Hope Quotes

What is Hope? a star that gleaming
O'er the future's troubled sky,
Struggles, tremulously beaming,
To reveal what there may lie.
- R.A.P., "Hope," in Southern Literary Messenger, December 1840





Hope, deceitful as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route. - François VI de la Rochefoucault


Once you choose hope, anything's possible. - Christopher Reeve


Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity. - Robert G. Ingersoll


Things which you do not hope happen more frequently than things which you do hope. - Titus Maccius Plautus


Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears, not to oust them. - Vincent McNabb


In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments. - Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1878


When the world says, "Give up,"
Hope whispers, "Try it one more time."
- Author Unknown


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





Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain. - Samuel Johnson


"Hope" is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all....
- Emily Dickinson, c.1861


Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. - Anne Lamott


The wings of hope carry us, soaring high above the driving winds of life. - Ana Jacob


All it takes is one bloom of hope to make a spiritual garden. - Terri Guillemets


The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.
- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure


The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination. - Marian Zimmer Bradley


You've gotta have hope. Without hope life is meaningless. Without hope life is meaning less and less. - Author Unknown


Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent. - Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Lord save us all from... a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. - Mark Twain


Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark. - George Iles


When hope is hungry, everything feeds it. - Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Hope is putting faith to work when doubting would be easier. - Author Unknown


If one truly has lost hope, one would not be on hand to say so. - Eric Bentley





The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes. - Thomas Hardy


Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic. - Norman Cousins




Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be. - Don Quixote


Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness, of captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable. - Samuel Johnson


It's all one thing — both tend into one scope -
To live upon Tobacco and on Hope,
The one's but smoke, the other is but wind.
- Sir Robert Aytoun of Kincaldie, "Sonnet on Tobacco"


Hope rises like a phoenix from the ashes of shattered dreams. - S.A. Sachs


'Tis a wreath of sunny flowers;
On the future's brow it twines;
Culled in love's own roseate bowers,
Fresh with sparkling dew it shines.
- R.A.P., "Hope," in Southern Literary Messenger, December 1840


We make our lives out of chaos and hope. And love. - Bones, "Mother and Child in the Bay," original airdate 2006 September 6th, spoken by the character Angela Montenegro, writing credits S.Nathan, H.Hanson, K.Reichs, and N.Hawley


Hope is a roving gypsy
With laughter on her tongue,
And the blue sky and sunshine
Alone, can keep her young;
And year by year she lingers
Under a budding tree...
- Dora Read Goodale, "The Chorus," in Country Life in America: A Magazine for the Home-maker, the Vacation-seeker, the Gardener, the Farmer, the Nature-teacher, the Naturalist, April 1902


Hope is the physician of each misery. - Irish Proverb




God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us — in the dreariest and most dreaded moments — can see a possibility of hope. - Maya Angelou


Hope deceives more men than cunning does. - Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims, 1746


Who thinks, at night, that morn will ever be?
Who knows, far out upon the central sea,
That anywhere is land? And yet, a shore
Has set behind us, and will rise before:
A past foretells a future...
- Bayard Taylor, "First Evening"


Hope is much like a cat in the Dark — you only know it's there by the reflection of its eyes — which means there is Light nearby. - Terri Guillemets  [A few years after writing this, I stumbled onto Ruth E. Renkel's "Never fear shadows. They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby." —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey. - Ouida


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


Hope is a strange invention –
A Patent of the Heart –
In unremitting action
Yet never wearing out....
- Emily Dickinson, c.1877


To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death. - Pearl S. Buck





Hope is but the dream of those who wake. - Matthew Prior


Hope is grief's best music. - Author Unknown


There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope. - Baruch Spinoza


He that lives upon hope will die fasting. - Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack


When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you're slamming the door in the face of God. - Charles L. Allen





Never deprive someone of hope — it may be all they have. - Author Unknown


Hope never abandons you, you abandon it. - George Weinberg


The birds of hope are everywhere, listen to them sing. - Terri Guillemets


Some see a hopeless end, while others see an endless hope. - Author Unknown


Hope is patience with the lamp lit. - Tertullian


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. - Lin Yutang


Hope is the poor man's bread. - Gary Herbert


Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man. - Victor Hugo


Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers. - Robert Ingersoll