Our greatest good, and what we least can spare,
Is hope: the last of all our evils, fear.
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.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre —
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Races, better than we, have leaned on her wavering promise,
Having naught else but Hope.
What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.
And tho't that the light-house look't lovely as hope,
That star on life's tremulous ocean.
The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope:
I've hope to live, and am prepar'd to die.
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings:
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that
And manage it against despairing thoughts.
To hope till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.
I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.