HOPE
Who can live without hope?
—Carl Sandburg
There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.
—Orison Sweet Marden
Don’t tell me what you will do
When you have time to spare;
Tell me what you did today
To ease a load of care.
Don’t tell me what you will give
When your ship comes in from sea;
Tell me what you gave today
A fettered soul to free.
Don’t tell me the dream you have
Of conquest still afar;
Don’t say what you hope to be
But tell me what you are.
—Union Church News, Lima, Peru
Traditionally there are two schools of thought in Germany. The industrial, practical, northern part of the country has this philosophy: “The situation is serious but not hopeless.” In the southern part of Germany, more romantic and perhaps less practical, the philosophy seems to be: “The situation is hopeless but not serious.”
—Bruce Larson
Unbelievable as it may seem, it is possible for a person to live up to seventy days without food. It is also possible to exist for nearly ten days without water. And one can live for up to six minutes without air.
But there is one thing it is impossible to live without—hope.
A famous American cardiologist said in his autobiography, “Hope is the medicine I use more than any other. Hope can cure nearly everything.” Another doctor commented, “If you lead a person to believe there’s no hope, you drive another nail in his coffin.”
—Leslie B. Flynn
It looked like Saturday morning TV time at the Van Pelt household. Lucy and Linus were sitting in front of the television set when she said to Linus, “Go get me a glass of water.”
Linus looked surprised. “Why should I do anything for you?” he said. “You never do anything for me.”
“On your seventy-fifth birthday,” Lucy promised, “I’ll bake you a cake.”
Linus got up, headed for the kitchen, and said, “Life is more pleasant when you have something to look forward to.”
Dr. Armand May Nicholi II says, “Psychiatrists have long suspected that hope fosters health, both physical and emotional. An increasing body of medical evidence documents the deleterious effect that depression and hopelessness have on physical health.” Dr. Nicholi quotes Freud who as early as 1905 declared that “duration of life can be appreciably shortened by depressive effects.”
—Leslie B. Flynn
Years ago a hydroelectric dam was to be built across a valley in Maine. The people in the town were to be relocated and the town itself submerged.
During the time between the initial decision and the completion of the dam, the town, which had once been well kept, fell into disrepair. Why keep it up now?
Explained one resident: “Where there is no faith in the future, there is no work in the present.”
—Bits & Pieces
When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God.
—Charles L. Allen
Hope is the major weapon against the suicide impulse.
—Karl Menninger
In an old inn at St. Moritz in Switzerland is an inscription which translated from the German reads, “When you think everything is hopeless, a little ray of light comes from somewhere.”
A tourist once asked a native Texan, “Have you lived here all your life?” And the Texan replied, “Nope, not yet.”
Bumper sticker: “Since I gave up hope I feel much better.”
When Alexander the Great was setting out on one of his campaigns, he was distributing numerous gifts to his friends. In his generosity he had given away nearly all his possessions. “Sir,” said one of his friends, “you will have nothing left for yourself.” “Oh yes I have,” said Alexander, “I still have my hopes.”
Things never go so well that one should have no fear nor so ill that one should have no hope.
—Danish proverb
There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.
—G. K. Chesterton
There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning.
—Christopher Morley
In recounting his experience as a political prisoner in Russia, Alexander Solzhenitsyn tells of a moment when he was on the verge of giving up all hope. He was forced to work twelve hours a day at hard labor while existing on a starvation diet, and he had become gravely ill. The doctors were predicting his death. One afternoon while shoveling sand under a blazing sun, he simply stopped working. He did so even though he knew the guards would beat him severely—perhaps to death. But he felt he just couldn’t go on. Then he saw another prisoner, a fellow Christian, moving toward him cautiously. With his cane the man quickly drew a cross in the sand and erased it. In that brief moment Solzhenitsyn felt all the hope of the Gospel flood through his soul. It gave him the courage to endure that difficult day and the months of imprisonment that followed.
Self-made millionaire Eugene Lang greatly changed the lives of a sixth-grade class in East Harlem. Mr. Lang had been asked to speak to a class of fifty-nine sixth-graders. What could he say to inspire these students, most of whom would drop out of school? He wondered how he could get these predominantly black and Puerto Rican children even to look at him. Scrapping his notes, he decided to speak to them from his heart. “Stay in school,” he admonished, “and I’ll help pay the college tuition of every one of you.” At that moment the lives of those students changed. For the first time they had hope. Said one student, “I had something to look forward to, something waiting for me. It was a golden feeling.” Nearly ninety percent of that class went on to graduate from high school.
—Parade magazine
HOPELESSNESS
There are no hopeless situations. There are only people who have grown hopeless about them.
Remove hope from a man and you make him a beast.
—Darnell G. Neister
H. G. Wells said before he died, “This world is at the end of its tether. The end of everything we call life is close at hand.”
As Socrates was in his prison cell dying from drinking the hemlock, one of his disciples whispered to him, “Master, will we live again?” Socrates answered, “I hope so, but no man can know for sure.”
HORSE RIDING
A riding academy in West Texas advertises that they have something for everyone. For fat people they have fat horses, for skinny people they have skinny horses, for fast people they have fast horses, and for people who have never ridden before they have horses who have never ridden before.
HOSPITALITY
When there is room in the heart, there is room in the house.
—Danish proverb
After three days, both fish and guests begin to smell.
—Danish proverb
Hospitality is the art of making people feel at home when you wish they were at home.
—Rolling in the Aisles
HOUSEWIVES
The most creative job in the world involves taste, fashion, decorating, recreation, education, transportation, psychology, romance, cuisine, designing, literature, medicine, handicraft, community relations, pediatrics, geriatrics, entertainment, maintenance, purchasing, direct mail, law, accounting, religion, energy, and management.
Anyone who can handle all those has to be somebody special. She is. She is a homemaker.
—A United Technologies Corporation ad by Richard Kerr
HOUSEWORK
I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes—and six months later you have to start all over again.
—Joan Rivers
HUMAN BODY
Each chromosome contains 20 billion bits of information. That amount of information would equal three billion letters. If there are six letters in an average word, the information in one human chromosome equals about 500 million words. If there are 300 words on a printed page, this would equal two million pages. If the typical books contain 500 pages, a single chromosome contains 4,000 books. Chromosomes carry every bit of information concerning the development of a human being. God programmed every minute detail into every single chromosome.
If you’re an adult of average weight, here is what you accomplish in 24 hours:
Your heart beats 103,689 times.
Your blood travels 168,000,000 miles.
You breathe 23,040 times.
You inhale 438 cubic feet of air.
You eat 3 1/4; pounds of food.
You drink 2.9 quarts of liquids.
You lose 7/8; pounds of waste.
You speak 25,000 words, including some unnecessary ones.
You move 750 muscles.
Your nails grow .0000646 inch.
Your hair grows .01714 inch.
You exercise 7,000,000 brain cells.
… feel tired?
—Paul Lee Tan
The monetary worth of the average human being has increased by 643 percent during the last few years and possibly much more today. However, I would hold off cashing in just yet. Even with our double-digit inflation you are only worth about $7.28 or so.
The minerals and trace elements that make up the body of humans were only about $.98 in 1970, according to a survey released then. Now with prices the way they are you could get more for your 1.5 pounds of phosphate, nine ounces of potassium, six ounces of sulphur and sodium, one ounce of manganese, and under one ounce of iron, copper, and iodine.
However, if you were to calculate the value of the working chemicals in your body, you might be worth more than $6 million—an appropriate figure for the price of man. Your follicle-stimulating hormone, for example, sells for more than $4 million a gram, and prolactin goes for almost $17 million a gram.
—Patricia S. Voldberg
HUMANISM
The ten most important two-letter words: “If it is to be, it is up to me.”