Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.

Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time.

The imperfect is our paradise.

One good thing, however, was there - Hope. It was the only good thing the casket had held among the many evils, and it remains to this day mankind's sole comfort in misfortune.

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.

If there is any possible consolation in the tragedy of losing someone we love very much, it's the necessary hope that perhaps it was for the best.

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.

Hope — Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us...A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.

The kind of hope that I often think about…I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world.

Either we have hope within us, or we don’t. It is a dimension of the soul
It’s not essentially dependent upon some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Hope is a belief that what we do might matter, an understanding that the future is not yet written. It’s an informed, astute open-mindedness about what can happen and what role we might play in it. Hope looks forward but draws its energies from the past, from knowing histories, including our victories, and their complexities and imperfections. It means not fetishizing the perfect that is the enemy of the good, not snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not assuming you know what will happen when the future is unwritten, and part of what happens is up to us.

hope, as Chesterton said, is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.

I speak to the broken halves of all our selves and tell them to embrace, loving the worst in us equally with the best.