Too many run out of hope before they run out of time.
From The Easy Virtue, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
There is a man who comes to the bench by the maples every Thursday with a folder of papers, and today he did not open it. He sat with his hands on it, the way you hold a thing you have already decided about, and then he got up and went home with the folder still shut. He has, by my counting, a great many Thursdays left. For years I thought the sad thing was running out of time, and I wrote a lot of lines about the shortness of things, most of them sincere and none of them quite right; too many run out of hope before they run out of time. Switch says the folder is probably just taxes. I watched the light move off the bench and could not decide whether that made it better.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- Hope for a better future, then head that way.
- Everything is possible, because nothing real is ever lost.
- Every kindness extended a stranger reduces a little the strangeness of the world.
- Just because the situation is critical does not mean it is impossible.
- If your feet are tapping, your heart is beating.
- If you want someone to listen, say something worth listening to.