#hope

I have often wished in vain,' said she, 'for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it.' 'That,' replied I, 'is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us. ↗

— Anne Brontë

#judgment #solitude #vain-hopes #respect

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promise of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the 'creative temperament'--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#personality #promise #responsiveness #romanticism #sensitivity

Call me hopeless romantic but I want to see my friend with the guy she's been pining for forever.... I want that more than anything on this earth. ↗

— Kristen Ashley

#hopeless-romantic #love #love

When was the last time she'd actually had a relationship based on reality, instead of some completely invented fantasy she'd written in her head? In her stupid, silly, romantic head. ↗

— Harriet Evans

#romantic

Because if one has an image, however dim and romantic, of a journey's end, one may, in the end, surely reach it, after no matter how many detours and deceptions and abandonings of hope. And hope could never have been entirely abandoned, even in the worst days. ↗

— Margaret Drabble

#romantic

Ana never saw the rotten apples littering the ground as she continually reached for the rare golden apple on the tree. Ana had stepped in a lot of rotten apples in her lifetime. She should have learned by now. ↗

— Travis Luedke

#hard-lessons #hopeless-romantic #optimism #romantic

An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it. What kind of society could we create if, instead, we drummed into them science and a sense of hope? ↗

— Carl Sagan

#science #movies

So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox... ↗

— Stanisław Lem

#cycles #despair #emotion #fear #free-will

A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony but the repository of hurt? And what is hurt but the repository of hope? ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#hurt #irony #teen

I keep forgetting you’re technologically challenged. ↗

— Colleen Hoover

#dean-holder #hopeless #sky-and-holder #sky-davis #technology