“Consult.../what reinforcement we may gain from hope,/If not, what resolution from despair.”

“What reinforcement we may gain from hope,If not what resolution from despair.”

“There is no despair so absolute as that which comes from the first moments of our first great sorrow when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and healed, to have despaired and recovered hope.”

“Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair. We have not the right to despair, and, finally, we have not the reason to despair”

“We gauge what we think is possible by what we know from experience, and our acceptance of scientific insights, in particular, is incremental, gained one experience at a time.”

“Those that much covet are with gain so fond,For what they have not, that which they possessThey scatter and unloose it from their bond,And so, by hoping more, they have but less;Or, gaining more, the profit of excessIs but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.”