E. W. Howe Quotes

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.

Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope

A lie to me is a dream that might come true.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

Most of us...are naturally more sanguine and hopeful than logic would justify. We seem to be so constituted that in the absence of any facts to go upon we are happy and self-satisfied; so that the effect of experience is continually to contract our hopes and aspirations

You always underestimate - rather than be disappointed.

Hope is a dream deferred.

Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too?

For, he that expects nothing shall not be disappointed, but he that expects much - if he lives and uses that in hand day by day - shall be full to running over.

Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is good company along the way.

Every new invention is like a baby. You think it may cure cancer or become the president, but in the end, you're happy it just stays out of jail.

In all worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness he finds not half the pleasure in the possession that he proposed to himself in the expectation.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

Men freely believe that which they desire.

I feel that if you really want an Oscar, you're in trouble. It's like wanting to be married - you'll take anybody. If you want the Oscar really badly, it becomes a naked desire and ambition. It becomes very unattractive.

That's the trouble with stories. People start out fantastic. You think they're extraordinary, but it turns out as the work goes along, they're just average with a good education.

It's a funny thing: my name in Arabic means hope, so I suppose I have to live by that principle. Hope is desire, feeling, and investing in a projection of something that doesn't yet exist. At its best, you witness its alchemy in your life, turning something that was once in the mind into reality. At its worst, it's delusion.

I had these kind of unrealistic expectations that were fueled by romantic comedies, and it has both helped me and hurt me in many ways. It helped me because, in general, they've made me hopeful. I just figure things will eventually work out for me. But nobody is like any Tom Hanks character. Nobody is Hugh Grant. No one is Meg Ryan!

Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.

The light at the end of the tunnel is just the light of an oncoming train.

To be candid, some people have given positive thinking a bad name. I can't stand to hear some gung-ho individual say that with positive thinking you can just do 'anything.' If you think about that one for a moment, you recognize the absurdity of it.

People think that dreams are better than reality but this is not always the case; sometimes, because you dream too much, you are unable to see what you have in front of your very eyes.

Being Sexiest Woman Alive definitely didn't just open all the doors for me, which I thought it would. I thought, 'This is going to be huge for me!' And it really wasn't at all.