“The best of life was hope”

“The best of life was hope” is Herr Gosch’s reflection on the value of ideals that may never be attained. Spoken during a negotiation with Thomas Buddenbrook, the maxim gathers together Gosch’s memories of public upheaval, his awareness of age and bodily decline, and his insistence that hope has worth even without fulfillment. It also marks a pointed contrast between the active man he considers fortunate and the dreamer who needs hope to endure.

Meaning and Context

Gosch introduces the thought while describing his life to Thomas. He remembers revolutions and wars as forces that had reached into his own experience, and recalls standing beside Consul Johann Buddenbrook during a historic Town Council meeting when they faced a furious crowd. His life, he insists, was not poor, either outwardly or inwardly: he has felt energy, held fast to ideals, and kept his heart open to great experiences.

Yet the present makes the distance between aspiration and achievement unmistakable. Gosch says that ideals do not exist only to be reached and realized. The stars serve as his image: people aspire toward them not because they expect to possess them, but because they offer hope. The maxim therefore does not dismiss ideals as futile; it locates their value partly in the striving and expectation they sustain.

Hope and the Contrast Between Lives

Gosch supports the idea with a French aphorism attributed in the passage to La Rochefoucauld: “L'espérance toute trompeuse qu'elle est, sert au moin à nous mener à fin de la vie par un chemin agréable.” Hope may deceive, the saying acknowledges, but it can still lead a person through life along a more agreeable path. Gosch’s formulation turns that qualified consolation into a compact principle: hope matters not only as a route to success but as a way of living before success is secured.

He distinguishes this need from Thomas’s apparent good fortune. The person carried on the shoulders of active life, with good fortune playing around his brow, has less need of such consolations; the person who dreams in the dark depths needs them greatly. When Gosch suddenly calls Thomas fortunate, he lays a hand on the senator’s knee and looks up at him with moist eyes. His admiration is sincere, but it also gives the maxim its emotional edge: hope is most necessary where action and fortune have not delivered their rewards.

The Saying Within the Scene

The passage sets reflection against bodily decline. Gosch says that old age is approaching with its infirmities, that his arm trembles, and that he spills half his evening glass of grog. The will, he says, no longer triumphs over the body. Against this loss of physical command, he asserts that his soul is not impoverished and that his heart remains young, still able to embrace ideals faithfully. Hope is thus presented as an inward resource that survives diminished strength.

The scene then sharply returns from philosophy to business. After praising Thomas’s fortune, Gosch falls into a dark reverie, sits up, and declares that their conversation must turn to business because time is money. He offers twenty-nine thousand thalers, or eighty-seven thousand marks courant, for Thomas’s mother’s house. The movement from stars and ideals to a precise price makes the saying part of the action rather than a detached maxim: Gosch can dwell in dreams and still resume negotiation, carrying his reflective inward life into the practical world.