hope quotes... strange perhaps be some... (published on Dec. 25, 2012)

first a poem --- found in a cottage at Green Gulch Zen Center -- Muir Beach area of California:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

AND FURTHERMORE:

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

and from The Devils Dictionary:
MARRIAGE, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
(But can I hope????)

DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.

HOPE, n. Desire and expectation rolled into one.

OPTIMIST, n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.

A pessimist applied to God for relief.

"Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness," said God.

"No," replied the petitioner, "I wish you to create something that would justify them."

"The world is all created," said God, "but you have overlooked something—the mortality of the optimist."

PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.

PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one—the knowledge and the dream.

PRESENT, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

  "What is your religion my son?" inquired the Archbishop of Rheims.
  "Pardon, monseigneur," replied Rochebriant; "I am ashamed of it."
  "Then why do you not become an atheist?"
  "Impossible!  I should be ashamed of atheism."
  "In that case, monsieur, you should join the Protestants."

“Hope is a waking dream.”
― Aristotle

“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”
― Barack Obama

“There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.'
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Inventory:

"Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

The Invoice, Robert Creeley

I once wrote a letter as follows:
dear Jim, I would like to borrow
200 dollars from you
to see me through.

I also wrote another: dearest M/
please come.
There is no one
here at all.

I got word today,
viz: hey
sport, how are you making it?
And, why don’t you get with it.

“How far would you go to keep the hope of love alive?”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Choice

“Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it's all right
Little darlin' it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darlin' it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it's all right
Little darlin' the smiles returning to their faces
Little darlin' it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it's all right
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Little darlin' I feel the ice is slowly meltin'
Little darlin' it seems like years since it's been clear
Here come the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it's all right
Here come the sun, here comes the sun
It's all right, it's all right”
― George Harrison

“Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing into the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall! ”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Keep your best wishes, close to your heart and watch what happens” 
― Tony DeLiso, Legacy: The Power Within

“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man”
― T.S. Eliot

“Sometimes good things fall apart, so better things can fall together.” 
― Jessica Howell

“Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: "Leave behind all hope, you who enter here.”
― Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope

“It's the possibility that keeps me going, not the guarantee.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The No

“We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

?????WHAT DOES THAT MEAN... THE ABOVE QUOTE???