Arnold Matthew 1822-1888
‘The Scholar-Gipsy'
Still nursing the unconquerable hope, still
Clutching the inviolable shade.
Assisi St Francis of 1181-1226
‘Prayer of St Francis'
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.
Austen Jane 1775-1817
Persuasion
All the privilege I calim for my own sex ... is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.
Bacon Francis 1561-1626
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
Bonaparte Napoleon 1822-1891
A leader is a dealer in hope.
The Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 46 v.1
God is our hope and strength: a very present help in trouble.
Byron Lord 1788-1824
Letter to Thomas Moore
What is hope? nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.
Ciardi John
Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.
Coleridge Samuel Taylor 1772-1834
‘Work without Hope'
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.
Cousins Norman 1915-1990
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.
Cowley Abraham 1618-1667
Hope! of all ills that men endure
The only cheap and universal cure.
Cowper William 1731-1800
'Truth'
He has no hope that never had a fear.
Dickinson Emily 1830-1886
‘Hope' is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without words
And never stops - at all.
Franklin Benjamin 1706-1790
Poor Richard's Almanac
He that lives upon hope will die fasting.
Gay John 1685-1732
The Beggar's Opera
The comfortable estate of widowhood, is the only hope that keeps up a wife's spirits.
Gibbon Edward 1737-1794
Memoirs of My Life
The abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.
Herbert George 1593-1633
Hope is the poor man's bread.
Ingersoll Robert G. 1833-1899
I suppose it can be truthfully said that hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.
Johnson Samuel 1709-1784
Boswell - Life (of a man who remarried)
A triumph of hope over experience.
Johnson Samuel 1709-1784
Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.
La Rochefoucauld François Duc de 1613- 1680
Hope, deceitful as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of life along an agreeable road.
La Rochefoucauld François Duc de 1613- 1680
Maxims
In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope for greater favours.
Landor Walter Savage 1775-1864
Deceive Me Once Again
You smiled, you spoke, and I believed,
By every word and smile deceived.
Another man would hope no more;
Nor hope I what I hoped before:
But let not this last wish be vain:
Deceive, deceive me once again!
Lincoln Abraham 1809-1865
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Lincoln Abraham 1809-1865
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honourable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth.
Lincoln Abraham 1809-1865
With high hope dor the future, no prediction is ventured.
Luther Martin 1483-1546
Every thing that is done in the world is done by hope.
Lyly John c.1554-1606
Where the mind is past hope, the heart is past shame.
Macaulay Baron (Thomas Babington) 1800-1859
Essays ... ‘Gladstone on Church and State'
The rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories.
Marvell Andrew 1621-1678
‘The Definition of Love'
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.
Milton John 1608-1674
An Apology for Smectymnuus
He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem.
Milton John 1608-1674
Paradise Lost
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.
Milton John 1608-1674
Paradise Lost
What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.
Milton John 1608-1674
Samson Agonistes
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day!
Milton John 1608-1674
Where no hope is left, is left no fear.
Owen Wilfred 1893-1918
‘Strange Meeting'
‘Strange friend,' I said, ‘here is no cause to mourn.'
‘None,' said that other, ‘save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also.'
Pope Alexander 1688-1744
An Essay on Man
Hope springs eternal in the human breast
Man never is, but always to be blest.
Porchia Antonio
One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Measure for Measure
The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope:
I have hope to live and am prepared to die.
Walsh William 1663-1708
‘Song: Of All the Torments'
I can endure my own despair,
But not another's hope.
Watts Isaac 1674-1748
The Psalms of David Imitated Psalm 90
Our God, our help in ages past
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.
Wilde Oscar 1854-1900
The Ballad od Reading Gaol
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.
William The Silent 1533-1584
One need not hope in order to undertake; nor succeed in order to persevere.
