Quotations on Hope

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

~ Benjamin Franklin

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

~ Oscar Wilde

To the sick, while there is life there is hope.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Hope" is the thing with feathers--
That perches on the soul--
And sings the tune without the words--
And never stops--at all--

~ Emily Dickinson

The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient's hopes are the physician's secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription.

~ Norman Cousins

Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Hope is a waking dream.

~ Aristotle

- from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blest.

~ Alexander Pope

A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.

~ George Eliot

In all things it is better to hope than to despair.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

~ Herman Melville

When hope is taken away from a people, moral degeneration follows swiftly thereafter.

~ Pearl S. Buck

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.

~ Pearl S. Buck

Our hopes, often though they deceive us, lead us pleasantly along the path of life.

~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Hope costs nothing.

~ Colette

To hope for Paradise is to live in Paradise, a very different thing from actually getting there.

~ Vita Sackville-West

Hope is the poor man's bread.

~ George Herbert

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.

~ Samuel Johnson

The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.

~ William Shakespeare

Every cloud has a silver lining, but it is sometimes difficult to get it to the mint.

~ Don Marquis

Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.

~ Mignon McLaughlin

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

~ Sir Francis Bacon

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

~ Proverbs

- English Proverb

He that waits for a dead man's shoes may long go barefoot.

~ Proverbs

- French Proverb

From the withered tree, a flower blooms.

~ Proverbs

- Zen Saying

We should not expect something for nothing but we all do, and we call it hope.

~ Ed Howe

Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is very good company by the way.

~ Lord Halifax

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.

~ Martin Luther

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

~ Ouida