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Quotes About Hope

We cannot think about the future, of course, for the future does not exist: the existence of the future is an article of faith.
~ Wendell Berry
You must not let your hope turn into expectation.
~ Wendell Berry
He knew that I was living in loss. He knew, if anybody did, that there was nothing that could be done about it, nothing certainly that he could do, and yet he came. He came to offer himself, to be with us in Virgil's absence, to love us without hope or help, as he had to do. This was a baby that needed to be stood by, and he stood by her.
~ Wendell Berry
And so how was a human to pray? I didn't know, and yet I prayed. I prayed the terrible prayer: "Thy will be done." Having so prayed, I prayed for strength. That seemed reasonable and right enough. As did praying for forgiveness and the grace to forgive. I prayed unreasonably, foolishly, hopelessly, that everybody in Port William might be blessed and happy—the ones I loved and the ones I did not. I prayed my gratitude. The
~ Wendell Berry
Another place! it's enough to grieve me – that old dream of going, of becoming a better man just by getting up and going to a better place.
~ Wendell Berry
Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.
~ Wendell Berry
the modern world abounds with heralds of a better future and with debunkers happy to point out that Yeats was silly like us or that Thomas Jefferson may have had a Negro slave as a mistress--and so we are disencumbered of the burden of great lives, set free to be as cynical or desperate as we please.
~ Wendell Berry
I remember too how spring came, just when I thought it might stay winter forever, at first in little touches and strokes of green lighting up the bare mud like candle flames, and then it covered the whole place with a light pelt of shadowy grass blades and leaves. And I remember how, as the days and the winds passed over, the foliage shifted and sang.
~ Wendell Berry
Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led—make of that what you will.
~ Wendell Berry
I am a man who has hoped, in time, that his life, when poured out at the end, would say, "Good-good-good-good-good!" like a gallon jug of the prime local spirit. I am a man of losses, regrets, and griefs. I am an old man full of love. I am a man of faith.
~ Wendell Berry
Whatever happens, those who have learned to love one another have made their way to the lasting world and will not leave, whatever happens.
~ Wendell Berry
Be still and listen to the voices that belong to the stream banks and the trees and the open fields. Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
~ Wendell Berry
But Christ's living unto death in this body of our suffering did not end the suffering. He asked us to end it, but we have not ended it. We suffer the old suffering over and over again.
~ Wendell Berry
of all bad motives none may be worse or more hopeless than fear. Nobody, I think, has ever done good work because of fear. Good work is done by knowing how and by love. Love requires faith, courage, patience, and steadiness, none of which can come from fear.
~ Wendell Berry
expectations.
~ Wendell Berry
It was something I might have prayed for, if I had thought of it, but it was not among the possibilities I had foreseen. It was just a good thing that came.
~ Wendell Berry
We must take love to the limit of time, because time can not limit it. A life cannot limit it. Maybe to have it in your heart all your life in this world, even while it fails here, is to succeed. Maybe that is enough.
~ Wendell Berry
VI We travelers, walking to the sun, can't see Ahead, but looking back the very light That blinded us shows us the way we came, Along which blessings now appear, risen As if from sightlessness to sight, and we, By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward That blessed light that yet to us is dark.
~ Wendell Berry
The conversation thus established was a poor thing, Tol knew, so far as his own participation in it went, but it was something to go on. It gave him hope. And now I want to tell youhow this courtship, conducted for so long in secret in Tol's mind alone, became public. This is the story of Miss Minnie's first consent, the beginning of their story together, which is one of the dear possessions of the history of Port William.
~ Wendell Berry
The big idea of education, from first to last, is the idea of a better place. Not a better place where you are, because you want it to be better and have been to school and learned to make it better, but a better place somewhere else. In order to move up, you have got to move on. I didn't see this at first. And for a while after I knew it, I pretended I didn't. I didn't want it to be true.
~ Wendell Berry
Why, so can I, or so can any man; / But will they come when you do call for them?
~ Wendy Lesser
I'm going to tell you a secret. Our lives are shaped by the future, not by the past. Once you decide how you want your life to be, all you need to do is live into that future.
~ Wendy Mass
Whereever you end up; Jack whispered into my ear.I wish you clear skies. Always
~ Wendy Mass
Reach for the stars and even if you miss you will land among the stars
~ Wendy Mass