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Hope Quotes

Hope is a small page with almost no controversy. At the time of writing, no quote on it is flagged as misattributed or disputed; three are marked attributed. The authors are mostly poets (Milton, Shelley, Byron, Samuel Johnson, T. S. Eliot), and the best-sourced entries are the older ones.

Coleridge, in “Work without Hope” (1825): “Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, / And Hope without an object cannot live.” Bertrand Russell, in Political Ideals (1917), thought that hope for the world was to be found only in the deeds of love. Jane Goodall appears three times, which makes her a rare modern name among the poets.

Random quote on Hope

Most quoted on hope:

When we open up about our emotional challenges, admitting we are not perfect, we give others permission to share their struggles. Together we realize there is hope and we do not have to suffer alone.

Reyna I. Aburto

Hope is many things, but it throws itself against fact and shatters.

Pete Dunne The Feather Quest: A North American Birder's Year (1992)

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

Baruch Spinoza

Hope keeps you focused on the future, and this continued focus perpetuates your denial of the Now and therefore your unhappiness.

Eckhart Tolle The Power of Now (1997)

There are three lessons I would write, —
Three words — as with a burning pen,
In tracings of eternal light
Upon the hearts of men.

Friedrich Schiller

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

Francis Bacon Apophthegms (1624)

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,
Adorns and cheers our way;
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray.

Oliver Goldsmith The Captivity, An Oratorio (1764)

The heart bowed down by weight of woe
To weakest hope will cling.

Alfred Bunn The Bohemian Girl (1843)

Who in life’s battle firm doth stand
Shall bear hope’s tender blossoms
Into the silent land!

Johann Gaudenz von Salis-Seewis

With a mind not diseased, a holy life is a life of hope; and at the end of it, death is a great act of hope.

William Mountford Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Providence has given human wisdom the choice between two fates: either hope and agitation, or hopelessness and calm.

Evgeny Baratynsky Two Fates (1823)

Until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, Wait and hope.

Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo (1845)

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart, and you'll never walk alone, you'll never walk alone.

Oscar Hammerstein II

When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.

Dinah Craik

Farewell!
For in that word, that fatal word,—howe'er
We promise, hope, believe,—there breathes despair.

Lord Byron The Corsair (1814)

All things, said an ancient saw, may be hoped for by a man as long as he lives.

Michel de Montaigne

For I know that many good things have happened to many, when least expected; and that many hopes have been disappointed.

Plautus

Unhappy they who raise their hopes upon the shifting sand.

J. E. Casely Hayford Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation (1911)

Hope of consciousness is strength
Hope of feelings is slavery
Hope of body is disease.

G. I. Gurdjieff All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (1950)

Now, there remain faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Paul of Tarsus

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