It has never been and never will be easy work! But the road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair even though they both lead to the same destination.

To my utter despair I have discovered and discover every day anew that there is in the masses no revolutionary idea or hope or passion.

With optimism you look upon the sunny side of things. People say 'Studs you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair you might as well put your head in the oven.

I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.

Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.

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.

Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings hope too can be given to one only by other human beings.

Blues are the songs of despair but gospel songs are the songs of hope.

When too many Americans don't vote or participate some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action.

If you start in the pit of despair with these profane awful things even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that's much brighter coming from this dark awful beginning.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward but he who has hope for it is a fool.

My theory has always been that if we are to dream the flatteries of hope are as cheap and pleasanter than the gloom of despair.

Then I despair... I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always.

For happiness one needs security but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed to have despaired and have recovered hope.

If your determination is fixed I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength but perseverance.

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time at all times who suffers harm done to others whose greatest passion is compassion whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.

Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair against our will comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

To me the black black woman is our essential mother the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair almost entirely of our future as a people.

When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.