Recently, I discovered a quote attributed to Seamus Heany, Irish poet and playwright (1939-2013), perhaps best known for winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. This is that quote:
“Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.”
The origin of the quote, though, might be a paraphrase from a former president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel (1936-2011), who reportedly said: “It [hope] is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” Heany seems to have used Havel’s conception of hope and voiced it poetically.
Regardless of the origin of the saying, I like Heany’s poetic expression.
Continue reading “HOPE IS NOT OPTIMISM by Esther Nelson”
Feminism and Religion 