hope & despair12 quotes

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic, as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

“As I have always held it a crime to anticipate evils I will believe it a good comfortable road untill I am conpelled to beleive differently.”

“You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you.”

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…and one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

“Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.”

“Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead, almost as often as too much sensualism does, to the edge of the slope, at the bottom of which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suicidal view of life. But to the diseases which reflection breeds, still further reflection can oppose effective remedies...”

“To ask earnestly the question of the ultimate meaning of history takes ones breath away; it transports us to a vacuum which only hope and faith can fill.”

“In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.”

“The dispute between the unscrupulous optimists and the dystopians will not disappear, but will be endlessly renewed as new futures occur to the one, and a renewed past detains the other. In emergencies, and all changes that abolish old routines, the optimists hope to turn things to their benefit. They are as likely to consult the past as a battalion fighting for its life in a city is likely to protect the monuments. They strive to be on the winning side, and to find the path into the future on which the light of ‘I’ stays shining.

The ‘we’ attitude, by contrast, is circumspect. It sees human decisions as situated, constrained by place, time and community; by custom, faith and law. It urges us not to throw ourselves always into the swim of things, but to stand aside and reflect. It emphasizes constraints and boundaries, and reminds us of human imperfection and of the fragility of real communities. Its decisions take account of other people and other times. In its deliberations the dead and the unborn have an equal voice with the living. And its attitude to those who say ‘press on’ and ‘ever onward’ is ‘sufficient unto the day the evil thereof’. It does not endorse a comprehensive pessimism, but only the occasional dose of pessimism, with which to temper hopes that otherwise might ruin us. It the voice of wisdom in world of noise. And for that very reason, no one hears it.”

“There is no God, but we still have the mountains and the hummingbirds. Or a good drink and a good fuck. Even a good shit and a good jerk. Try as you might, you cannot escape small pleasures. The flowers please you in spite of yourself, as you walk down the street muttering. Despairing over no text message from some girl you’d get tired of if she texted you back. Worrying about work. The clouds look painterly at sunset every god damn day and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. Even if you shut the blinds the magic hour light leaks through. A baby smiles at you in the checkout line. Sees something in your eyes. It was not lost.”

“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should in live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”