“Only Hope remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door.”
Hesiod, c. 700 BC · Greek farmer-poet, telling of Pandora and the jar of evils
Chapter 9
On Hope
“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.”
The Book of Proverbs, 1611 · Proverbs 13:12, King James Version
“For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.”
The Book of Ecclesiastes, 1611 · Ecclesiastes 9:4, King James Version
“It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning.”
The Lamentations of Jeremiah, 1611 · Lamentations 3:22-23, King James Version, written amid ruins
“Hope is the bread of the unhappy.”
Traditional proverb, 1859 · recorded in a Victorian survey of proverbs from many nations
“The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky.”
Rabindranath Tagore, 1912 · Bengali poet, in the collection that won him the Nobel Prize
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.”
Emily Dickinson, 1891 · American poet, who published almost nothing in her lifetime
Hope is not a mood. It has two working parts: a route to what you want, and the belief you can walk it. People with both do better through illness and loss.
C. R. Snyder and colleagues, 1991 · psychologists, University of Kansas, authors of hope theory
Following more than 70,000 people for decades, researchers found the most optimistic lived 11 to 15 percent longer than the least, and were far likelier to reach the age of 85.
Lewina Lee and colleagues, 2019 · Boston University and Harvard, two long-running cohort studies
Across 148 studies and more than 300,000 people, those with strong social ties were 50 percent likelier to still be alive at follow-up. Being held by others rivals quitting smoking as a matter of survival.
Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues, 2010 · meta-analysis, Brigham Young University
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