - (Robert) Laurence Binyon
      'The Burning of the Leaves'.

  • We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    General Thanksgiving.

  • All my hope on God is founded He does still my trust renew, Me through change and chance he guideth, Only good and only true. God unknown, He alone Calls my heart to be his own.

    - Robert Seymour Bridges
      Hymn.

  • Liberty lendsus her wings and Hope guides us by her star.

    - Charlotte Bronte« 
      Villette, ch.6.

  • None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

    - Pearl ne  e Sydenstricker Buck
      What  America Means To Me, ch.4.

  • There was a laughing devil in sneer, That raised emotions both of rage and fear; And where his frown of hatred darkly fell, Hope withering fled, and Mercy sighed farewell!

    -Rochdale
      The Corsair, canto1, stanza 9.

  • Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell, And Freedom shriekedas Kosciusko fell!

    -Thomas Campbell
      The Pleasures of Hope, pt.1, l.381^2.

  •    Hope ushers in a Revolutionas earthquakes are preceded by bright weather. 192

    -Thomas Carlyle
      History of the French Revolution, vol.1, bk.2, ch.1.

  • Charity isthepowerofdefending that whichwe know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.

    - G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton
      Heretics, ch.12.

  • Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

    -Dante Alighieri originally Durante
    c.1320  Inscription above the gates of Hell. Divina Commedia, 'Inferno', canto 3, l.9.

  • They fought as they revelled, fast, fiery, and true, And, though victors, they left on the field not a few; And they who survived fought and drank as of yore, But the land of their heart's hope they never saw more, For in far, foreign fields, from Dunkirk to Belgrade Lie the soldiers and chiefs of the Irish Brigade.

    -Thomas Osborne Davis
      The Spirit of the Nation,'The Battle-Eve of the Brigade'.

  • It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
      A  Tale of  Two Cities, bk.1, ch.1.

  • 'Hope' is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stopsat all

    - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
    c.1860  Complete Poems, no.254 (first published1891).

  • I strongly wish for what I faintly hope: Like the day-dreams of melancholy men, I think and thinkon things impossible, Yet love to wander in that golden maze.

    -John Dryden
      The Rival Ladies, act 3, sc.1.

  • Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'Ash Wednesday'.

  • I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought, So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.1.

  • A person seldom falls sick, but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die.

    - RalphWaldo Emerson
      The Conduct of Life,'Considerations by the Way'.

  • Il faut e  crire pour soi, avant tout. C'est la seule chance de faire beau. It isnecessary to write for oneself, above all.It isthe only hope of creating something beautiful.

    - Gustave Flaubert
      Letter to Mlle Leroyer de Chantepie,11  Jul.

  • One morning, as I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me, and a temptation beset me, and I sate still† And as I sate still under it and let it alone, a living hope rose in me, and a true voice arose in me which cried:There is a living God who made all things. And immediately the cloud and temptation vanished away, and the life rose over it all, and my heart was glad, and I praised the living God.

    - George Fox
      Journal of George Fox.

  • Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console; To be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

    - Benjamin Franklin
    Attributed prayer, traditionally known as the'Prayer of St Francis'.

  • The knowledge that you can have is inexhaustible, and what is inexhaustible is benevolent. The knowledge that you cannot have is of the riddles of birth and death, of our future destinyand the purposes of God. Here there is no knowledge, but illusions that restrict freedom and limit hope. Accept the mystery behind knowledge: It is not darkness but shadow.

    - Northrop Frye
       Address, Metropolitan United Church, Toronto,10  Apr, quoted by Alexandra  Johnston in Vic Report, spring1991.

  • Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter, So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly Singing about her head, as she rode by.

    - Robert von Ranke Graves
    'Love without Hope'.

  • No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose) The bosom of his Father and his God.

    -Thomas Gray
    Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.125^8,'The Epitaph'.

  • An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his sail Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carollings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through 382 His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.

    -Thomas Hardy
      'The Darkling Thrush'.

  •    Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwistslack they may bethese last strands of man In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Cansomething, hope, wish daycome, not choose not to be.

    -Gerard Manley Hopkins
      'Carrion Comfort'.

  • The hope of science isthe perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a fewand the damnation of almost everybody.

    - Robert Ingersoll
      The Age of Reason, Mar.

  • The triumph of hope over experience.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
     On a friend's second marriage shortly after the death of his first, troublesome, wife. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • We were a self-centred army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that ourearlier ambitions faded in its glare.

    -Arabia
      Seven Pillars of  Wisdom, ch.1.

  • My love is of a birth as rare As 'tis for object strange and high: It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility. Magnanimous Despair alone Could show me so divine a thing, Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

    - Andrew Marvell
    c.1650^1652  'The Definition of Love' (published1681).

  • Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even fromthese dead doubts shegathersher most vital hope.

    - Herman Melville
    Moby Dick, ch.7.

  •   Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

    - Arthur Miller
      Tom. The Ride Down Mount Morgan, act1.

  • Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.

    - Henry Valentine Miller
      The World of Sex.

  • Yet where an equal poise of hope and fear Does arbitrate the event, my nature is That I incline to hope, rather than fear, And gladly banish squint suspicion.

    -John Milton
      Comus,  A Mask, l.410^13.

  • Alas! What boots it with uncessant care To tend the homely slighted Shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse; Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.

    -John Milton
      Lycidas, l.64^76.

  •    What reinforcement we may gain from hope; If not, what resolution from despair.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.190^1.

  • A dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all.

    -John Milton
      Of Hell. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.61^7.

  • Satan exalted sat, by merit raised To that bad eminence; and from despair Thus high uplifted beyond hope.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.5^7.

  • 'Strange friend,' I said,'here is no cause to mourn.' 'None,'said the other,'save the undone years, The hopelessness.Whatever hope is yours Was my life also; I went hunting wild After the wildest beauty in the world.'

    -Wilfred Owen
      'Strange Meeting', collected in Poems (published1920).

  • Hope sleeps in our bones like a bear waiting for spring to rise and walk.

    - Marge Piercy
      Stone, Paper, Knife,'Stone, Paper, Knife'.

  • Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never Is, but alwaysTo be blest.

    - Alexander Pope
      An Essay on Man, epistle1, l.95^6.

  •   Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky way; Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n, Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heav'n.

    - Alexander Pope
      An Essay on Man, epistle1, l.99^104.

  • Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon, My scrip of joy, immortal diet, My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope's true gage, And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.

    - Sir Walter Raleigh
      The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage.

  • The government may tomorrow withdraw every one of their troopsfrom Ireland.Ireland will be defended by her armed sons from foreign invasion, and for that purpose the armed Catholics in the south will be only too glad to join arms with the armed Protestant Ulsterman. Is it too muchtohope that out of thissituation a result mayspring that will be good not merely for the Empire but for the future welfare and integrity of the Irish nation?

    -John Edward Redmond
      Speech, House of Commons, 3 Aug.

  • It is, we believe, Idle to hope that the simple stirrup-pump Can extinguish hell.

    - Henry Reed
      'ChardWhitlow (Mr Eliot's Sunday Evening Postscript)'.

  • In the factory, we make cosmetics; in the store we sell hope.

    -James B(arrett) Reston
    Quoted in Andrew P Tobias Fire and Ice (1976), ch.8.

  • Come to me in the silence of the night; Come in the speaking silence of a dream; Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright As sunlight on a stream; Come back in tears, O memory, hope, love of finished years.

    - Christina Georgina Rossetti
      Goblin Market and Other Poems,'Echo'.

  • If this can be termed the century of the common man, then soccer, of all sports, is surely his game† In a world haunted by thehydrogenand napalm bomb, thefootball field is a place where sanity and hope are still left unmolested.

    - Sir Stanley Rous
      Quoted in Bryon Butler The Official History of the Football Association (1986).

  • As Michael read the Gaelic scroll It seemed the story of the soul; And those who wrought, lest there should fail From earth the legend of the Gael, Seemed warriors of Eternal Mind Still holding in a world gone blind, From which belief and hope had gone, The lovely magic of its dawn.

    - GeorgeWilliam pseudonym  Ó Russell
      The Interpreters,'Michael'.

  • Television has spread the habit of instant reaction and has stimulated the hope of instant results.

    - Arthur M(eier),Jr Schlesinger
      In Newsweek, 6 Jul.

  • Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'StanzasWritten in Dejection, near Naples'.

  • To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent: To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory,Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life,Joy, Empire and Victory.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      Prometheus Unbound, act 4, l.570^8.

  • Life may change, but it may fly not, Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed,but it returneth!

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Hellas', l.34^7.

  • Hope, art thou true, or dost thou flatter me?

    - Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway Shute
    Astrophel and Stella, sonnet 67.

  • I would have been disappointed if I hung up my pen without ever getting one†[and] now I hope to get one every 30 years like clockwork.

    -1st Viscount
      On receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Lost inYonkers. In the Washington Post,10 Apr.

  • Artists are the only people in the world who really live. The others have to hope for heaven.

    -John French Sloan
    Recalled on his death,7 Sep1951, and quoted in the Smithsonian, Apr1988.

  • Take short views, hope for the best, and trust in God.

    - Rev Sydney Smith
    Quoted in Lady Holland Memoir (1855), vol1, ch. 6.

  • I am just going to pray for you at St Paul's, but with no very lively hope of success.

    - Rev Sydney Smith
    Quoted in H PearsonThe Smith of Smiths, (1934), ch.10.

  • Hope has often caused the love of gain to ruin men.

    -Sophocles
    Antigone, 222 (translated by H Lloyd-Jones,1994).

  • First, sturdy March with brows full sternly bent, And arme'  d strongly, rode upon a ram, The same which over Hellespontus swam: Yet in his hand a spade he also hent, And in a bag all sorts of seeds ysame, Which on the earth he strowe'  d as he went, And filled her womb with fruitful hope of nourishment.

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Faerie Queen,'Mutability', canto 7, stanza 32. hent = grasped; ysame = together.

  • En cherchant la gloire, j'ai toujours espe  re   qu'elle me ferait aimer. I have pursued fame always in the hope of winning her love.

    - Germaine Necker, Baronne de Stae«  l
      Corinne ou de l'Italie.

  • O Domine Deus! speravi inTe; O care miJesu! nunc libera me; In dura catena, in misera poena, DesideroTe, Languendo, gemendo, et genu flectendo Adoro, imploro, ut liberes me! O Lord my God, I hope in thee; My dear Lord Jesus, set me free; In chains, in pains On bended knee I adore thee, implore thee To set me free.

    - Mary known as Mary, Queen of Scots Stuart
      Poem composed just before her execution (translated by E Milner-White and G W Briggs,1941).

  • Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. Wherethere isdespair, may we bring hope. See St Francis 334:98.

    - Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness Thatcher
      Said on entering No.10 Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister; 4 May. A misquotation of St Francis of Assisi.

  • Yet I strode on austere; No hope could have no fear.

    -James pseudonym 'BV',ByssheVanolis Thomson
      The City of Dreadful Night, pt.4.

  • They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

    - Anthony Trollope
      OfTrevelyan's paranoia about his wife's fidelity. HeKnew He Was Right, ch.38.

  • Poets may boast (as safely-vain) Their work shall with the world remain: Both bound together, live, or die, The verses and the prophecy. But who can hope his lines shou'd long Last, in a daily changing tongue? While they are new, envy prevails, And as that dies, our language fails.

    - Edmund Waller
      'Of EnglishVerse'.

  •    Our God, our help in ages past Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast And our eternal home.

    - Isaac Watts
      ThePsalms of David Imitated, Psalm 90 (in1738 JohnWesley substituted'O God' for 'Our God').

  •    The worship of God is not a rule of safetyit is an adventure of thespirit, a flight after theunattainable.The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.

    - Alfred North Whitehead
      Science and the ModernWorld.

  • Something was dead in each of us, And what was dead was Hope.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
      The Ballad of Reading Gaol, pt.3, stanza 31.

  • The fear that kills; And hope that is unwilling to be fed. 926

    -William Wordsworth
      'Resolution and Independence', stanza17 (published 1807).

  • Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood Upon our side, we who were strong in love! Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

    -William Wordsworth
      'The French Revolution as it appeared to enthusiasts at its commencement', l.1^5 (published in The Friend, 26 Oct.1809).

  • Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know.

    -William Wordsworth
      The River Duddon, no.34,'After-Thought', l.10^14.

  • Even so for me a vision sanctified The sway of death; long ere my eyes had seen Thy countenancethe still rapture of thy mien When thou, dear Sister! wert become death's bride: No trace of pain or languor could abide That changeage on thy brow was smoothedthy cold Wan cheek at once was privileged to unfold A loveliness to living youth denied. Oh! if within me hope should e'er decline, The lamp of faith, lost Friend! too faintly burn; The may that heaven-revealing smile of thine, The bright assurance, visibly return: And let my spirit in that power divine Rejoice, as, through that power, it ceased to mourn.

    -William Wordsworth
      'November1836', complete poem (published1837).

  • An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.

    - Emil Zatopek
    Quoted by Christopher Brasher in the Observer,12 Sep1982.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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