A few weeks ago I had a dream. I dreamed I was back at the house, in the red room, reading my microeconomics textbook. Maddy outside playing with Hope, and Agnes was preparing dinner. It was just like old times. I was elated. I knew all along that they weren't really dead. It was all just a terrible mistake. Maddy joined me in the library. Strangely, she didn't smell like anything. Not her usual crème brulee or green apples or candy. That's when I realized she was dead, though I didn't know I was dreaming. She apologized for everything and then proceeded to explain why things had turned out the way they had. Her story made complete sense. It was what I needed to hear. Finally I had an answer. Finally I could let go. And then she vanishedWhen I woke up, in a pool of sweat, I couldn't remember a thing Maddy had said.
~ Katherine Easer
To die,so young to die.No, no, not I,I love the warm sunny skies,light, song, shining eyes,I want no war, no battle cry,No, no, not I.
~ Hannah Senesh
Flowers don't tell, they show. That's the way good books should be too.--Stephanie Skeem. Author of Flotsam
~ Stephanie Skeem
Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world. Winston Churchill Christmas Eve Message, 1941 as printed in In the Dark Streets Shineth.
~ David Mccullough
She was famous, and she was insane.Her voice soared out over the audience, holding them spellbound and enraptured, delivering their hopes and fears tangled in chords and rhythm. They called her an angel, her voice a gift.She was famous, and she was a liar.
~ Dianne Sylvan
The traumatized person is often relieved simply to learn the true name of her condition. By ascertaining her diagnosis, she begins the process of mastery. No longer imprisoned in the wordlessness of the trauma, she discovers that there is a language for her experience. She discovers that she is not alone; others have suffered in similar ways. She discovers further that she is not crazy; the traumatic syndromes are normal human responses to extreme circumstances. And she discovers, finally, that she is not doomed to suffer this condition indefinitely; she can expect to recover, as others have recovered...
~ Judith Lewis Herman
Women think in [Douglas] Sirk’s films. Something which has never struck me with other directors. None of them. Usually women are always reacting, doing what women are supposed to do, but in Sirk they think. It’s something that has to be seen. It’s great to see women think. It gives one hope. Honestly.
~ Rainer Werner Fassbinder
NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of manIn me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins
But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done.
~ Mark Twain
Do try to remember this: even the world's not so black as it is painted-Valerie to Stephen (pg. 408)
~ Radclyffe Hall
For if the darkness and corruption leaveA vestige of the thoughts that once I had,Better by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.
~ Christina Rossetti
The positive emotions that arise in...unpromising circumstances demonstrate that social ties and meaningful work are deeply desired, readily improvised, and intensely rewarding. The very structure of our economy and society prevent these goals from being achieved.
~ Rebecca Solnit
By the time the last few notes fade, his hope will be restored, but each time he's force to resort to the Adagio it becomes harder, and he knows its effect is finite. There are only a certain number of Adagios left in him, and he will not recklessly spend this precious currency.
~ Steven Galloway
How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?
~ Joseph Conrad
The morning was full of sunlight and hope.
~ Kate Chopin
The journey through another world, beyond bad dreamsbeyond the memories of a murdered generation,cartographed in captivity by bare survivorsmakes sacristans of us all.The old ones go our bail, we oblate preachers of our tribes.Be careful, they say, don't hock the beads of kinship agonies; the moire-effect of unfamiliar hymnsupon our own, a change in pitch or shrillness of the voicetransforms the ways of song to words of poetry or proseand makes distinctionsno one recognizes.Surrounded and absorbed, we tread like Etruscanson the edge of useless law; we prayto the giver of prayer, we give the cane whistlein ceremony, we swing the heavy silver chainof incense burners. Migration makes new citizens of Rome.
~ Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
I suppose she's right. It's like a metaphor for life: No one wants an ornery old goat, but we can't resist opening the door ayway. We can't keep from hoping.
~ Lauren Myracle
Wherever the hope of glory lives, hopelessness passes away.
~ Nadine C. Keels
Because now that it's finally morning, the shadows are beginning to fade, the shadows that have been covering my mind and my soul. Now that they're gone, I can almost start to see the way, and it's different from the one they'd convinced me was all I could have.
~ Vixen Phillips
Faith doesn't always come naturally but as we take those steps of faith, we notice little by little that our faith has grown and it isn't as hard as we first thought.
~ Jacqueline Winslow
I couldn't help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever.
~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón
disappointment had to be postponed, hope kept alive as long as possible
~ ;Graham Greene
...but if there was one thing that all my years as the Spider, all the battles, all the brushes with my own death, had taught me, then it was THIS.That THIS was what was important. This moment right now and all the ones that we are lucky enough to have after it. Today, tomorrow, hell, maybe even forever.
~ Jennifer Estep
I feel a resurgence of my 6-year-old self… that little warrior, goddess of a girl reminding me of who I was when I was little, before the world got its hands on me.
~ Jennifer Elisabeth
He turned away, and suddenly she thought about the old children's story, where the stupid girl opens the box that God gave her, and all the evils of the world fly out, except Hope, which stays at the bottom; and she wondered what Hope was doing in there in the first place, in with all the bad things. Then the answer came to her, and she wondered how she could've been so stupid. Hope was in there because it was evil too, probably the worst of them all, so heavy with malice and pain that it couldn't drag itself out of the opened box.
~ K.j. Parker
I know that this process of ‘me changing my life’ doesn’t just end once I set fire to this list of things I hate about myself. Tonight isn’t as much of a new beginning as it is a violent end and I know the real work hasn’t even started yet.
Never loose hope. Stay strong, you never know what tomorrow brings.
~ Magith Noohukhan
But that's just it; I can either focus on what I have lost, or what I have gained, and I choose the latter.
~ Angie Smith
I’m going to follow this invisible red thread until I find myself again… until I finally figure out… who I’m meant to be.
There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.
~ Octavia E. Butler
I cared about them. I wanted them to feel better, to live better lives. And then it occurred to me - I cared about myself. I wanted me to live a better life, too Caring about myself was allowing me to care about others.
~ Cate Tiernan
We’re a couple of shooting stars, Biggs, and we’ll never be stopped.
~ George Lucas
I kept reaching for my muses,my wandering muses, floatingon clouds filled with their passions.”(Muses of Wandering Passions, p. 64)
~ Chimnese Davids
Maybe the future is like rowing for shore. Your only choice is to try or give up.
~ Kristen Chandler
We hold our dreams and ideals close to our hearts, where the promises are made to the future generations.
~ John Rachel
The idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow – Hope shining upon the tears of grief.
~ Robert G. Ingersoll
I made a sorry face in response to such strong insistence, but I couldn’t believe him. Fantasies were exactly that..…..fantasies. Whimsy. Wishes. Mere castles in the sky without foundation or substance. Dreams didn’t come true. To believe so would be to believe falsely, to surrender to madness, to give in to an unreliable hope that would crush me once again as it always, always did!
~ Richelle E. Goodrich
Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.
~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel
But only a person in the depths of despair neglected to look beyond winter to the spring that inevitably followed, bringing back color and life and hope.
~ Mary Balogh
When our dreams don’t come true, sometimes we can hand them down to our children and hope that they will come true for them. The joy can be immeasurable just the same.
~ Isabel Lopez
