Hope is the capacity to work for something, to continually "go for it," simply because it is good, desirable, or "worthy" — and not because we have a fairly good chance of succeeding, and not necessarily because there may be some juicy reward in it for us. The more desperate the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the more forbidding the circumstances, the greater the odds against things turning out well, the deeper the hope. The more hopeless the present may appear to be, the more ardent our hope for something better. . . .
Hope is the serene conviction that something makes sense, that it's worth it, regardless of how it might turn out.
— Michael Downey, Hope Begins Where Hope Begins