A Quote by Joseph Addison
The man who will live above his present circumstances, is in great danger of soon living beneath them; or as the Italian proverb says, "The man that lives by hope, will die by despair.
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What is hope but a feeling of optimism, a thought that says things will improve, it won't always be bleak, there's a way to rise above the present circumstances. Hope is an internal awareness that you do not have to suffer forever, and that somehow, somewhere there is a remedy for despair that you will come upon if you can only maintain this expectancy in your heart.
There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observations, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children, and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will, and lives in the hope – the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that the force that is within him cannot die.
Trench says a wild man is a willed man. Well, then, a man of will who does what he wills or wishes, a man of hope and of the future tense, for not only the obstinate is willed, but far more the constant and persevering. The obstinate man, properly speaking, is one who will not. The perseverance of the saints is positive willedness, not a mere passive willingness. The fates are wild, for they will; and the Almighty is wild above all, as fate is.
In proportion as man gets back the spirit of manliness, which is self-sacrifice, affection, loyalty loan idea beyond himself, a God above himself, so far will he rise above circumstances, and wield them at his will.
Man without religion is the creature of circumstances: Religion is above all circumstances, and will lift him up above them.
While optimism makes us live as if someday soon things will soon go better for us, hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present, with the deep trust that God will never leave us alone but will fulfill the deepest desires of our heart... Joy in this perspective is the fruit of hope.
Pitch a lucky man into the Nile, says the Arabian proverb, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth!
Will you keep going when you don't know why? When you can't get any answers that would make the pain go away, will you still say, 'My Lord,' even though his ways are not clear to you? Will you keep going-with all the grace and grit and faith you can muster-and live in hope that one day God will set everything right. Will you trust that God is good? ... Ultimately, the choice everyone faces is the choice between hope and despair. Jesus says, 'Choose hope.'
In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’ So tell me—who lives and who dies?
So to be sick unto death is, not to be able to die-yet not as though there were hope of life; no, the hopelessness in this case is that even the last hope, death, is not available. When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life; but when one becomes acquainted with an even more dreadful danger, one hopes for death. So when the danger is so great that death has become one's hope, despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die.
For most of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.
There is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversity. The palm-tree grows best beneath a ponderous weight, even so the character of man. There is no merit in it, it is a law of psychology. The petty pangs of small daily cares have often bent the character of men, but great misfortunes seldom. There is less danger in this than in great good luck.
If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power... they will talk, they will gloat. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.
The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger.
There is no moment like the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards: they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.
If a person is cold and rigid, he feels within himself as if he were in a grave. He is not living, he cannot enjoy this life for he cannot express himself and he cannot see the light and life outside. What keeps man from developing the heart quality? His exacting attitude. He wants to make a business of love. He says, 'If you will love me, I will love you.' As soon as a man measures and weighs his favors and his services and all that he does for one whom he loves, he ceases to know what love is. Love sees the beloved and nothing else.
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