From the song 'Hero' by Mariah Carey:

"When you feel like hope is gone,
Look inside you and be strong,
And you finally see the truth
That the hero lies in you.

"Hold on, there will be tomorrow,
In time, you'll find the way."

http://youtu.be/0IA3ZvCkRkQ

Hope is a good thing – maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
- Andy from the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption'
http://youtu.be/C_diyX7yNeE

"Strong hope is a much greater stimulant to life than any single realized joy could be."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Men and women are limited not by the place of their birth, not by the color of their skin, but by the size of their hope."
- John Johnson

"All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like. Let's live with hope."
- Henri Nouwen

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."
- Dale Carnegie

"Great hopes make great men."
- Thomas Fuller

"Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired."
- Erik H. Erikson

"Hope is an essential constituent of human life."
- Benjamin Franklin

MainMessageForToday
Extraordinary men and women in history have shown us that hope is a great treasure. In
dire circumstances, when there seems to be no hope, hope can help a person stay strong and persevere.

What are your hopes?

From the song 'I Hope' by Dixie Chicks"

Sunday morning, I heard the preacher say
Thou shall not kill.
I don't wanna hear nothing else about killing
And that it's God's will
'Cause our children are watching us.
They put their trust in us,
They're gonna be like us
So let's learn from our history
And do it differently.

I hope... for more love, more joy and laughter,
I hope... we'll have more than we'll ever need,
I hope... we'll have more happy ever after,
I hope... we can all live more fearlessly,
And we can lose all the pain and misery,
I hope, I hope.

http://youtu.be/KZGpvN44zvo

"Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope."
- Epictetus

"Hope deceives more men than cunning does."
- Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims

"False hopes are more dangerous than fears."
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Children of Hurin

"Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It's a sort of spiritual clap, I should say."
- Henry Miller

"In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-too-Human

"Hope was a dangerous emotion that more often than not led men into foolishness and peril, made them risk their lives and lose their wives and part with fortunes that they never recovered."
- Bentley Little, The Policy

"Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don't know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it's not. It's a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it."
- Ann Patchett, State of Wonder

MainMessageForToday
Like everything, hope has a "bad side." False hopes can lead a person to make inappropriate choices and can lead to discontent and unhappiness.

"Don't worry about a thing 'cause every little thing's gonna be all right."
- From the song 'Three Little Birds' by Bob Marley
http://youtu.be/zaGUr6wzyT8

“There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow.”
- Orison Swett Marden

"Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear."
- President Snow in the movie 'Hunger Games'
http://youtu.be/UVKlk26-ZOU

“The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.”
- Norman Cousins

“Hope is what motivates us to work hard and get things done. It’s the idea that something better will happen in the future because of what we do.”
- George Anderton

"Hope is that feeling that the things we want will be achieved or certain events will turn out for the best."
- Kevin Ngo

"Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate."
- G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

MainMessageForToday
Hope is a form of optimism that motivates and also tends to bring out courage.

There is always tomorrow.....

Song 'Always Tomorrow' by Gloria Estefan:
http://youtu.be/MeRT6_h6q3w

"Hope is the last thing that dies in man; and though it be exceedingly deceitful, yet it is of this good use to us, that while we are traveling through life it conducts us in an easier and more pleasant way to our journey's end."
- Francois De La Rochefoucauld

"A man begins to die when he ceases to expect anything from tomorrow."
- Abraham Miller, Unmoral Maxims

"Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope; and the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable."
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent."
- Jean Kerr

"Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today."
- Thich That Hang

What is hope?
To want something to happen or be true and think that it could happen or be true. (Merriam Webster)

MainMessageForToday
In life, the outcome of an event, circumstance or struggle may be uncertain, but a person needs to hope tomorrow will be better and never give up.

It's a new year, a time when hopes are high. What are you hoping for in the new year? What do you hope to achieve?

Theme for the week 1/3 - 1/9: Hope.