I wasn’t very long ago that my co-blogger wrote about being hard-hit by the news and needing to find HOPE.  And here we are again, many of us with hearts bleeding for Boston and Texas and other places around the world where despair rages. As long as we keep getting news, we’ll never have a shortage of despair, it seems. And as long as we have despair, we’ll need to cling to hope. So instead of our usual Quotable Nerdy Chick Feature, this week I wanted to share what some great people have said hope.

Alexandre Dumas:

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must of felt what it is to die … that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.  — Alexandre Dumas

Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.

J.R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings :

The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.

Martin Luther King Jr. :

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”

Michelle Obama :

You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

 Langston Hughes:

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.

Sunsets like this one in Beaufort somehow give me hope.