Quotes About Not Having Hope

“And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way towards him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us. (Acts 17:26”

— John C. Lennox

“No hay problema," Orlando agreed. "But you haven't said where?" His eyes grazed over the rumpled tux, Aiden not having thought about where the tattoo might go. Isabel had an answer.
"His neck."
"My neck?"
"Tiene cojones," Orlando said slyly grinning.
"Yes, your neck. It'll be your thing, you know, when you're famous
like an insigna. It's sexy and dangerous. Aidan's going to be a famous rock star, Orlando."
Aidan admired her confidence. "From her lips ... "
"I surely hope, mis amigos, because putting that thing on your neck does not say nine-to-five employment.”

— Laura Spinella

“Visions haunt the mind of unforeseen things of the future. Action is of no possibility, but meandering doubts of a stoic nature made real by the mind are persuasive enough to destroy hope.
It's the overly-broad confusion, but not knowing what to be confused about that is the most perplexing. Whether it is the future, the present or the past, all of the answers will never come. The uncertainty lies not in the answer, but not knowing what question to ask.
Life must have meaning, but God -if there is such a thing- is having too much fun not telling me what that is.”

— Brian Krans

“Page 142: "When a spouse says to the alcoholic, "you need to go to AA," that is obviously not true. The addict feels no need to do that at all, and isn't. But when she says, "I am moving out and will be open to getting back together when you are getting treatment for your addiction," then all of a sudden the addict feels "I need to get some help or I am going to lose my marriage." The need has been transferred. It is the same with any kind of problematic behavior of a person who is not taking feedback and ownership. The need and drive to do something about it must be transferred to that person, and that is done through having consequences that finally make him feel the pain instead of others. When he feels the pain, he will feel the need to change ... A plan that has hope is one that limits your exposure to the foolish person's issues and forces him to feel the consequences of his performance so that he might have hope of waking up and changing.”

— Henry Cloud

“Man, do you ever feel it's just the hope of things we live for?' I asked. 'I mean, it's like the things themselves are just a big disappointment, you know? We like the searching, the dreaming. It's sort oflike the way previews for a movie are better than the film itself sometimes. What was that line I heard from Spock on Star Trek? He says 'Having is not as good as wanting' or something like that. Like, reality is the ultimate letdown.”

— Augustus Cileone

“We all have a suspicion and hope that we've just been part of something special, something that may eventually change our lives. That no one else knows this makes it seem like we are living with a secret that we would like to share, but can't, sort of like having a superpower that's not come online or being president elect. For the moment, our lives proceed as usual, but within a month, we think, everything will change. It's a frustrating, if exciting, disconnect.”

— Rob Lowe

“A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that the greatness of man is to accept his insignificance, his human condition and his earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of man is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day.”

— Jean Vanier

“Somebody's going to be reading, right? Wrong. They're FBing. Doing a Number Two. Maybe I shouldn't have had those chilli peppers. Hope y'all having a good day! -Coming from a toilet not far from you. xxxx”

— Hope Barrett

“I hope everyone that is reading this is having a really good day. And if you are not, just know that in every new minute that passes you have an opportunity to change that”

— Gillian Anderson

“My dear cousin means the world to me. He is my only ally and I lost him. Deep in my heart I know he didn't want to blame me but his heart is set on that training and I had been beginning to think that took priority over family. I hope he would see reason but I can't not blame him if he doesn't. Breaking free from this castle is a dream not only held by me.
But I can't imagine having to reason with someone who stole your future.”

— Celia Mcmahon

“Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.”

— Cornel West

“Celebrity is having ten thousand friends and five really sick enemies , all of whom you have never met . WILL never meet if you're lucky . Either you accept that and resolve to live with it , or you get out of the spotlight and hope to God you left in time . Because if anybody still remembers you from one flash of fame twenty years ago , then anonymity is not an option .”

— Sharyn McCrumb

“He had only thought, and Wolsey had only thought, that the Emperor and Spain would be against it. Only the Emperor. He smiles in the dark, hands behind his head. He doesn't say which people, but waits for Liz to tell him. 'All women,' she says. 'All women everywhere in England. All women who have a daughter but not a son. All women who have lost a child. All women who have lost any hope of having a child. All women who are forty.”

— Hilary Mantel

“She saw herself riding in the passenger seat, Sam behind the wheel. Like two of those little peg people in a toy car. Husband peg, wife peg, side by side. Facing the road and not looking at each other; for why would they need to, really, having gone beyond the visible surface long ago. No hope of admiring gazes anymore, no chance of unremitting adoration. Nothing left to show but their plain, true, homely, interior selves, which were actually much richer anyhow.”

— Anne Tyler

“What is clear is that he was self-aware and prepared to live with unresolved contradictions, approaching the crises of life with a sense of hope tempered by a recognition that he, at least, was not fated to live to see the end of heartbreak, failure, disappointment, and death. "We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy," he had written-as the Heart, not the Head. "It is the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce." Jefferson believed that the future could be better than the past. He knew, though, that life was best lived among friends in the pursuit of large causes, understanding that pain was the price for anything worth having.”

— Jon Meacham

“Maybe it's not about how long you've lived, or having the ability to hope, even when things seem hopeless. Maybe it's just about how much faith you have.”

— P.C. Cast

“The beauty of having nothing to lose, is you learn the beauty of having everything to gain.
This is where hope lives.
Hope can't be taken.
Hope can't be lost.
Hope can't be broken.
When we are boiled down to what we are as people. We are not love, because we hope to love, we are not money or who we hold, because we hope to have and to hold. We are not religion or God, because we enter into belief in the hope we get something back for ourselves. We are not a soul.
We are hope.”

— Craig Stone

“True, he had dreamy visions of possibilities: there is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequence of his passions - does not find images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread.”

— George Eliot

“What the young writer needs to develop, to achieve his goal of becoming a great artist, is not a set of aesthetic laws but artistic mastery. He cannot hope to develop mastery all at once; it involves too much. But if he pursues his goal in the proper way, he can approach it much more rapidly than he would if he went at it hit-or-miss, and the more successful he is at each stage along the way, the swifter his progress is likely to be. Invariably when the beginning writer hands in a short story to his writing teacher, the story has many things about it that mark it as amateur. But almost as invariably, when the beginning writer deals with some particular, small problem, such as description of a setting, description of a character, or brief dialogue that has some definite purpose, the quality of the work approaches the professional. Having written some small thing very well, he begins to learn confidence.”

— John Gardner

“It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born. That line came back to me, from out of nowhere, and I decided to practice radical hope, hope in the face of not having a clue.”

— Anne Lamott

“For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. TITUS 3:3-7”

— Stormie Omartian

“He wonders if it's some sort of twisted joke the adults are having, shoving hormonal teens into tight quarters but making it impossible to do anything but breathe.
"I wouldn't mind suffocating if it was with you," the girl says, which is flattering, but makes him even less interested in her.
"There'll be a better time," he tells her, knowing that such a time will never come-at least not for her-but hope is a powerful motivator.
Eventually they settle into a sort of symbiotic breathing rhythm. He breathes in when she breathes out, so their chests don't fight for space.
After a while, there's a jarring motion. With his arm now around the girl, he holds her a little more tightly, knowing that easing her fear somehow eases his own.”

— Neal Shusterman

“The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence. Obvious though this should be, how few writers will admit it, or having drawn the conclusion, will be prepared to lay aside the piece of iridescent mediocrity on which they have embarked! Writers always hope that their next book is going to be their best, and will not acknowledge that they are prevented by their present way of life from ever creating anything different.”

— Cyril Connolly

“So, having found a lady, could you not have come to her aid, or left her alone? Why drag her into your foolishness?'
'Love,' he explained.
She looked at him with eyes the blue of the sky. 'I hope you choke on it,' she said, flatly.”

— Neil Gaiman

“I prefer not to call them demons. It demeans their nature.
"But isn't that what they are?"
"We should pity them more than fear them Alfred. They were angels once."
"Yea, but didn't you say they rebelled against God? They got what they deserved."
"Perhaps." He sighed. "Yet do we not all hope and pray that we ourselves escape that we truly deserve? None have fallen as far or as irrevocably as the outcasts of heaven. Did you not find them beautiful." " ... They have gazed upon the very face of God, the face they will see no more for all eternity-and so I pity them. Even as I envy them for having seen it.”

— Rick Yancey

“The delightful assurance of her total indifference towards Frank Churchill, of her having a heart completely disengaged from him, had given birth to the hope, that, in time, he might gain her affection himself;-but it had been no present hope-he had only, in the momentary conquest of eagerness over judgment, aspired to be told that she did not forbid his attempt to attach her.-The superior hopes which gradually opened were so much the more enchanting.-The affection, which he had been asking to be allowed to create, if he could, was already his!-Within half an hour, he had passed from a thoroughly distressed state of mind, to something so like perfect happiness, that it could bear no other name.”

— Jane Austen

“Hope and purpose in this world is living as best as you can and maybe having life that gives back. But simply giving back isn't purpose; it's a branch of purpose, but it is not the trunk or root of the tree.”

— Nick Vujicic

“But the secrets of such a book are not perpetual. Once they are known, they become relegated to a lesser sphere, which is that of the knower. Having lost the prestige they once enjoyed, these former secrets now function as tools in the excavation of still deeper ones which, in turn, will suffer the same corrosive fate. And this is the fate of all the secrets of the universe. Eventually the seeker of a recondite knowledge may conclude-either through insight or sheer exhaustion-that this ruthless process is never-ending, that the mortification of one mystery after another has no terminus beyond that of the seeker's own extinction. And how many still remain susceptible to the search? How many pursue it to the end of their days with undying hope of some ultimate revelation? Better not to think in precise terms just how few the faithful are.”

— Thomas Ligotti

“However, she wouldn't be the first person to mistrust her nearest and dearest yet confide in the first stranger who comes along: a strange but true quirk of behaviour, whose root is easily traced to the human heart. Some people perhaps have nothing left to gain from those they live with; having revealed the emptiness of their souls, they secretly feel themselves to be judged with deserved severity; however, as they have a powerful craving for the flattery they need but lack, or a burning desire to appear to possess qualities they do not have, they hope to take by surprise the heart and esteem of those who are strangers to them, at the risk of one day falling from grace.”

— Honoré De Balzac

“I hope that I can get people to read it without having to change it. Especially now that the strip has more different kinds of characters. It's really not all lesbians any more.”

— Alison Bechdel

“Social rejection-or fearing it-is one of the most common causes of anxiety. Feelings of inclusion depend not so much on having frequent social contacts or numerous relationships as on how accepted we feel, even in just a few key relationships.20 Small wonder that we have a hardwired system that is alert to the threat of abandonment, separation, or rejection: these were once actual threats to life itself, though they are only symbolically so today. Still, when we hope to be a You, being treated like an It, as though we do not matter, carries a particularly harsh sting.”

— Daniel Goleman

“What's hard is not having that hope. I can't imagine going through bad times without that peace. Without that surrender, life just eats you up. Spits you out. Wears you down to nothing.”

— Jenny B. Jones

“You didn't think I really liked you? Do you think I really like you now?"
He turned toward her, uncertainty in his face."You did go quite a lot of effort to be having this conversation, but ... I don't want to read too much of what I hope into that."
Val stretched out beside him, resting her head in the crook of his arm. "What do you hope?"
He pulled her close, hands careful not to touch her wounds as they wrapped around her. "I hope that you feel for me as I do for you," he said, his voice like a sigh against her throat.
And how is that?" she asked, her lips so close to his jaw that she could taste the salt of his skin when she moved them.
You carried my heart in your hands tonight," he said. "But I have felt as if you carried it long before that."
She smiled and let her eyes drift closed. They lay there together, under the bridge, city lights burning outside the windows like a sky full of falling stars, as they slid off into sleep”

— Holly Black

“Darling,
You asked me to write you a letter, so I am writing you a letter. I do not know why I am writing you this letter, or what this letter is supposed to be about, but I am writing it nonetheless, because I love you very much and trust that you have some good purpose for having me write this letter. I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.
Your father”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

“The process of liberation brings with it a profound conflict. Having the project be clear is not enough. What is necessary is a spirituality of resistance and of renewed hope to turn ever back to the struggle in the face of the defeats of the oppressed.”

— Leonardo Boff

“So you never said if you're having a boy or girl."
"We won't know until it's born."
I hope it's not a girl. The thought shocks me, comes so quick it has to be honest. So I think it again, careful and slow to be sure. I hope it's not a girl. I feel it even more the second time.”

— Courtney Summers

“May we all thus experience what it is to be not almost only, but altogether Christians! Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus, knowing we have peace with God through Jesus Christ, rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, and having the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the l holy Ghost given unto us!”

— John Wesley

“When you speak of the favour of the gods, we may as fairly hope for that as yourselves; neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise among themselves. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do. Thus, as far as the gods are concerned, we have no fear and no reason to fear that we shall be at a disadvantage. But when we come to your notion about the”

— Thucydides

“I'm still of the same mind. For many years I've been ashamed, mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn. As time went on, I merely learned that even those who were better than the rest could not keep themselves nowadays from killing or letting others kill, because such is the logic by which they live, and that we can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. Yes, I've been ashamed ever since I have realized that we all have the plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the mortal enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death.”

— Albert Camus

“The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving it; and in the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach to truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of attaining it. Strange”

— John Stuart Mill

“Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is also a destroyer of life, of hope: death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveler expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram. Think of the tragedies that are rooted in ambiguity, and be clear! When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.”

— E.B. White

“One would hope that you would have a CBO director who does not let ideology get in the way of making good estimates, [Congress] values having a credible institution that they can rely on to give them the best estimates possible.”

— Alice Rivlin

“Success has a lot of things that go along with it and I haven't experienced any personal resentment. I can't control any of that and I try not to worry about it. I hope that's not the case, you know. Most of the writers that I know and artists that I know understand what was going on. I think there's just as many things going on in the awards process that have to do with the show having won a few times.”

— Matthew Weiner

“The best people in the world aren't those who never fail - but those who fail and learn something from it. I hope that your goal in life isn't to slide safely into death not having screwed up much.”

— John Townsend

“With the greatest respect, we do not make the criminal law on the basis of opinion polls. A majority of 9:1 could be in favour of a ban in my constituency, but I would not regard that as conclusive, and I hope that we never would. If we start having opinion polls about all the unpleasant and distasteful habits and customs of some members of society, and suggesting that their findings should be made part of the criminal law, foxhunting would come way down the list, and quite a lot of strange enactments would have to go through the House.”

— Kenneth Clarke

“I once read that forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past ... but forgiving is not the same as obliterating memory.”

— Martha Beck

“I once told you that I am not a saint, and I hope never to see the day that I cannot admit having made a mistake. So I will close with another confession. Frequently, along the tortuous road of recent months from this chamber to the Presidents House, I protested that I was my own man. Now I realize that I was wrong. I am your man, for it was your carefully weighed confirmation that changed my occupation. The truth is I am the peoples man, for you acted in their name, and I accepted and began my new and solemn trust with a promise to serve all the people and do the best that I can for America.”

— Gerald R. Ford

“Beyond [Barack Obama] having made history as the first African-American president, I hope that he gets re-elected for what he does while in office, not for his skin color. I certainly believe he has the capacity.”

— Lenny Kravitz

“When you consider what you would love to accomplish in your life but feel ill-prepared to bring it about, picture the eighty-nine Michelangelo living five centuries ago, painting, sculpting, and writing. Imagine he is telling you that you can create whatever you desire, and the great danger is not in having too much hope, but in reaching what you have perceived as hopeless.”

— Wayne Dyer