Quotes about Hope

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. (...). Pointing through the window of the hut, she said 'This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.' (...). Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. 'Yes.' What did it say to her? She answered, 'It said to me, I am here - I am here - I am life, eternal life.

We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles—whatever one may choose to call them—we know: the best of us did not return.

In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Of course, this was no therapy in the proper sense since, first, his despair was no disease; and second, I could not change his fate; I could not revive his wife. But in that moment I did succeed in changing his attitude toward his unalterable fate inasmuch as from that time on he could at least see a meaning in his suffering.

It must be kept in mind, however, that optimism is not anything to be commanded or ordered. One cannot even force oneself to be optimistic indiscriminately, against all odds, against all hope. And what is true for hope is also true for the other two components of the triad inasmuch as faith and love cannot be commanded or ordered either.

At that moment there was very little I knew of myself or of the world--I had but one sentence in mind—always the same: I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space." How long I knelt there and repeated this sentence memory can no longer recall. But I know that on that day, in that hour, my new life started. Step for step I progressed, until I again became a human being.

Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man's world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in his life.

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.

A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely.

As long as a man is still motivated either by the fear of punishment or by the hope of reward—or, for that matter, by the wish to appease the superego—conscience has not had its say as yet.

I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.