Hope, when it is honest, does not look like optimism. It looks like a small light kept lit through a long night — practical, ordinary, unafraid of the dark.
Optimism forecasts; hope endures. Optimism explains; hope stays. One requires the world to cooperate. The other only requires that we keep the candle where we said we would keep it.
This is why hope is quiet. Loud hopes are almost always something else — appetite, perhaps, or fear in costume. Real hope has already made its peace with waiting.