how poor and disheartening a thing is experience compared with hope!
The heart less bounding at emotion new, The hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again.
The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.
No matter how the sun shone, the sea held forth no more promises.
He might be tall enough to see into tomorrow, but he hadn’t looked there in a long, long time. He’d forgotten how bright it was. So bright he could hardly stand it.
The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.
Worse than despair, Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope.
Where art thou, beloved To-morrow? When young and old, and strong and weak, Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow, Thy sweet smiles we ever seek,-- In thy place--ah! well-a-day! We find the thing we fled--To-day!
