Hopefulness

“ If you are already soured on men and the world, change that condition by a persistent habit of optimism. All death shows an acid reaction. Hopefulness is the alkaline in character.
Make "looking on the bright side" a habit. It can be done. Mingle with people as much as possible—especially with the young and buoyant and beautifully hopeful. Be a part of passing events. Read the daily newspapers. Form the habit of picking out the brighter aspects of occurrences. There is an astonishing tonic in the daily newspaper. When you read it, the blood of the world's great vitality is pouring through you. ”

“ Peggy does not feel the least little bit older than when she climbed the water-wheel, or thrashed Jones minor behind the paling of the cricket-field—if growing old means losing your ideals, and your keen enthusiasm, and your hopefulness, and a certain appreciation of other people's worth which is our birthright when we are young. She is still capable of climbing a tree or scrambling over a hedge when no one is looking, and pursues her hobbies with all her former vigour and energy. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Sometimes thou servest the devil, and sometimes thou doest business on thine own account. Again, I say, hang thee for an intermeddling imp!
Men talk of the pleasures of hope! have they never felt the misery of hope deferred—the pang of hope crushed? Have they ever estimated the amount of misery chargeable to this self-same hope? Who fathers Ambition, with all its woes, attendant and consequent? Hope. How many dream away their lives in listless vacuity, hoping all the while, that something will turn up! What injuries has Hope not done to youth? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hope.—"I know I am in fault; and, had not you been with me here, I had gone to sleep and run the risk of death. I see it is true that the wise man saith, 'Two are more good than one.' Up to this time thou hast been my ruth and thou shalt 'have a good meed for thy pains.'"
HOPEFUL TELLS CHRISTIAN HIS EXPERIENCE.
I saw then in my dream, that Hopeful gave a look back, and saw Ignorance, whom they had left in their wake, come in their track. "Look," said he to Christian, "how far yon youth doth lag in the rear." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And so let us not fill our minds with vain hopes which, whether they be fulfilled or not, will not satisfy us, but lift our eyes to and stay our anticipations on those glories beyond, as real as God is real, and as certain as His word is true. Let these hopes concentrate and define for us the aims of our life; and let the aims, clearly accepted and recognised, be pursued with earnestness, with 'diligence,' with haste, with the enthusiasm of which they, and they only, are worthy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus hope, we perceive, belongs properly to a middle and unsettled state, such as our life in this world is, in relation to the whole of our existence, and such as the period of youth is, in relation to the whole of our present life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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? ”

“ However, while there is life there is hope, I reflect, and this thought restrains me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Be perfectly hopeless, that is the highest state. What is there to hope for? Burst asunder the bonds of hope, stand on your Self, be at rest, never mind what you do, give up all to God, but have no hypocrisy about it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Alas! if we murmur at things like these,
That reflection tells us are wise decrees,—
That the wind is not ever a gentle breath,
That the sun is often the bearer of death,
That the ocean waves are not always still,
And that life is chequered with good and ill;
If we know 'tis well such change should be,
What do we learn from the things we see?
That an erring and sinning child of dust
Should not wonder nor murmur, but hope and trust. ”

“ From them I received that eternal hope which treads disaster under its feet, that courage which never fails, because God never can fail, and that natural religious trust which is the abiding foundation of a life that has continually turned sorrow into joy and apparent failure into certain success. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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, 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Reluctantly and gradually her ardent mind, by nature ever either buoyant in the heaven of assured hope or cast down to the depths of despair, bowed to the middle conclusion, and consented to look through the eyes of wisdom and experience. ”

“ Hope is before us, the long years that bore us
Bore leaders more than men may be.
Let dead hearts tarry and trade and marry,
And trembling nurse their dreams of mirth,
While we the living our lives are giving
To bring the bright new world to birth.
Come, shoulder to shoulder ere earth grows older!
The Cause spreads over land and sea;
Now the world shaketh, and fear awaketh,
And joy at last for thee and me. ”

“ Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope. ”

“ But hope is the lever that moves the world onward, and the faint hope that had dawned on my thick night was too dear and bright a one to leave me crushed again by my old despondency, and I felt that there must be some way of untangling the problem. ”

“ On the contrary, even in a highly-finished picture of some actual and present scene, this idea of hope, as the soul which animates the whole, may be present, and like an invisible thread of higher life, be interwoven in it. ”

“ Would you know what it is to hope again, and have all your hopes at hand?—hang upon the crags at a gradient: that makes your next step a debate between the thing you are and the thing you may become. There the merry little hopes grow for the climber like flowers and food, immediate, prompt to prove their uses, sufficient: if just within the grasp, as mortal hopes should be. How the old lax life closes in about you there! You are the man of your faculties, nothing more. Why should a man pretend to more? ”

“ Remember the eternal God and make your appeal to the future. Are there any parents whose children have wandered far? When they are old, the children will return to the path of faith and obedience. Are there any in whom the immortal hope burns low? The smoking flax He will not quench, but will fan the flame into victory. Look up to-day; be comforted once more. Work henceforth in hope. Live like a prince. Scatter sunshine. Let your atmosphere be happiness. If troubles come, let them be the dark background that shall throw your hope and faith into bolder relief. ”

“ The shining form of Hope is dancing on before you in the path of life--hope that ere it is too late, ere the silver cord be loosed or ever the golden bowl be broken, you will make sure a treasure and inheritance in Heaven. ”