Image by Kristine Lejniece from Pixabay
I found some quotes on “hope” that I think are very interesting. We can’t live without hope, but hope can sometimes lead us astray.
“It’s not the despair… I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.”
This is from Blackthorn’s post here. The post describes a British comedy “Clockwise” starred John Cleese, in which he played a character whose reputation is practically ruined by all the hopes. If he had stayed passive, inactive, and hopeless, he would most likely have lived a safe and uneventful life.
“I don’t like hope. Hope is killing me. My dream is to become hopeless. When you’re hopeless you don’t care and when you don’t care that indifference makes you attractive.”
This is from the Seinfeld episode, “The Fix Up”, in which George says that hope really makes him too eager and unattractive. So he wants to try hopelessness.
“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 “Hope is the thing with feathers”
“Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.”
“And then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.”
― Nora Ephron Commencement Address 1996
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
― Friedrich Nietzsche
My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.
― Maya Angelou
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― William Faulkner
“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr.
Haoyan Do 
I have said before that hope can be vulnerable because the underside of earthly hope is hopelessness.
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Haha, I often wonder about that too. Hope can often be ridiculous, but the perfect reasoning world can be too gloomy to live in.
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This reminds me of something I have read from Dale Carnegie’s book, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” in which he somewhat writes the same thing. When faced with a problem, the first thing one must do is assume the worst will happen. After that, think about ways to improve upon the worst. This advice changed my perspective ever since.
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That’s great advice. Sometimes when I assume the worst, I can lose the spirit to think of ways for improvement. LOL. However I know what you are trying to say and it is very important that we do that. Fancying some good results will accidentally befall on us is just too naive and unrealistic.
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“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
Love this.
All the quotes are wonderful.
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Thank you so much. That’s true. I love this quote too. Not giving up on something is often the reason we don’t move forward.
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Love these quotes, especially Maya Angelou’s!
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Wow, love her poems and can’t have enough of her voice of strength and stamina.
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the natural one
not self-created dream
promises no hope
he demands the confrontation
with the reality of the soul
Soul and spirit are within us
not out there
we are all under the same roof
on mother earth
the earth
which
turns in front of the sun
on the journey
in the dark
of the universe
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Thank you for such a poem comment. It is wonderful. Yes, in the journey of the universe.
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Very interesting perspective on the downside of hope!
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Haha, me too. I feel the same way. Hope is a double edged sword, it turns out.
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Inspiration👌
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Thank you.
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