Quotes about Hope

No one can be saved, and attain eternal joy, without all of the following: (1) a morally honest acceptance of the demands of virtue, (2) a serious effort to practice it, (3) an intellectually honest confession of failure, (4) repentance, and (5) at least an implicit faith and hope in God as Savior.

The deepest healing is the healing of the deepest wound. The deepest wound is the frustration of the deepest need. The deepest need is the need for meaning, purpose, and hope.

St. Thomas thus detects a primary source of presumption in seeking genuinely good things, like human happiness on earth, as if we did not need divine grace to attain them; and in the hope that we can obtain God's pardon and mercy without our confessing and repenting of sin.

He came. That is the salient fact, the towering truth, that alone keeps us from putting a bullet through our heads. He came.

nothing else can ever cure our sick world except saints, and saints are never made except by prayer.

When the worldly toys in which we foolishly place our hopes for happiness are taken away from us, our foolishness is also taken away, and this brings us closer to true happiness, which is not in worldly things but in wisdom.

Truth is unchanging. The principles of morality are unchanging. The human essence is unchanging. Therefore there is no hope of a New Man, Heaven on Earth, Babel Rebuilt, a Brave New World, or Superman.

We cannot go from our darkness to his light, because we are working in the dark. But God can go from his light to our darkness, because he is working in the light.

Learning to pray is dress rehearsal for eternal life.

Expect the world to be Heaven, and it will feel like Hell. Expect it to be Purgatory, and it will feel like Heaven. The two most salient facts about Purgatory are pain and hope, suffering and meaning.

Presumption and despair are opposite deadly sins. We hear a lot about despair, and the need for hope; but what is presumption?

Our attempts at charity without God, our attempts at charity before faith and hope, all fail because they are based on ourselves and our own false sufficiency and our own righteousness as their foundation and cause. But the charity that comes after faith is God's own work in and through us, and is part of our own salvation.