Martin E. Marty Quotes

If falling into desperation worked to make things better, then I would say, 'Let's all jump into despair.' But it doesn't help. The only way to truly find meaning and fulfillment is to look at the disaster, the pain, the difficulty, and know with complete certainty that good can come from this.

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.

I do believe that most men live lives of quiet desperation. For despair, optimism is the only practical solution. Hope is practical. Because eliminate that and it's pretty scary. Hope at least gives you the option of living.

The reason I never give up hope is because everything is so basically hopeless.

You only cry for help if you believe there is help to cry for.

It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.

When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God.

Hope is everything. Once you've lost that, you don't really have much.

Losing the possibility of something is the exact same thing as losing hope and without hope nothing can survive.

And one thing to be remembered: it is not that the people who are poor, starving, become frustrated with life - no. They cannot become frustrated. They have not lived yet - how can they be frustrated? They have hopes. A poor man always has hopes that something is going to happen - if not today then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow; if not in this life then in the next life.

Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope.

So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.

If we lose our hope, that's our real disaster!

It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.

If there is a chronic infirmity by which every teacher ought to be afflicted, it is, indeed, hope.

Hope could be the most powerful thing or the most useless.

I’ve always said that you can live without water for many days, but you can’t live for a second without hope.

Nobody, not even the old, not even the despairing, wished to come to an end in time or in eternity.

There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown hopeless about them.

I think it's realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: 'I despair. The world's no good.' That's a perverse idealist. It's practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That's very realistic.

God gave you not a spirit of faithlessness, not a spirit of despair.

I'm a serious optimist. I come from a country where you have little to be hopeful for, and so you have to always be an optimist.

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.