Hopeful

“ We are encompassed by illusions and delusions. We need the comforting promises of the heart—a steadfast faith in the good and true, and hopefulness in all things, especially of futurity. Hope is rich and glorious, and faithfully should it be cultivated. Let its inspiring influence grow in the heart; it will give strength and courage.
Let the cheerful word fall from the lips, and the smile play upon the countenance. The way of the world is dark enough even to the most favored ones {472} among us. Why not, then, gather all the happiness out of life that you can? ”

“ It falls on the heart like the dew on the flower, — An infinite essence from tropic to pole, The promise, the home, and the heaven of Soul. Hope happifies life, at the altar or bower, And loosens the fetters of pride and of power; It comes through our tears, as the soft summer rain, To beautify, bless, and make joyful again, The harp of the minstrel, the treasure of time; A rainbow of rapture, o'erarching, divine; The God-given mandate that speaks from above, — No place for earth's idols, but hope thou, and love. ”

“ Hope is the boy, a blind, headlong, pleasant fellow, good to chase swallows with the salt; Faith is the grave, experienced, yet smiling man. Hope lives on ignorance; open-eyed Faith is built upon a knowledge of our life, of the tyranny of circumstance and the frailty of human resolution. ”

“ Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world. 90 Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher, Death; and God adore. What future bliss, He gives not thee to know, But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never Is, but always To be blest: The soul, uneasy and confined from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come. ”

“ The wretch condemned with life to part, Still, still on hope relies; And every pang that rends the heart Bids expectation rise. Hope, like the gleaming taper’s light, Adorns and cheers our way; And still as darker grows the night, Emits a brighter ray. ”

“ It is hope—often, indeed, founded on the dictates of piety, or the whispers of reason, but still hope—hope that we may yet, with all our afflictions, rely for aid on the presiding hand of Providence, or that we may find circumstances more supportable than we had thought—it is still hope, in whatever form, that lends the soothing balm to every sorrow, and the first breath of buoyancy to every sinking heart. ”

“ What in the world could we do without her? Hope spiritualises the earth; Hope makes it always new; and, even in the earth’s best and brightest aspect, Hope shows it to be only the shadow of an infinite bliss hereafter! ”

“ Oh ! that for me some home like this would smile,
Some hamlet shade, to yield my sickly form
Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm !
There should my hand no stinted boon assign
To wretched hearts with sorrow such as mine !—
That generous wish can soothe unpitied care,
And Hope half mingles with the poor man' s prayer.
Hope ! when I mourn, with sympathizing mind ;
The wrongs of fate, the woes of human kind,
Thy blissful omens bid my spirit see
The boundless fields of rapture yet to be ;
I watch the wheels of Nature's mazy plan,
And learn the future by the past of man. ”

“ The future is more present than the past:
For one look back a thousand on we cast,
And Hope doth ever Memory outlast.
For Hope say Fear—Hope is a timid thing,
Fearful, and weak, and born in suffering;
At least, such Hope as human life can bring. ”

“ Send me away with some hope, however little, some faint hope of ultimate deliverance, and I will nerve myself to endure, from hour to hour, the hideous dream into which my existence has been transformed. ”

“ May speak of hope, when hope on earth is gone?
That solemn pause is o'er—the youth hath given
One glance of parting love to earth and heaven;
The sun rejoices in th' unclouded sky,
Life all around him glows—and he must die! ”

“ Hope,—so is called upon earth, his recompense, Hope, the befriending, Does what she can, for she points evermore up to heaven, and faithful Plunges her anchor's peak in the depths of the grave, and beneath it Paints a more beautiful world, a dim, but a sweet play of shadows! Races, better than we, have leaned on her wavering promise, Having naught else but Hope. ”

“ Thus interpreted and yielded to, these impulses warrant unbounded hope for the future. “No star is ever lost we once have seen; We always may be what we might have been; The hopes that lost in some far distance seem May be the truer life, and this the dream.” ”

“ Which colour life but once—those morning lights
That shine so cloudlessly and pass so soon!
Hope's waters yet were fresh with them; the cares,
The earthly cares, that stain each nobler aim,
And withering sorrows, falsehood, discontent,
Had not as yet profaned thy sweetest fountain,
Delicious Hope! ”

“ See yonder vast host, with its manifold heart Made as one man's by one hope! The hope 'tis your part To aid towards achievement, to save from reverse Mine, through suffering to soothe, and through sickness to nurse. ”

“ Faith draws back the curtain, and Hope gazes into the supernal abysses. My hope, if it be anything else than the veriest will-o'-the-wisp and delusion, is the answer of my heart to the revealed truth of God. ”

“ And I feel infinite hope for him,—hope that he will serve God and man more loyally than I have done; and, seeing how full he is of life,—how much he can afford to throw away,—I feel the inexhaustibleness of nature, and console myself for my own incapacities. ”

“ I interrupted; "better to be disappointed than hopeless; few indeed are the brave souls that need not hope; many a weary spirit, without that one poor consolation, would pass through its joyless existence like a wanderer in the desert without sun or star to guide him on."
But the sage said, "Happy is he who after a lapse of years can yet hope! Happy the one whose heart has not grown sick from hope long deferred; for hope departed, can faith exist? ”

“ Supports the mind, supports the body too.
Hence the most vital movement mortals feel
315Is Hope; the balm and life-blood of the soul.
It pleases, and it lasts. Indulgent heaven
Sent down the kind delusion, thro' the paths
Of rugged life; to lead us patient on;
And make our happiest state no tedious thing.
320Our greatest good, and what we lead can spare,
Is Hope; the last of all our evils, Fear. ”

“ We were full of hope, and it clung about us to the end, hope for the life together we should lead, out of it all, out of the battle and struggle, the wild and empty passions, the empty, arbitrary 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not' of the world. ”

“ Instant are its dawn, its noon and its accomplishment! Hope, if it is true hope, fills the mind, affording malice and deceitful dread no room. Hope lives in action. All the elements of hope are deeds done now!
“Deeds—the very echoes are the fruit of deeds! One stone laid on another in Hope’s name is greater service to the gods than all the pomp of conquest and the noise of prayer! A deed—who measures it? Who knows the limits of a mended wheel or reckons up the leagues it shall lay underfoot?—what burdens it shall bear?—whose destiny it shall await and serve? ”

“ Who does not desire to join that happy, heavenly throng and wave those palms and wear those white robes and sing those sweet songs over beyond the shadowy vale of death? I seem to hear many voices saying, "I hope to be among that blood-washed throng." Let me tell you in all tenderness and love, but very plainly, that the realization of your hope depends entirely upon how you live while here in this world. Oh, how much in that great and awful future is depending upon our manner of life in this time-world! Let us learn to live well, to be our best every day. ”

“ How pleasant it is to be able to hope and believe, even though it be but a little, in the future! Now I will go upon the walls and fight with a light heart, and it seems as if I should be unconquerable. Can it be that iron or lead will dare to wound a man in whose heart hope is born? ”

“ And now came Hope, that most blessed and beneficent spirit that lifteth the fallen from the slough, that bindeth up the broken heart, that cheereth the sad and downcast and maketh the oft-defeated bold and courageous to attempt Fortune yet again. ”

“ For we shall still find Hope shining, be it for fond invitation, be it for anger and menace; as a mild heavenly light it shone; as a red conflagration it shines: burning sulphurous-blue, through darkest regions of Terror, it still shines; and goes not out at all, since Desperation itself is a kind of Hope. Thus is our Era still to be named of Hope, though in the saddest sense,—when there is nothing left but Hope. ”

“ Without change, break, or ripple the sunshiny days glide past, each bringing in its hands the same offering of love and peace monotonous as a dove’s cooing. My life is without hope, for, having all, what is there to hope for? ”

“ Hope, which catches up the brush as it falls from the narrator's hand, adds yet another scene, in the faint, hazy, indistinct hues of a distant horizon, to the picture at which we have been looking for awhile. ”

“ Hope is but a vain shadow, and we cling to it as to a strong anchor; like the bright reflection cast by a mirror, its light withdrawn leaves us in yet greater darkness, Daughter, those who have no hope are never disappointed. ”

“ But hope grew astonishingly. The less soil there is, the better hope grows. Hope is what you might call the indestructible mushroom of the soul. If I were a poet, instead of faultfinder, it might impel me to an ode to courage. ”

“ Hope had sustained her, and that hope, that idea of a pure, refined, elevated and noble life, chastened by love, was now dwindling away and she seemed destined to join the great multitude of ordinary beings. ”

“ Hope is an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast, that will restrain our frail bark and enable us to outride the storms of time.
There are so many humiliations in this world! The secret is to rise above them, to throw off dissatisfaction, and to grasp some pleasing hope, grateful and beneficial to the mind. ”

“ Ignoring the shadow, seeking always to stand in the sunshine, we welcomed with yet unshaken faith the heavenly guest who stood in our midst, turning upon us almost for the last time an unclouded face, and eyes undimmed by doubt or pain,—the angel of Hope. ”

“ I said, "such a scene fills my soul with delight, with hope. The beautiful colors and forms make me revel in dreams of brighter lands, of a better state, where there shall be only joy and goodness. Surely in time man will become more perfect even here. There is much to hope for; we must have faith in the future. ”

“ I thought how Love, I thought how Hope,
O'er the horizon of my heart
Had poured their light like yonder sun;
Like yon sun, only to depart:
Alas! that ever suns should set,
Or Hope grow cold, or Love forget! ”

“ It is to the youth that hope addresses itself; to those who yet burn with aspiration, who are not hardened in their sins. But I dare not expect too much of them. I am not very old; yet of those who, in life's morning, I saw touched by the light of a high hope, many have seceded. ”

“ Wishing to hope without a hope, some fears
About my future worldly maintenance,
And, more than all, a strangeness in the mind,
A feeling that I was not for that hour,
Nor for that place. But wherefore be cast down?
For (not to speak of Reason and her pure
Reflective acts to fix the moral law
Deep in the conscience, nor of Christian Hope,
Bowing her head before her sister Faith
As one far mightier) , hither I had come,
Bear witness Truth, endowed with holy powers
And faculties, whether to work or feel. ”

“ But then came in again the voice of hope, representing prospects the most improbable as the most likely, changing the relative bearings of all the circumstances around him, and whispering that, even for the bare chance of winning such happiness, he might well stake the tranquillity of his whole life. Such were the thoughts that agitated him, with many another, on which it is needless here to touch. Such was the theme for meditation on which he pored while wandering on beside the stream. ”

“ It is pleasant to live, to breathe, to have one’s being, on this glorious earth, even though that life may be cast among felons. There is still a future before us; and Hope, the bright goddess of health and enthusiasm, inspires our nerves with energy to conquer our present ills. ”

“ We could see the young buds of hope, the first bursts of ambition, the early up-shoots of confident aspiration, and occasionally the opening bloom of assurance. The star of hope had risen upon the colored people, and they were beginning to realize that their day had come. ”

“ Hope steadfastly, hope constantly, hope boldly; hope for the best things, the greatest things, the most divine and the most blessed things. If you forget to-night all else you have heard to-day, I implore you not any longer to forget and neglect this, that hope is your immediate, constant, imperative duty. No sin, no depth of corruption in your heart, no assault on your heart from your conscience, can justify you in ceasing to hope. ”

“ Hope, who has attended the victim of intemperance through all the changes of his downward fortune, and not forsaken him in any other exigency, has forsaken here. Earth had its vanities to solace him, but eternity has none. ”

“ Therefore, sow thy seed. Ye are saved by hope.
The ground and basis of all hope whatsoever is God. It is his good providence and redemptive love in Jesus Christ that make us optimists. Hope is not within the scope of our wisdom or culture or skill; and hope is not in our health or tool or treasure. We journey into an unknown future. It is not given to us to know what a day or an hour of the new year may bring forth. How impotent are the wisest and strongest in the hour when we hear the sound of the ocean and in darkness ford the deep and dangerous river, beyond which is high and eternal noon. ”