Hope

"Hope,... which whispered from Pandora's box after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is only time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivion... It's a law of motion, a fact of physics..., no different from the stages of white dwarves and red giants. Like all things in the universe, we are destined from birth to diverge. Time is simply the yardstick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years."

"Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable."

"She wildly burned for the one she loved and he stood there watching, hoping he too would catch a blaze from the violence stirring in her heart."

"And as I watched him, I knew that in every dark night there was, somewhere, a small light burning that could never be quenched."

"True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings."

"Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope."

"She needed the chaos within her in order to discover the extraordinary no man could ever reach."

"Instead of being encouraged to feel completely protected, loved, honored, and respected by the Divine Force, you've been taught that you're being judged. Because you've been taught that, you feel guilt and fear. But guilt and fear do not open you connection to the Divine; they only serve to close your heart. The reality is that God's way is love, and you can see this for yourself."

"And when all your faith is gone let it be me, if it's a friend you need let it be me"

"Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope."

"Maybe I hope too much. Maybe I dream too much or maybe I love too much to just give up on you."

"But 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."

"Once you choose hope, anything's possible."

"I find peace when I'm confused, I find hope when I'm let down, not in me but in you."

"We truly believed in something back then, and we knew we were the kind of people capable of believing in something - with all our hearts. And that kind of hope will never simply vanish."

"No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes—forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique."

"I have hope for you, if only because you're the only one left to hope for."

"Your hope is the most beautiful and the saddest in the world."

"Your guardian angel never, ever stops communicating with you. I feel that at times they should be frustrated with us but they seem to have endless patience and they never ever give up on us."

"I'm really hoping he’s being genuine because I can already tell he isn't the kind of guy a girl gets a simple crush on. He’s the kind of guy you fall hard for, and the thought of that terrifies me. I don’t really want to fall hard for anyone at all, especially someone who’s only making an effort because he thinks I'm easy. I also don’t want to fall for someone who has already branded himself hopeless. But I'm curious. So curious."