Above all else [Nietzsche] fears being deceived in faith, hope, and love—after all, all three states of mind open one to deception—and would rather suffer anything than the humiliation of being fooled. This may be said to be the very origin of the hermeneutics of suspicion, the adolescent fear of being caught believing in that which others have ceased to believe in. Nietzsche is so often praised for the daring of his thought, and this is not wholly inaccurate, but whatever daring his thought may have is, paradoxically enough, produced by his exceptional timidity in living.

—

Hope is the virtue by means of which suspicion can be overcome. The charitable reader offers the gift of constant and loving attention—faithfulness—to a story, to a poem, to an argument, in hope that it will be rewarded. But this hope involves neither demand nor expectation; indeed, if it demanded or expected it would not be hope.

-Dr. Alan Jacobs, A Theology of Reading

[via an ecstasy of particulars]