A high-school girl, seated next to a famous astronomer at a dinner party, struck up a conversation with him by asking: What do you do for a living? I study astronomy, he replied. Really? said the teenager, wide-eyed. I finished astronomy last year.

Hope cherishes no illusions, nor does it yield to cynicism.

A young lady went into a bookstore and asked the clerk for Irving Stone's book, Immoral Wife. The title is Immortal Wife, the clerk replied. I'll get it for you. Oh, please don't bother, If that's the correct name of the book, I don't think I'd care for it. I had something else in mind.

A candle loses nothing of its light by lighting another candle.

Hope puts up with modest gains, realizing that the longest journey starts with one step.

The will of a wealthy New York woman, in addition to distributing her worldly goods to her children, left them the following advice: Love one another. Hold fast to that whether you understand one another or not, and remember nothing really matters except being kind to one another in the name of Christ and to all the world as far as you can reach.

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: 'It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.'

Hope lights a candle instead of cursing the darkness.

My center is giving way, my right is pushed back, my left is wavering. The situation is excellent. I shall attack!

Some time ago we heard a strange story. The pilot of a small plane said that he had been caught in a one hundred fifty mile gale, which held his plane perfectly still. The motor was roaring, he claimed, but the plane was not moving. It was weird, he said , to be going one hundred fifty miles an hour and yet not be going anywhere at all.

Some time ago I took a trip on the Hudson and Manhattan Transit System. Not being familiar with the names of the various stops, I asked the man next to me the name of the station where we had just stopped. He replied, I've been riding this line for fifteen years and I only know two stops: where I get on and where I get off.

Hope opens doors where despair closes them.

A Seattle lawyer once interrupted his lengthy cross-examination of a witness and exclaimed, Your Honor, one of the jurors is asleep. You put him to sleep, replied the judge. Suppose you wake him up.

Hope discovers what can be done instead of grumbling about what cannot.