Hope quotes
Quotations about hope and resilience, from Emily Dickinson’s feathered bird and Maya Angelou’s daybreak to Tennyson’s ageing sailors and Mandela’s long walk. Hope is quoted constantly and sourced rarely, so each entry names its earliest verifiable source and, where it is a translation, the translator.
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.
Does the road wind up-hill all the way? / Yes, to the very end.
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! / Bird thou never wert,
History, despite its wrenching pain / Cannot be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not be lived again.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers — / That perches in the soul —
I have had my invitation to this world’s festival, and thus my life has been blessed.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear / I rise / Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear / I rise
I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
O Wind, / If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Just like moons and like suns, / With the certainty of tides, / Just like hopes springing high, / Still I’ll rise.
I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance / I have not winced nor cried aloud. / Under the bludgeonings of chance / My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Out of the night that covers me, / Black as the pit from pole to pole, / I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquerable soul.
For sometimes it is an act of bravery even to live.
You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
Come, my friends, / ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies,
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.