Fleeting Hope Quotes & Sayings

Where we hope to land (and where we do land, though only for a fleeting moment, enough for tired wings to catch the wind anew) is a 'there' which we thought of little and knew of even less. — Zygmunt Bauman

Look, it is snowing! Oh, I must
go out! Amsterdam asleep in the white night, the dark jade canals under the little snow-covered bridges, the empty streets, my muted steps
there will be
purity, even if fleeting, before tomorrows mud.See the huge flakes drifting against the windowpanes. It must be the doves, surely. They finally make up
their minds to come down, the little dears; they are covering the waters and the roofs with a thick layer of feathers; they are fluttering at every window.
What an invasion! Lets hope they are bringing good news. — Albert Camus

I wonder if any of you have ever noticed that it is sometimes those who find most pleasure and amusement in their fellow man, and have most hope in his goodness, who get the reputation of being his most carping critics. Maybe it is that the satirist is so full of the possibilities of humankind in general, that he tends to draw a dark and garish picture when he tries to depict people as they are at any particular moment. The satirist is usually a pretty unpopular fellow. The only time he attains even fleeting popularity is when his works can be used by some political faction as a stick to beat out the brains of their opponents. Satirical writing is by definition unpopular writing. Its aim is to prod people into thinking. Thinking hurts.
(John Dos Passos, 1957, from the speech he delivered upon accepting the Gold Medal for Eminence in Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters) — John Dos Passos

Sometimes evil wins, nah, child. But it's always fleeting. Just a temporary ripple in a sea of goodness, brought on by the carnal nature of greed 'n corruption. Sacrifice washes that ripple out in waves of love 'n light, and peace is found when justice is served, even for those who lose, ya hear? — Rachael Wade

Please know my deep respect for humans and human life. Such beautiful, fragile animals, so fleeting and easily broken and yet powerful beyond anything faeries can ever hope to be. We cannot create but live forever, unchanging. You change with every breath, dying even as you live, but your thread to eternity and immortality is reborn with every new generation — Kiersten White

I just wish moments weren't so fleeting!' Isaac called to the man on the roof, 'They pass so quickly!'
'Fleeting?!' responded the tilling man, 'Moments? They pass quickly?! ... Why, once a man is finished growing, he still has twenty years of youth. After that, he has twenty years of middle age. Then, unless misfortune strikes, nature gives him twenty thoughtful years of old age. Why do you call that quickly?' And with that, the tilling man wiped his sweaty brow and continued tilling; and the dejected Isaac continued wandering.
'Stupid fool!' Isaac muttered quietly to himself as soon as he was far enough away not to be heard. — Roman Payne

Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper. — David Quammen

I wanted to give you something that would last forever. Something that would surpass the world, that would still be alive and bright even after you passed away. Something beautiful. For your eyes and smile only. But I never found it. All I could give you is words. Words which were as fleeting as the heartbeats that shook my soul whenever you looked my way. — F.K. Preston

There are no words in that fleeting moment between hope and the knowledge. There is no way to express how a heart can burst and break at the same time, how the sun can cut through the darkness but will case shadows everywhere. — Marieke Nijkamp

Spring is not yet here, but the song of a solitary, pioneering blackbird when I wake, the smell of something warm and floral on the air in fleeting moments, these signs give me hope. — Tracy Rees

When hope is fleeting, stop for a moment and visualize, in a sky of silver, the crescent of a lavender moon. Imagine it
delicate, slim, precise, like a paper-thin slice from a cabochon jewel.
It may not be very useful, but it is beautiful.
And sometimes it is enough. — Vera Nazarian

She could only hope they could read the depth of sorrow in her face, to recognize that it was true, and not fleeting. — Markus Zusak

May your dreams be fleeting, Gravier says to us and I smile. I don't want my dreams to be fleeting tonight. Tonight I hope I would see something, anything to put my mind at ease. I fear I would get the opposite but I still drift off in the hope if they were of the nightmarish kind, that then they would be fleeting after-all. — Celia Mcmahon

It is sad to see a young man's fondest hopes and dreams shattered when the rose-colured veil is plucked away and he sees the actions and feelings of men for what they are. But he still has the hope of replacing his old illusions with others, just as fleeting, but also just as sweet. — Mikhail Lermontov

Grief is not a fleeting emotion. This pain would be inside me for a long time, and all I could do was learn to live with it and hope that, someday, I'd be able to breathe again without hurting. — Karen Lynch

Happiness comes in many forms - in the company of good friends, in the feeling you get when you make someone else's dream come true, or in the promise of hope renewed. It's okay to let yourself be happy because you never know how fleeting that happiness might be. — Lucas Scott

Thus heavenly hope is all serene,But earthly hope, how bright soe'er,Still fluctuates o'er this changing scene,As false and fleeting as 't is fair. — Reginald Heber

But always too soon, right after a fleeting moment of hope, the floor opens up and I sink to the bottom again. — Natalie Taylor

His hope was like an intake of icy air - it hurt - and just as sharp and sudden was his jealousy. In an instant he was hot and cold with it, his hands clenching into fists so tight they burned. A flare of adrenaline coursed through him and left him shaking, and it wasn't her. It wasn't her, and for the fleeting flash of an instant, he felt relief. Followed by crushing disappointment and self-loathing for what his reaction had been. — Laini Taylor

And here am I ... what did I hope - what did I expect? What rich promise did the future seem to hold out to me, when with scarcely a sigh - only a bleak sense of utter desolation - I took my leave from the brief phantom, risen for a fleeting instant, of my first love?
What has come of it all - of all that I had hoped for? And now when the shades of evening are beginning to close in upon my life, what have I left that is fresher, dearer to me, than the memories of that brief storm that came and went so swiftly one morning in spring? — Ivan Turgenev

I sell ideas. Actually, if you think about it, everything is really no more than idea. The past is nothing more than a memory, which is one kind of idea. The future is still a hope, another kind of idea. The present is fleeting and becomes a memory before you can put your hands on it. All ideas. I sell ideas. — Ted Dekker

Whatever the internal mechanism that moderated the human capacity for joy, mine had long been broken beyond repair. And I knew this was a poor substitute, a base shadow cast on the cave wall, a reflection in a tarnished mirror of ordinary things like happiness, love, and hope. But there were moments, fleeting moments, lost in the responses of my body to his, when it was almost enough. And, God, I wanted, I wanted. These crumbs of bliss. — Alexis Hall

Once in while a man or a woman
no, they were not men and women; they were Jews
would find Liesel's face among the crowd. They would meet her with their defeat, and the book thief could do nothing but watch them back in a long, incurable moment before they were gone again. She could only hope they could read the depth of sorrow in her face, to recognize that it was true, and not fleeting.
She understood she was utterly worthless to these people. They could not be saved.
Then, one human.
Hans Hubermann. — Markus Zusak

Are you finally admitting that you can sell a man hope? Have I at last succeeded in teaching you that?'
He laughed and flicked his whip again, harder. He was in a better mood than I had seen for months.
'No, Camelot, not hope. Hope is for the weak; have I not succeeded in teaching you that? To hope is to put your faith in others and in things outside yourself; that way lies betrayal and disappointment. They didn't want hope, Camelot; they wanted certainty. What a man needs is the certainty that he is right, no selfdoubt, no fleeting thought that he might be wrong or misled. Absolute certainty that he is right, that's what gives a man the confidence and power to do whatever he wants and to take whatever he wants from this world and the next. — Karen Maitland

Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life,
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
Of semblance with reality, which brings
To the delirious eye, more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love- and all our own!
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known. — Edgar Allan Poe

There is no tomorrow..it is always today. Tomorrow is the fleeting and minute distance..between hope & once more..once again! — Victoria June

The boy went ahead with the dog, trudging across the sand, maintaining the same lethargic pace. She watched them go. And as she rinsed the sand from the board, she felt restored, somehow lighter. She wanted her old life back, just the two of them, before all the drama. But it wasn't possible. So she'd have to make do with moments like these: perfect and fleeting. — Samantha Wood

God knows, I'm no expert on relationships, but I do know when something's good. And this thing we've created between us is precious and rare. I only hope it's not fleeting, because for the first time in my adult life, I've given someone the power to hurt me. — Linda Castillo

She closed her eyes and began to weave a song. She abandoned the familiar melodies she'd played so many times before and went in search of something new, no longer wanting a song fed on pain or guilt. She needed one that could replace those wounds with strength, with resolve, with confidence. She needed a song that could not only assuage, but heal and build anew. The notes stumbled around the room, tripping over beds and empty stools and hollow men sleeping. They warbled and fell, haphazard, chaotic, settling without flight. Fin's forehead creased and she persisted. She let her fingers wander, reached out with her mind. She chased the fleeting song she'd glimpsed once before. In Madeira she'd felt a hint of it: something wild, untameable, a thing sprung whole and flawless from the instant of creation. — A.S. Peterson

Whatever troubles come, let us play the man; let us show that we are not such little children as to be cast down by what may happen in this poor fleeting state of time. Our country is Immanuel's land, our hope is above the sky, and therefore, calm as the summer's ocean; we will see the wreck of everything earth-born, and yet rejoice in the God of our salvation. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Beyond today tomorrow reigns for yesterday has passed. Earth time is just a fleeting ploy, our spinning planet's ship ahoy; Our pale blue dot on brink of vast. — EsthersChild

What I have always found most comforting about these forms is the trace of hope I get as I'm filling them out. How they break your life down into such tidy realms, making each seem tractable, because discrete, in a way they never are beyond the white noise of the waiting room. You get that fleeting sense that you're on the verge of being understood, truly and fully, and for the first time, if you could just get it all down in black and white before the receptionist calls your name. — Adam Haslett

I to my perils Of cheat and charmer Came clad in armour By stars benign. Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine. The thoughts of others Were light and fleeting, Of lovers' meeting Or luck or fame. Mine were of trouble, And mine were steady, So I was ready When trouble came. - A. E. HOUSMAN — Elizabeth Frank

Their lives would not turn out as they dreamed. I understood this, even as mine had turned out far better than I would have hoped, had I permitted myself to hope for anything at all. I was the exception, I knew, and even my own good fortune I believed to be a fleeting moment in what would be a long, hard, solitary life. — Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Running has taken me on adventures great and small, at home and around the world. It has provided me with hope and perseverance on days when I had none-and even, once every great while, warmed me with that fleeting ray of sunshine known as glory. Running has taught me that I can do anything, just so long as I keep putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes that notion is metaphorical and sometimes not. In this way, I have been inspired to attempt things I would have never dreamed possible. And it all started with a single step. — Martin Dugard

Hope is sometimes fleeting, but always precious. Sad to say, when the battle began, most of my companions had no hope at all. — T.A. Barron

It's been a wild ride. I hope people can appreciate how special it is to see the people that ran well today; how special and sometimes fleeting greatness can be even from yourself. I gave it everything I had and for a short period of time I did very very well and I'm very proud of that and I'm leaving it at that. I did the best I could. — Alan Webb

Mortality
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, the low and the high,
Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.
Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
'Tis the wink of an eye - 'tis the draught of a breath -
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud? — William Knox

Each word that she left behind is precious, including the simple three I rediscovered a few days after Marina's memorial service. Her long-forgotten note, scrawled with a dry-erase marker on the back of a BB&N book slip and left on my desk when she was visiting from college, simply read, "Marina was here!" Marina was here. Yes, she was, in so many ways. And with an exclamation point. My hope is that through this book and Marina's many legacies, we may all still hear her and be inspired by how she used her fleeting time to be passionately, vibrantly, fully here. - Beth McNamara August 2014 — Marina Keegan

LORD, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered - how fleeting my life is. 5 You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand. My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath. Interlude 6 We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing. We heap up wealth, not knowing who will spend it. 7 And so, Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you. — Anonymous

He carried Paul inside and up the stairs. He gave him a drink of water and the orange chewable aspirin he like and sat with him on the bed, holding his hand ... This was what he yearned to capture on film: these rare moments where the world seemed unified, coherent, everything contained in a single fleeting image. A spareness that held beauty and hope and motion - a kind of silvery poetry, just as the body was poetry in blood and flesh and bone. — Kim Edwards

Victory is a fleeting thing in the gambling business. Today's winners are tomorrow's blinking toads, dumb beasts with no hope. — Hunter S. Thompson

Here and there even in our world, and now and then, even in ourselves, we catch glimpeses of a New Creation, which, fleeting as those glipmses are apt to be, give us hope both for this life and for whatever life may await us later on. — Frederick Buechner

The child was slender as fleeting hope. — William Peter Blatty

The child was slender as a fleeting hope. — William Peter Blatty

The Christian living in disobedience also lives devoid of joy and hope. But when he begins to understand that Christ has delivered him from the reign of sin, when he begins to see that he is united to Him who has all power and authority and that it is possible to walk in obedience, he begins to have hope, and as he hopes in Christ, he begins to have joy. In the strength of this joy, he begins to overcome the sins that have so easily entangle him. He then finds that the joy of a holy walk is infinitely more satisfying than the fleeting pleasures of sin. But to experience this joy, we must make some choices. We must choose to forsake sin, not only because it is defeating to us but because it grieves the heart of God. — Jerry Bridges

Hope founded upon a human being, a man-made philosophy or any institution is always misplaced ... because these things are unreliable and fleeting. — Charles Stanley

It struck me tonight how music mirrors life. Fleeting ephemeral moments, made up of beauty, sadness, joy, hope and despair. Melodies which are written in both major and minor keys. Flowing and fleeting. You can't hold onto it, or keep it from changing. Our emotions possess the evanescence of a note. — Virginia Burges