I have a knack of hoping, which is as good as an estate in reversion, if one can keep from the temptation of turning it into certainty, which may spoil all.—George Eliot.
Hope, folding her wings, looked backward and became regret.—George Eliot.
Hope is always liberal, and they that trust her promises make little scruple of reveling to-day on the profits of to-morrow.—Johnson.
It is necessary to hope, though hope should be always deluded; for hope itself is happiness and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.—Johnson.
Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.—Victor Hugo.
Humanity.—A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds: therefore let him seasonably water the one and destroy the other.—Bacon.
I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.—Burke.
Human nature is not so much depraved as to hinder us from respecting goodness in others, though we ourselves want it. This is the reason why we are so much charmed with the pretty prattle of children, and even the expressions of pleasure or uneasiness in some parts of the brute creation. They are without artifice or malice; and we love truth too well to resist the charms of sincerity.—Steele.
I do not know what comfort other people find in considering the weakness of great men, but 'tis always a mortification to me to observe that there is no perfection in humanity.—Montagu.
The true proof of the inherent nobleness of our common nature is in the sympathy it betrays with what is noble wherever crowds are collected. Never believe the world is base; if it were so, no society could hold together for a day.—Bulwer-Lytton.