Whether we be young or old, / Our destiny, our being’s heart and home, / Is with infinitude, and only there; / With hope it is, hope that can never die, / Effort and expectation, and desire, / And something evermore about to be.

—William Wordsworth

Hope is like a road in the country: there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.

—Lin Yutang

Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours.

—Swedish proverb

I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart. Hope is the feeling that life and work have a meaning. You either have it or you don’t, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you. Life without hope is an empty, boring, and useless life. I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me. I am thankful to God for this gift. It is as big as life itself.

—Vaclav Havel

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

—Eric Hoffer

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.

—Reinhold Niebuhr

People who build hope into their own lives and who share hope with others become powerful people.

—Zig Ziglar

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.

—Thomas Hardy

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

—Thomas Jefferson