There will always be moments when life feels out of control and stressful. And I know that things can feel a little hopeless and scary. That’s why, in times of crisis, we sometimes need to look to the wisdom of others when it comes to feeling hope. And as if we can bounce back.
I personally find that I can listen to the wisdom of my own heart – and intuition – when I take pen to paper and write in my journal. As if the worry flows away from my brain to reside on the page. Where there, I can make sense of it all. It’s why, when anyone is asking me, I am encouraging them to begin keeping a journal of sorts during this time period. Just to have a refuge to turn to when they’re feeling anxious and worried.
I also find that if I am without words, there are the words of others to turn to in order to find a sense of hope. Whether you meditate upon a favorite quote or simply transfer it to your own journal, note card, or on Facebook, remembering that others who’ve experience tough times have come out OK on the other side can be a balm to the soul.
That’s why I gathered eighty-seven quotes on hope to turn to when you’re feeling weary, wary, and worried during this time of crisis.
- “Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
–Emily Dickinson
- “Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.”
— Christopher Reeve - “The new cultural belief that everything should be fun, fast, and easy is inconsistent with hopeful thinking. It also sets us up for hopelessness. When we experience something that is difficult and requires significant time and effort, we are quick to think, This is supposed to be easy; it’s not worth the effort, or, This should be easier: it’s only hard and slow because I’m not good at it. Hopeful self-talk sounds more like, This is tough, but I can do it.”
–Brene Brown - “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
–CS Lewis - “Hope. It’s like a drop of honey, a field of tulips blooming in the springtime. It’s a fresh rain, a whispered promise, a cloudless sky, the perfect punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. And it’s the only thing in the world keeping me afloat.”
–Tahereh Mafi - “We seldom notice how each day is a holy place where the eucharist of the ordinary happens, transforming our broken fragments into an eternal continuity that keeps us.”
–John O’Donohue - “Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”
–Lady Bird Johnson
- “Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.”
–Elie Wiesel - “I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.”
–C. Joybell C. - “You don’t want to beat yourself up for beating yourself up in the vain hope that it will somehow make you stop beating yourself up. Just as hate can’t conquer hate — but only strengthens and reinforces it — self-judgment can’t stop self-judgment.”
— Kristin Neff - “Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again.”
–Karen Marie Moning - “Stay positive and happy. Work hard and don’t give up hope. Be open to criticism and keep learning. Surround yourself with happy, warm and genuine people.”
–Tena Desae - “Hope is sweet-minded and sweet-eyed. It draws pictures; it weaves fancies; it fills the future with delight.”
–Henry Ward Beecher
- “Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.”
–Elizabeth Gilbert - “The way you speak to others can offer them joy, happiness, self-confidence, hope, trust, and enlightenment. Mindful speaking is a deep practice.”
–Thich Nhat Hanh - “I can’t over-emphasize how important an exquisite perfume is, to be wrapped and cradled in an enchanting scent upon your skin is a magic all on its own! The notes in that precious liquid will remind you that you love yourself and will tell other people that they ought to love you because you know that you’re worth it. The love affair created by a good perfume between you and other people, you and nature, you and yourself, you and your memories and anticipations and hopes and dreams; it is all too beautiful a thing!”
–C. Joybell C. - “It’s not by accident that people talk of a state of confusion as not being able to see the wood for the trees, or of being out of the woods when some crisis is surmounted. It is a place of loss, confusion, terror and anger, a place where you can, like Dante, find yourself going down into Hell. But if it’s any comfort, the dark wood isn’t just that. It’s also a place of opportunity and adventure. It is the place in which fortunes can be reversed, hearts mended, hopes reborn.”
–Amanda Craig - “Peace is not the end of the mundane, troublesome, and painful moments of life. Peace is found in the midst of the mundane, troublesome, and painful moments of life as we look for the good in all things, grasp tiny moments of joy glittering in the darkness, and gather hope into a soft place to rest when life grows hard and our spirit grows weary in the journey.”
–L.R. Knost - “There is a light that shines in the darkness, which is only visible there.”
–Barbara Brown Taylor
- “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.”
–Thomas Merton - “Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there’s no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.”
–Laini Taylor - “Hope itself is like a star- not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity.”
–C.H. Spurgeon - “People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them.”
–Flannery O’Connor - “I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”
–Anne Frank - “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”
–Goethe
- “Many of the arts practiced at home are especially nourishing to the soul because they foster contemplation and demand a degree of artfulness, such as arranging flowers, cooking, and making repairs.”
–Thomas Moore - “Let go. Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday. It is not yours to judge. Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love?”
–Leo Buscaglia - “It’s probably my job to tell you life isn’t fair, but I figure you already know that. So instead, I’ll tell you that hope is precious, and you’re right not to give up.”
–C.J. Redwine - “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
–G.K. Chesterton - “Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”
–Anne Lamott - “Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.”
–Albert Camus
- “I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
–TS Eliot - “It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something. May I suggest that it be creating joy for others, sharing what we have for the betterment of personkind, bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely.”
–Leo Buscaglia - “To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”
–G.K. Chesterton - “And books, they offer one hope — that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.”
–Anne Rice - “Happiness is always there. You just have to choose to see it. There’s no point dwelling in the dark and ignoring the light of the stars.”
–Carrie Hope Fletcher - “Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
–Samuel Smiles
- “Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.”
–G.K. Chesterton - “Hope is a waking dream.”
–Aristotle - “Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.”
–Vaclav Havel - “It’s always something, to know you’ve done the most you could. But, don’t leave off hoping, or it’s of no use doing anything. Hope, hope to the last!”
–Charles Dickens - “The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.”
–Marion Zimmer Bradley - “Hope is not an emotion; it’s a way of thinking or a cognitive process.”
–Brene Brown
- “Grace has to be the loveliest word in the English language. It embodies almost every attractive quality we hope to find in others. Grace is a gift of the humble to the humiliated. Grace acknowledges the ugliness of sin by choosing to see beyond it. Grace accepts a person as someone worthy of kindness despite whatever grime or hard-shell casing keeps him or her separated from the rest of the world. Grace is a gift of tender mercy when it makes the least sense.”
–Charles R. Swindoll - “Vulnerability is the essence of romance. It’s the art of being uncalculated, the willingness to look foolish, the courage to say, ‘This is me, and I’m interested in you enough to show you my flaws with the hope that you may embrace me for all that I am but, more important, all that I am not.”
–Ashton Kutcher - “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
–Mark Twain - “Hope is not dependent on peace in the land, justice in the world, and success in the business. Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown.”
–Henri Nouwen - “Why worry? If you’ve done the very best you can, worrying won’t make it any better.”
–Walt Disney - “Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.”
–Steve Maraboli
- “I have found it very important in my own life to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. I am finding that when I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen for me.”
–Henri Nouwen - “Somehow I can’t believe there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C’s. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy and the greatest of these is Confidence.”
–Walt Disney - “Almost all lives are small. What enlarges a life is the inner life, are the thoughts, are the sensations, are the useless hopes…Hope is like a sunflower which turns aimlessly toward the sun. But it is not ‘aimless.’ ”
–Clarice Lispector - “The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.”
–Auguste Rodin - “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr. - “Never lose hope, my heart, miracles dwell in the invisible.”
–Rumi
- “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.”
–Howard Zinn - “I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and you laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.”
–Clarissa Pinkola Estes - “How much hope, expectation, and sheer hard work goes into the smallest success! There is no being sure of anything except that whatever has been created will change in time.”
–May Sarton - “Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.”
–Barbara Brown Taylor - “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”
–Winston Churchill - “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.”
–Jonas Salk
- “Life doesn’t give you dreams and aspirations for you to turn away and say ‘not for people like me.’ Your dreams are your real Self yearning to be followed with a courageous heart and unbending intent. Your own wisdom is more powerful than anything you see around you. The price for living your dream is facing your deepest fear; ask yourself ‘What am I afraid of most’? Facing your answer is the price of greatness.”
–Jackson Kiddard - “You can make positive deposits in your own economy every day by reading and listening to powerful, positive, life-changing content and by associating with encouraging and hope-building people.”
–Zig Ziglar - “The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
–Barbara Kingsolver - “I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and you laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.”
–Clarissa Pinkola Estes - “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at it destination full of hope.”
–Maya Angelou - “Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.”
–Roy T. Bennett
- “Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.”
–James Allen - “The body uses its skin and deeper fascia and flesh to record all that goes on around it. Like the Rosetta stone, for those who know how to read it, the body is a living record of life given, life taken, life hoped for, life healed.”
–Clarissa Pinkola Estes - “My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.”
–Maya Angelou - “The greatest joys in life are found not only in what we do and feel, but also in our quiet hopes and labors for others.”
–Bryant McGill - “Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning. ”
–Barbara Kingsolver
- “I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this “In order to love you, I must make you something else”. That’s what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake and recast you.”
–Bell Hooks - “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
–Mother Teresa - “Storytelling, like rhetoric, pulls us in through the cognitive mind as much as through the emotions. It answers both our curiosity and our longing for shapely forms: our profound desire to know what happens, and our persistent hope that what happens will somehow make sense. Narrative instructs us in both these hungers and their satisfaction, teaching us to perceive and to relish the arc of moments and the arc of lives. If shapeliness is an illusion, it is one we require — it shields against arbitrariness and against chaos’s companion, despair. And story, like all the forms of concentration, connects. It brings us to a deepened coherence with the world of others and also within the many levels of the self.”
–Jane Hirshfield - “I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.”
–Clarissa Pinkola Estes - “Hope is a force of nature. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
–Jim Butcher
- “Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.”
–Johann von Goethe - As with any descent to the unconscious, there comes a time when one simply hopes for the best, pinches one’s nose, and jumps into the abyss. If this were not so, we would not have needed to create the words heroine, hero, or courage.”
–Clarissa Pinkola Estés, - “Forgiveness is letting go of the hope that the past can be changed.”
–Brene Brown - “It’s the possibility that keeps me going, not the guarantee.”
–Nicholas Sparks - “If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.”
–Rumi
- “If we want to cultivate hopefulness, we have to be willing to be flexible and demonstrate perseverance. Not every goal will look and feel the same. Tolerance for disappointment, determination, and a belief in self are the heart of hope.”
–Brene Brown - “The world is part of us, as we are part of the world. Even through the smallest acts, we can demonstrate that. I believe in the human spirit, in the kindness in all of us, and I am hopeful for this world.”
–Clemantine Wamariya - “There are lots of ways to bring joy, happiness, peace, laughter, hope and comfort into your life, and they cost absolutely nothing.”
–Sandra Magsamen - “There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t.”
–John Green - “This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Darling, I know that things may feel a little bleak right now. But please don’t lose hope.
As I often remind my clients, if you are struggling to find the silver thread right now, turn to pen and paper. Write (and re-write) these quotes in your journal as a collection of reminders that there are sunnier days ahead. Because when you actively choose to look for hope, you will feel more hopeful. And that, my dear, allows you to feel a little less anxious. No matter how chaotic and uncertain the world may seem.
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