"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 ability to start out upon your own impulse is fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms. . . . Getting started, keeping going, getting started again in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm."
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Source: Seamus Heaney (2010). “Opened Ground”, Faber & Faber
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