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Faith

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Unless you believe, you shall not understand. ~ Augustine of Hippo

Faith is confidence or trust in a person, idea, deity, religion, or any specifiable belief that is not based on proof. While some have argued that many forms of faith are opposed to reason, proponents of faiths argue that the proper domain of faith concerns questions which cannot be settled by evidence, and that rationality and faith are complementary aspects of human perceptual and imaginative capacities. The word faith is often used synonymously for hope, trust, belief, or a religious tradition.

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A

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Blind faith in any institution does not make one honorable. ~ Ro Laren
Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest understand. ~ Augustine of Hippo
  • "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing."
    "Oh," says man, "but the Babel fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't."
    "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
    "Ah, that was easy," says man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white, and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.
    Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys.
  • I would fain ask one of these bigotted Infidels, supposing all the great Points of Atheism … were laid together and formed into a kind of Creed, according to the Opinions of the most celebrated Atheists; I say, supposing such a Creed as this were formed, and imposed upon any one People in the World, whether it would not require an infinitely greater Measure of Faith, than any Set of Articles which they so violently oppose.
  • No doctrine can be a proper object of our faith which it is not more reasonable to believe than to reject. […] In receiving therefore the most mysterious doctrines of revelation, the ultimate appeal is to reason: not to determine whether she could have discovered these truths; not to declare whether considered in themselves they appear probable; but to decide whether it is not more reasonable to believe what God speaks, than to confide in our own crude and feeble conceptions.
    • Archibald Alexander, Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration and Canonical Authority of the Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1836), Ch. I: The Right Use of Reason in Religion, pp. 10–11
  • The power of any faith comes not from its coercion of critics and dissenters. It comes from the moral integrity and the intellectual strength of its believers.
  • Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.
    • Maya Angelou, Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer (2006)
  • Ἔστιν δὲ πίστις ἐλπιζοµένων ὑπόστασις, πραγµάτων ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεποµένων. Ἐν ταύτῃ γὰρ ἐµαρτυρήθησαν οἱ πρεσβύτεροι. Πίστει νοοῦµεν κατηρτίσθαι τοὺς αἰῶνας ῥήµατι Θεοῦ, εἰς τὸ µὴ ἐκ ϕαινοµένων τὰ βλεπόµενα γεγονέναι.
    • Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
  • God hath endowed us with different faculties, suitable and proportional to the different objects that engage them. We discover sensible things by our senses, rational things by our reason, things intellectual by understanding; but divine and celestial things he has reserved for the exercise of our faith, which is a kind of divine and superior sense in the soul. Our reason and understanding may at some times snatch a glimpse, but cannot take a steady and adequate prospect of things so far above their reach and sphere. Thus, by the help of natural reason, I may know there is a God, the first cause and original of all things; but his essence, attributes, and will, are hid within the veil of inaccessible light, and cannot be discerned by us but through faith in his divine revelation. He that walks without this light, walks in darkness, though he may strike out some faint and glimmering sparkles of his own. And he that, out of the gross and wooden dictates of his natural reason, carves out a religion to himself, is but a more refined idolater than those who worship stocks and stones, hammering an idol out of his fancy, and adoring the works of his own imagination. For this reason God is nowhere said to be jealous, but upon the account of his worship.
  • The Sea of Faith
    Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
    Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
    But now I only hear
    Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
    Retreating, to the breath
    Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
    And naked shingles of the world.
  • Blind faith in any institution does not make one honorable.
  • Est autem fides credere quod nondum vides; cujus fidei merces est videre quod credis.
    • Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
  • Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.

B

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Faith is a higher faculty than reason. ~ Philip James Bailey
Reason without faith is doomed to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence. Faith without reason risks being cut off from everyday life. ~ Benedict XVI
All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own. ~ Richard Francis Burton
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it. ~ Samuel Butler
  • Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again, and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, if the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.
    • Francis Bacon, Of Boldness, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds; he whose words exceed his deeds, know verily his death is better than his life.
    • Bahá'u'lláh, "Asl-i-Kullu’l-Khayr (Words of Wisdom)" in Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh
  • There is one inevitable criterion of judgment touching religious faith in doctrinal matters. Can you reduce it to practice? If not, have none of it.
    • Hosea Ballou, Manuscript, Sermons, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • “She is armed with the power of the spirit. The power of faith.”
    Dravid had resisted the urge to yawn. He had heard this kind of “empty-hand, spirit-power” mania too many times to even give it credence by mocking it. He had also seen any number of similarly deluded cults and spiritual blind-faithers walk like fools into the trajectory of safe-care weapons, only to have their very real physical bodies torn to shreds by unspiritual projectiles and explosives that needed no faith in invisible deities to perform their lethal function. Faith might move mountains; but lasers cut flesh. And without flesh to sustain it, there was nothing left to harbor faith.
  • The idea of faith interested him, even fascinated him, not as an intellectual idea, not as a concept or some abstract theoretical framework, but as a way of controlling people, as a way of understanding and so manipulating them. As a flaw, in the end, as something which was wrong with others that was not wrong with him.
  • Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. It is intellectual bankruptcy. With faith, you don't have to put any work into proving your case. You can "just believe."
    • Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (1992), p. 102
    • Variant: If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that the assertion can't be taken on its own merits. If something is true, we don't invoke faith. Instead, we use reason to prove it. Faith is intellectual bankruptcy. With faith, you don't have to put any work into proving your case or overcoming objections. You can "just believe."
      • Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists (2008)
  • Faith is never identical with "piety".
  • A particularly crucial battleground in today's cultural struggle between the supremacy of technology and human moral responsibility is the field of bioethics, where the very possibility of integral human development is radically called into question. In this most delicate and critical area, the fundamental question asserts itself force-fully: is man the product of his own labours or does he depend on God? Scientific discoveries in this field and the possibilities of technological intervention seem so advanced as to force a choice between two types of reasoning: reason open to transcendence or reason closed within immanence. We are presented with a clear either/ or. Yet the rationality of a self-centred use of technology proves to be irrational because it implies a decisive rejection of meaning and value. It is no coincidence that closing the door to transcendence brings one up short against a difficulty: how could being emerge from nothing, how could intelligence be born from chance? Faced with these dramatic questions, reason and faith can come to each other's assistance. Only together will they save man. Entranced by an exclusive reliance on technology, reason without faith is doomed to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence. Faith without reason risks being cut off from everyday life.
  • Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.
    • The Bible, Ecclesiastes 11:1
  • And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
    • The Bible, Matthew 17:20
  • Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge about things without parallel.
    • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
  • An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
    • Book of Common Prayer, Catechism, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • I believe — that the Lord God created the universe.
    I believe — that He sent His only Son to die for my sins.
    And I believe — that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America.
    I am a Mormon
    and a Mormon just believes.
    • "I Believe", The Book of Mormon (musical) (2011)
  • Orthodoxy can be learnt from others; living faith must be a matter of personal experience.
    • "Buchsel," as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 239
  • You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
  • Strike from mankind the principle of Faith, and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep.

C

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Faith is more basic than language or theology. Faith is the response to something which is calling us from the timeless part of our reality. Faith may be encouraged by what has happened in the past, or what is thought to have happened in the past, but the only proof of it is in the future. Scriptures and creeds may come to seem incredible, but faith will still go dancing on. ~ Sydney Carter
A faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets. ~ Arthur C. Clarke
When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. ~ Dinah Craik
Who hath no faith to man, to God hath none. ~ George Chapman
  • What accords better and more aptly with faith than to acknowledge ourselves divested of all virtue that we may be clothed by God, devoid of all goodness that we may be filled by Him, the slaves of sin that he may give us freedom, blind that he may enlighten, lame that he may cure, and feeble that he may sustain us; to strip ourselves of all ground of glorying that he alone may shine forth glorious, and we be glorified in him?
  • Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality. … Don’t put limitations on yourself. Other people will do that for you. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t bet against yourself. And take risk. NASA has this phrase that they like, "Failure is not an option." But failure has to be an option. In art and exploration, failure has to be an option. Because it is a leap of faith. And no important endeavour that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. … In whatever you are doing, failure is an option. But fear is not.
  • I credit that eight years of grammar school with nourishing me in a direction where I could trust myself and trust my instincts. They gave me the tools to reject my faith. They taught me to question and think for myself and to believe in my instincts to such an extent that I just said, "This is a wonderful fairy tale they have going here, but it's not for me."
  • Faith is more basic than language or theology. Faith is the response to something which is calling us from the timeless part of our reality. Faith may be encouraged by what has happened in the past, or what is thought to have happened in the past, but the only proof of it is in the future. Scriptures and creeds may come to seem incredible, but faith will still go dancing on. Even though (because it rejects a doctrine) it is now described as "doubt". This, I believe, is the kind of faith that Christ commended.
  • You've promised that if we come to You and ask something in faith, that You'll do it.
    • Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, p. 58
  • I now had enough faith not only to believe there were answer, but to feel certain that those answers would become apparent at some point in the future.
  • I believe that faith is a precursor of all our ideas. Without faith, there never could have evolved hypothesis, theory, science or mathematics. I believe that faith is an extension of the mind. It is the key that negates the impossible. To deny faith is to refute oneself and the spirit that generates all our creative forces. My faith is in the unknown, in all that we do not understand by reason; I believe that what is beyond our comprehension is a simple fact in other dimensions, and that in the realm of the unknown there is an infinite power for good.
  • Who hath no faith to man, to God hath none.
  • Others, one suspects, are afraid that the crossing of space, and above all contact with intelligent but nonhuman races, may destroy the foundations of their religious faith. They may be right, but in any event their attitude is one which does not bear logical examination — for a faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
  • All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things unseen. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions. The man strongly possessed of an idea is the master of all who are uncertain and wavering. Clear, deep, living convictions rule the world.
    • James Freeman Clarke, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 222
  • In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
  • Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine word which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart; which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and feelings.
    • Samuel T. Coleridge, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 219
  • Faith makes the discords of the present, the harmonies of the future.
    • Robert Collyer, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 218
  • 'Faith' is merely fear dressed up as virtue... Faith is the grip that clergy have over you. It's the invisible rope around your neck that pulls you along the road they want you to travel, for their benefit, not yours. It's a dead-end word. It's a word of bondage. It's a word that lets you believe what you've been told to believe, without feeling that you've been told what to believe, but you have, and you can stop pretending any time you like. It's not a virtue, that's the last thing it is. It's an abdication from reality. It's a dumb act of self-hypnosis. It's a cowardly cop-out. It's gullibility with a halo, and hiding behind it is like pretending to be an invalid.
  • "Take courage, soul!
    Hold not thy strength in vain!
    With faith o'ercome the steeps
    Thy God hath set for thee.
    Beyond the Alpine summits of great pain
    Lieth thine Italy."
    • Rose Terry Cooke, Beyond, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
    Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.
    • Abraham Cowley, On the Death of Crashaw, line 55, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.
  • I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

D

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Faith is the promise of the future. ~ Christopher Dawson
Faith — is the Pierless Bridge
Supporting what We see
Unto the Scene that We do not. ~ Emily Dickinson
Faith allows us to enter peacefully into the dark night which faces every one of us at one time or another. ~ Catherine Doherty
  • It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
  • Reason lives on the systematization of the past, but Faith is the promise of the future.
  • Faith — is the Pierless Bridge
    Supporting what We see
    Unto the Scene that We do not.
  • Faith is a fine invention
    For gentlemen who see;
    But Microscopes are prudent
    In an emergency.
    • Emily Dickinson, Poems, Second Series, XXX, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • Faith sees God's face in every human face.
  • Faith allows us to enter peacefully into the dark night which faces every one of us at one time or another.
  • It is so important for us to have faith, trust, confidence in one another. It is the only way we can communicate. Without faith there is no communication, there is no love, or if there was a little love, it will die without hope, trust, and confidence. Even if it doesn't die right away, it will be so weak, so ill, and so tired that communication will be miserable as well.
  • To take up half on trust, and half to try,
    Name it not faith but bungling bigotry.
    • John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), Part I, line 141

E

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  • Love is no ingredient in a merely speculative faith, but it is the life and soul of a practical faith... A speculative faith consists only in the assent of the understanding, but in a saving faith there is also the consent of the heart.
  • Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead. "Faith works by love."
    • Jonathan Edwards, Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 396
  • No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
    • George Eliot, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 219
  • Faith lived in the incognito is one which is located outside the criticism coming from society, from politics, from history, for the very reason that it has itself the vocation to be a source of criticism. It is faith (lived in the incognito) which triggers the issues for the others, which causes everything seemingly established to be placed in doubt, which drives a wedge into the world of false assurances.
    • Jacques Ellul, L'espérance oubliée (1972) [Hope in Time of Abandonment] as translated by C. Edward Hopkin (1973)
  • I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
    For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
    For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
    But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
    Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
    So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

F

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The Way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason: The Morning Daylight appears plainer when you put out your Candle. ~ Benjamin Franklin
Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. ~ Erich Fromm
  • Faith is a letting down our nets into the untranparent deeps at the divine command, not knowing what we shall take.
    • Frederick William Faber, Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches and among Foreign Peoples (London: J.F.G. and J. Rivington, 1842), p. 545
  • Malory clung to his faith with fierce obliviousness to “facts”—in itself an indication that he had gone mad, if his critics were to be believed.
  • Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.

G

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Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness. ~ G. I. Gurdjieff
Faith cannot be given to man.Faith arises in a man and increases [...] from understanding. Understanding is the essence obtained from information intentionally learned and from all kinds of experiences personally experienced. ~ G. I. Gurdjieff
  • Nimrod, becoming weary of arguing with Abraham, decided to cast him before his god--fire--and challenged Abraham's deliverance by the God of Abraham, but God saved him out of the fiery furnace. Haran too was challenged to declare his god, but halted between two opinions, and delayed his answer until he saw the result of Abraham's fate. When he saw the latter saved he declared himself on the side of Abraham's God, thinking that he too, having now become an adherent of that God, would be saved by the same miracle. But since his faith was not real, but depended on a miracle, he perished in the fire, into which like Abraham he was cast by Nimrod. This is hinted in the words (Gen. 11. 28): 'And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.'
  • We lean on Faith; and some less wise have cried,
    "Behold the butterfly, the seed that's cast!"
    Vain hopes that fall like flowers before the blast!
    What man can look on Death unterrified?
    • R. W. Gilder, Love and Death, Stanza 2, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • Die Botschaft hör' ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Glaube;
    Das Wunder ist des Glaubens liebstes Kind.
    • Your messages I hear, but faith has not been given;
      The dearest child of Faith is Miracle.
    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, I. 1. 413, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • If you have any faith, give me, for heaven's sake, a share of it! Your doubts you may keep to yourself, for I have a plenty of my own.
    • Goethe, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 223
  • Faith in an order, which is the basis of science, will not (as it cannot reasonably) be dissevered from faith in an Ordainer, which is the basis of religion.
  • If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?
  • Faith is the backbone of the social and the foundation of the commercial fabric; remove faith between man and man, and society and commerce fall to pieces. There is not a happy home on earth but stands on faith; our heads are pillowed on it, we sleep at night in its arms with greater security for the safety of our lives, peace, and prosperity than bolts and bars can give.
    • Thomas Guthrie, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 218
  • God comes down in the rain,
    And the crop grows tall—
    This is the country faith,
    And the best of all.

H

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  • וְצַדִּ֖יק בֶּאֱמוּנָתֹ֥ו יִחְיֶֽה.‏‎
  • Faith is a grasping of Almighty power;
    The hand of man laid on the arm of God; —
    The grand and blessed hour
    In which the things impossible to me
    Become the possible, O Lord, through Thee.
    • Anna Elizabeth Hamilton, "Great is Thy Faith", in He Giveth Songs by W. M. L. Jay, A. E. Hamilton and Others (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1881), p. 132
  • Faith, Quinn mused, was a strange power. They had committed their lives to the sect, never questioning its gospels. Yet in all of that time, they had the reassurance of routine … The bedrock of every religion, that your God is a promise, never to be encountered in this life, this universe.
    • Peter F. Hamilton, in The Naked God: Flight (2000), p. 203
  • A Faith that sets bounds to itself, that will believe so much and no more, that will trust thus far and no further, is none. It is only Doubt taking a nap in an elbow chair. The husband, whose scepticism is prurient enough to contemplate the possibility of his wife's proving false, richly deserves that she should do so.
  • The moderation we see among nonfundamentalists is not some sign that faith itself has evolved; it is, rather, the product of the many hammer blows of modernity that have exposed certain tenets of faith to doubt.
  • Faith is generally nothing more than the permission religious people give to one another to believe things strongly without evidence.
  • Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it — especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible.
  • What sought they thus afar?
    Bright jewels of the mine?
    The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?—
    They sought a faith's pure shrine!
    • Felicia Hemans, Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.
  • Faith is a gift of God, which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menace of torture.
  • Faith draws the poison from every grief, takes the sting from every loss, and quenches the fire of every pain; and only faith can do it.
    • Josiah Gilbert Holland, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 218
  • Faith, as an intellectual state, is self-reliance, which, if you have a metaphysical turn, you will find is not so much of a paradox as it sounds at first.
  • Mirror of constant faith, revered and mourn'd!
    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book IV, line 229. Pope's translation, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • My faith is great: out of the transient darkness of the present the shadows will flee away, and Day will yet dawn. I am an Anarchist.
    No man who believes in force and violence is an Anarchist. The true Anarchist decries all influences save those of love and reason. Ideas are his only arms.
    Being an Anarchist I am also a Socialist. Socialism is the antithesis of Anarchy. One is the North Pole of Truth, the other the South.
    • Elbert Hubbard, in "The Better Part" in A Message to Garcia and Thirteen Other Things (1901), p. 132
  • It’s a real shame that I let something as insignificant as simple belief rob me of my right to profound experience.
    • Tim Huntley, One on Me (1980), Chapter 11
  • As it is with all matters of faith, though, I found nothing that could not sustain at least two interpretations.
    • Tim Huntley, One on Me (1980), Chapter 23

I

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  • I believe it was Magellan who said, "The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church."
  • Never confuse faith, or belief — of any kind — with something even remotely intellectual.
  • Our faith begins at the point where atheists suppose it must be at an end. Our faith begins with the bleakness and power which is the night of the cross, abandonment, temptation and doubt about everything that exists! Our faith … must be born of nothingness, it must taste this nothingness and be given it to taste in a way that no philosophy of nihilism can imagine.
    • Hans Joachim Iwand, unpublished manuscript, quoted in The Crucified God (1972) by Jürgen Moltmann, as translated by R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (1974), p. 31; this quote is sometimes misattributed to Moltmann.

J

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Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? … Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn? ~ Book of Job
Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself. ~ Pope John Paul II
The general rule is, that Truth should never be violated, because it is of the utmost importance to the comfort of life, that we should have a full security by mutual faith; and occasional inconveniences should be willingly suffered that we may preserve it. ~ Samuel Johnson
  • Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
  • The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
  • It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
    • William James, in "Is Life Worth Living?" The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
  • I have long defended to my own students the lawfulness of of voluntarily adopted faith;but as soon as they have got well imbued with the logical spirit, they have as a rule refused to admit my contention to be lawful philosophically, even though in point of fact they were personally chock full of some faith or other themselves.
  • Truly I say to you, if you have faith, and do not doubt, you shall not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, "Be taken up and cast into the sea," it shall happen.
  • Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?
  • The German is the discipline of fear; ours is the discipline of faith — and faith will triumph.
    • Gen. Joseph Joffre, at the unveiling of a statue of Lafayette in Brooklyn (1917), as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.
  • If he were
    To be made honest by an act of parliament
    I should not alter in my faith of him.
    • Ben Jonson, The Devil Is an Ass (performed 1616; published 1631), Act IV, scene 1
  • Our faith is a light by nature coming of our endless Day, that is our Father, God. In which light our Mother, Christ, and our good Lord, the Holy Ghost, leadeth us in this passing life. This light is measured discreetly, needfully standing to us in the night. The light is cause of our life; the night is cause of our pain and of all our woe: in which we earn meed and thanks of God. For we, with mercy and grace, steadfastly know and believe our light, going therein wisely and mightily.
  • Charity keepeth us in Faith and Hope, and Hope leadeth us in Charity. And in the end all shall be Charity.
  • It's faith, Hawkgirl. You're not supposed to understand it... you just have it.
  • The general rule is, that Truth should never be violated, because it is of the utmost importance to the comfort of life, that we should have a full security by mutual faith; and occasional inconveniences should be willingly suffered that we may preserve it. There must, however, be some exceptions. If, for instance, a murderer should ask you which way a man is gone, you may tell him what is not true, because you are under a previous obligation not to betray a man to a murderer.

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When in the dark night of suffering sagacity cannot see a handbreadth ahead of it, then faith can see God, since faith sees best in the dark. ~ Søren Kierkegaard
  • I've seen dreams that move the mountains
    Hope that doesn't ever end
    Even when the sky is falling
    I've seen miracles just happen
    Silent prayers get answered
    Broken hearts become brand new
    That's what faith can do.
  • Religion is based on faith alone, and faith stands in no need of logical demonstrations, but is itself justified in postulating its content as a necessary hypothesis.
    • Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, translated by Louis Infield (Hackett: 1920), p. 88
  • Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.
  • The believer humanly comprehends how heavy the suffering is, but in faith’s wonder that it is beneficial to him, he devoutly says: It is light. Humanly he says: It is impossible, but he says it again in faith’s wonder that what he humanly cannot understand is beneficial to him. In other words, when sagacity is able to perceive the beneficialness, then faith cannot see God; but when in the dark night of suffering sagacity cannot see a handbreadth ahead of it, then faith can see God, since faith sees best in the dark.
  • Whoever has the world’s treasures has them no matter how he got them. In the world of the spirit it is otherwise.
  • The ethical as such is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which from another angle means that it applies at all times. It rests immanent in itself, has nothing outside itself that is its τέλος but is itself the τέλος for everything outside itself, and when the ethical has absorbed this into itself, it goes not further. The single individual, sensately and psychically qualified in immediacy, is the individual who has his τέλος in the universal, and it is his ethical task continually to express himself in this, to annul his singularity in order to become the universal. As soon as the single individual asserts himself in his singularity before the universal, he sins, and only by acknowledging this can he be reconciled again with the universal. ... Faith [in contrast to the ethical] is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal ... so that after having been in the universal he as the single individual isolates himself as higher than the universal.
  • But faith, it keeps the lamp alight; in waiting and in expectation keeps the lamp alight to the end; and if fulfilment comes, still keeps the lamp alight, in not forgetting that it was impossible.
    • Søren Kierkegaard, Gospel of Suffering (1847), David F. Swenson and Lilian Marvin Swenson trans. (1948), p. 35
  • The belief that God will do everything for man is as untenable as the belief that man can do everything for himself. It, too, is based on a lack of faith. We must learn that to trust God with the expectation that he will do everything while we do nothing, is not faith, but superstition.
    • Martin Luther King, Jr, (between July 1962 and March 1963), as quoted on The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr (2007), p. 552
  • Faith is taking the first step, even when you're scared shitless and don't see the whole goddamn staircase.
  • We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other... except through faith.
  • And we shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only with what we can understand, but content with what we do not understand—the habit of mind which theologians call—and rightly—faith in God.
    • Charles Kingsley, Health and Education, On Bio-Geology, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

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  • For those who are born into atheism, it's a faith like any other. The only real atheist is an ex-believer.
    • Gabriel Lauber, Denken verdirbt den Charakter: Alle Aphorismen (1984), p. 39
  • Reason is the linking together of truths, but particularly (when it is compared with faith) of those to which the human mind can attain naturally without being helped by the light of faith.
    • Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Preliminary Dissertation On The Conformity Of Faith And reason, as quoted in Theodocy (2010), p. 73
  • The object of faith is the truth, which God has revealed in an extraordinary way
Darth Vader: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
  • The faith for which God justifieth, is not an empty speculation, but a faith joined with repentance, and working by love. And for this, which was, in effect, to return to God himself, and to their natural allegiance due to him, and to advance as much as lay in them, the glory of the kingdom, which he had promised his Son ; God was pleased to declare, he would accept them, receive them to grace, and blot out all their former transgressions. This is evidently the covenant of grace, as delivered in the scriptures [...] It is a law of faith, whereby God has promised to forgive all our sins, upon our repentance and believing something ; and to impute that faith to us for righteousness...
    • John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures, (1695), p. 236
  • The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.

M

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  • Ye children of promise, who are awaiting your call to glory, take possession of the inheritance that now is yours. By faith take the promises. Live upon them, not upon emotions. Remember feeling is not faith. Faith grasps and clings to the promises. Faith says, "I am certain, not because feeling testifies to it, but because God says it."
    • Mandeville, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 222
  • The atheists have the greatest faith: they believe that God does not exist.
  • Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
  • “I know, I know,” Moore said. “Mad beliefs like that, eh? Must be some metaphor, right? Must mean something else?” Shook his head. “What an awfully arrogant thing. What if faiths are exactly what they are? And mean exactly what they say?”
  • O welcome pure-ey'd Faith, white-handed Hope,
    Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!
  • That in such righteousness
    To them by faith imputed they may find
    Justification towards God, and peace
    Of conscience.
  • Yet I argue not
    Again Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
    Of right or hope; but still bear up and steer
    Eight onward.
    • John Milton, To Cyriac Skinner, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • Combien de choses nous servoient hier d'articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd'hui!
    • Translation: How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which to-day are fables to us!
      • Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Book I, Chapter XXVI, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • Vjera se prihvaća slobodnom voljom, a ne razumom.
    • Translation: Faith is accepted by free will, not by reason.
      • Petar Mitrikeski in TV talk-show "Peti dan" (Fifth day) on Croatian Radiotelevision, 22 December 2017
  • But Faith, fanatic Faith, once wedded fast
    To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.
    • Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan
  • If faith produce no works, I see
    That faith is not a living tree.
    Thus faith and works together grow;
    No separate life they e'er can know:
    They're soul and body, hand and heart:
    What God hath joined, let no man part.
    • Hannah More, Dan and Jane, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • Faith is a vice pretending to be a virtue, its lies and errors and frothy nonsense deluding us and distracting us from action. There's no salvation in wishful thinking, only inertia. Faith is the enemy of reason. The one thing every single one of us here must be united in despising is faith. It's the barren refuge of the vacuous, the fearful, the frauds, and the obstacles to accomplishment.

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Buddhism does not demand blind faith from its adherents. Here mere belief is dethroned and is substituted by confidence based on knowledge, which, in Pali, is known as Saddha ... The confidence placed by a follower on the Buddha is like that of a sick person in a noted physician, or a student in his teacher. ~ Narada Maha Thera
  • Buddhism does not demand blind faith from its adherents. Here mere belief is dethroned and is substituted by confidence based on knowledge, which, in Pali, is known as Saddha. The confidence placed by a follower on the Buddha is like that of a sick person in a noted physician, or a student in his teacher.
  • We may infer from any defeat of ours that it is due either to lack of faith or failure to obey. No other reason can suffice.
  • Faith and God belong together somewhat as sense experience and physical reality do.
  • Faith Saves.—Virtue gives happiness and a state of blessedness only to those who have a strong faith in their virtue:—not, however, to the more refined souls whose virtue consists of a profound distrust of themselves and of all virtue. After all, therefore, it is "faith that saves" here also! (214)
  • It is always a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science rests, —and that even we knowing ones of to-day, the godless and anti-metaphysical, still take our fire from the conflagration kindled by a belief a millennium old, the Christian belief, which was also the belief of Plato, that God is truth, that the truth is divine... (344)
  • That faith makes blessed under certain circumstances, that blessedness does not make of a fixed idea a true idea, that faith moves no mountains but puts mountains where there are none: a quick walk through a madhouse enlightens one sufficiently about this.
    • Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (1888), Sec. 51
    • Often paraphrased as: A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
  • »Glaube« heißt Nicht-wissen-wollen, was wahr ist.
    • Faith means not wanting to know what is true.
  • The truest visions of religion are illusions, which may be partially realised by being resolutely believed. For what religion believes to be true is not wholly true but ought to be true; and may become true if its truth is not doubted.
  • Intellect separated from faith will lack the firm belief in its own power to be the guide on the path of life. Without this inner conviction it will hesitate to follow in earnest its own conclusions and commands.

O

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  • Faith is not just something you have, it's something you do.
  • Orthodoxy is the ability to say two and two make five when faith requires it.

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In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't. ~ Blaise Pascal
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right. ~ Alexander Pope
  • Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.
  • In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
  • I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.
  • For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
    His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
  • The enormous faith of many made for one.
  • “You strong in your faith, then?” she said, as if she couldn’t leave things alone.
    Oats sighed. “I try to be.”
    “But you read a lot of books, I’m thinking. Hard to have faith, ain’t it, when you read too many books.”

R

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  • What is wanted is not the will-to-believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite.
  • We may define "faith" as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith". We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.
  • If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather then by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called "education". This last is particularly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defencelessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practiced in greater or less degree in the schools of every civilised country.
  • Faith is cold as ice. Why are little ones born only to suffer for the want of immunity or a bowl of rice? Well, who would hold a price on the heads of the innocent children if there's some immortal power to control the dice?
    • Rush, Roll the Bones (1991)

S

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Faith: The opposite of dogmatism. ~ John Ralston Saul
Men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude … that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits… ~ Baruch Spinoza
  • Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine
    By which alone the mortal heart is led
    Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
    • George Santayana, "O World, thou choosest not the better part", Sonnets and Other Verses (1906)
  • Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.
  • There are three lessons I would write, —
    Three words — as with a burning pen,
    In tracings of eternal light
    Upon the hearts of men.

    Have Hope. Though clouds environ now,
    And gladness hides her face in scorn,
    Put thou the shadow from thy brow, —
    No night but hath its morn.

    Have Faith. Where'er thy bark is driven, —
    The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth, —
    Know this: God rules the hosts of heaven,
    The habitants of earth.

    Have Love. Not love alone for one,
    But men, as man, thy brothers call;
    And scatter, like the circling sun,
    Thy charities on all.

    Thus grave these lessons on thy soul, —
    Hope, Faith, and Love, — and thou shalt find
    Strength when life's surges rudest roll,
    Light when thou else wert blind.

    • Friedrich Schiller, Hope, Faith, and Love (c. 1786); also known as "The Words of Strength", as translated in The Common School Journal Vol. IX (1847) edited by Horace Mann, p. 386
  • [A]re you tough enough to have faith in the things worthy of faith? A belief in your own particular God … an adherence to the tenets of your particular religion … all this with a decent regard and respect for the God and religions of others. Believe without proselytizing. Believe without peddling. Believe without working both sides of the street, trying to sell to others that which is uniquely your own. But most major here, simply believe. There’s no alternative to faith … and God help us, there’s no salvation without it.
  • Reason ambitions only a world; faith gives it infinity.
    • Antonin Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life, Preface to the 2nd edition (1934), translated by Mary Ryan. Cork: The Mercier Press, 1948, p. 8
  • Lack of faith doesn’t always make people secular. It often makes them seek out substitutes which provide some of the same things found in traditional religions, i.e. an all-encompassing view of the world, a sense of right and wrong, a place in which they belong and feel at home, etc... [T]hose are real human needs that almost everyone feels in some sense or another.
  • Set on your foot,
    And with a heart new-fir'd I follow you,
    To do I know not what: but it sufficeth
    That Brutus leads me on.
  • Faith ... is the unspoiled seed, the cause of abilities;
    Faith grows into the tree of Awakening.
    • Śikṣāsamuccaya, The Training Anthology of Śāntideva, as translated by Charles Goodman (Oxford University Press: 2016), p. 4
  • In People with no faith
    Bright qualities do not grow,
    Just as a green sprout
    Never grows from seeds burned by fire.
    • Śikṣāsamuccaya, The Training Anthology of Śāntideva, as translated by Charles Goodman (Oxford University Press: 2016), p. 6
  • Christian faith merely substitutes, provisionally, for clear knowledge: statements of the Holy Scripture on this subject are unmistakable.
    • Yves Simon, A General Theory of Authority (1962): Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980, p. 161; Simon cites 1 Cor. 13:12 and Heb. 11:1.
  • The saddest thing that can befall a soul
    Is when it loses faith in God and woman.
    • Alexander Smith, A Life Drama, scene 12, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • Beware of doubt—faith is the subtle chain,
    Which binds us to the infinite; the voice
    Of a deep life within, that will remain
    Until we crowd it thence.
    • Elizabeth Oakes Smith, "Atheism in Three Sonnets", XXVIII: "Faith", line 1, in The Poetical Writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1845), p. 201
  • It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.
    • Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir, Volume I, p. 53, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • Faith creates the foundation for conviction.
  • As men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude … that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey God freely with his whole heart, while nothing would be publicly honoured save justice and charity.
  • That's the thing about faith. If you don't have it, you can't understand it. And if you do, no explanation is necessary.
  • Faith is the key that unlocks the cabinet of God's treasures; the king's messenger from the celestial world, to bring all the supplies we need out of the fullness that there is in Christ.
    • J. Stephens, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 218
  • Faith is something that cannot be won through intimidation and fear.
  • Faith in a better than that which appears, is no less required by art than by religion.
    • John Sterling, "Thoughts and Images" (1838), Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. XLIV, p. 203; Essays and Tales (1848), Vol. II, p. 153
  • I heard once of an American who so defined faith, "that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue." For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of the big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him, but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe.
  • Faith is a beautiful thing. So are forest fires, and the color of gangrene. I think faith—especially capital-F Faith—is more dangerous and more disgusting than either. It is a substitute for thought.

T

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  • How sweet to have a common faith!
    To hold a common scorn of death!
  • Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
    And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith.
  • Whatever answers faith gives, regardless of which faith, or to whom the answers are given, such answers always give an infinite meaning to the finite existence of man; a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation or death. This means only in faith can we find the meaning and possibility of life.
    • Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, as quoted in The Portable Tolstoy (1978), Vol. Part 2, p. 704
  • Doubt, indeed, is the disease of this inquisitive, restless age. It is the price we pay for our advanced intelligence and civilization. It is the dim night of our resplendent day. But as the most beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith which springs from conflict is often the strongest and the best.

U

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  • Those who do not doubt do not believe. Faith is maintained by resolving doubts, and again resolving those further doubts which are suggested by the resolution of previous doubts.
    • Miguel de Unamuno, The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho (1914), Part 2, Ch. 10, in Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno, Volume 3, translated by Anthony Kerrigan. Bollingen Series LXXXV.3/Princeton University Press, 1967, p. 175

V

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Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakeable faith. ~ Vincent van Gogh
This saving faith is the perceiving, believing, and resting upon a fact — the atoning death of Jesus Christ. ~ Marvin Richardson Vincent
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. ~ Kurt Vonnegut
  • I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it.
    But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakeable faith.
  • This saving faith is the perceiving, believing, and resting upon a fact — the atoning death of Jesus Christ. The failure to understand this is one fruitful cause of the confusion in many minds about this subject. For not unfrequently persons are looking into their own hearts, and trying to discover whether they have faith or not, instead of looking away from themselves altogether at the object of faith.
  • Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.

W

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Scepticism is the beginning of faith. ~ Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray
  • Faith is seated in the understanding as well as in the will. It has an eye to see Christ as well as a wing to fly to Christ.
    • Richard Watson, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 219
  • Faith, though it hath sometimes a trembling hand, it must not have a withered hand, but must stretch.
    • Richard Watson, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 221
  • Everywhere, always, in everything, the social feeling produces a perfect imitation of faith, that is to say perfectly deceptive. This imitation has the great advantage of satisfying every part of the soul. That which longs for goodness believes it is fed. That which is mediocre is not hurt by the light; it is quite at ease. Thus everyone is in agreement. The soul is at peace. But Christ said that he did not come to bring peace. He brought a sword, the sword that severs in two, as Aeschylus says.
  • Whatever faith you have, you ought to be willing to confront it with the discoveries of science.
    • Steven Weinberg, (August 12, 2019)"The Bill Moyers Interview - Steven Weinberg". VHS Video vault, YouTube. (interview on July 2, 1990; quote from 19:18 of 28:03 in video)
  • Faith, mighty faith the promise sees
    And rests on that alone;
    Laughs at impossibilities,
    And says it shall be done.
    • Charles Wesley, Hymns, No. 360, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • Through this dark and stormy night
    Faith beholds a feeble light
    Up the blackness streaking;
    Knowing God's own time is best,
    In a patient hope I rest
    For the full day-breaking!
    • John Greenleaf Whittier, Barclay of Ury, Stanza 16, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • A bending staff I would not break,
    A feeble faith I would not shake,
    Nor even rashly pluck away
    The error which some truth may stay,
    Whose loss might leave the soul without
    A shield against the shafts of doubt.
    • John Greenleaf Whittier, Questions of Life, Stanza 1, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • How scrumptious to be faithful! But utterly irrelevant to whether or not the opinion in question is true. Whatever the finer feelings associated with faith, no matter how elevated those who indulge in it, from the point of view of truth and evidence, faith is exactly the same as prejudice. Declaring an opinion to be a matter of faith provides it with no new evidential support, gives no new reason to think it true. It merely acknowledges that you have none.
  • Thomas Daggett: Some people lose their faith because Heaven shows them too little. But how many people lose their faith because Heaven showed them too much?
  • The faith of immortality gives to every mind that cherishes it a certain firmness of texture.
    • Wilberforce, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 222
  • Of one in whom persuasion and belief
    Had ripened into faith, and faith become
    A passionate intuition.
  • 'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
    Of Faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind
    Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
    And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.
    • William Wordsworth, Weak is the Will of Man, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • A faith that can be destroyed by suffering is not faith.
  • Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of Death,
    To break the shock blind nature cannot shun,
    And lands Thought smoothly on the further shore.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night IV, line 721

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Y

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Z

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In faith and hope
Earth I resign;
Secure of heaven,
For I am Thine!
~ Huldrych Zwingli ~
  • Help me, O Lord, my strength and rock;
    Lo at the door I hear death’s knock.
    Uplift Thine arm once pierced for me;
    That conquered death and set me free.
    Yet if Thy voice in life’s midday,
    Recalls my soul, then I obey.
    In faith and hope
    Earth I resign;
    Secure of heaven,
    For I am Thine!
    • Huldrych Zwingli, in "The Song of the Plague" (1519), as quoted in Life of Ulrich Zwingli : The Swiss Patriot and Reformer (1902) by Samuel Simpson, p. 87.

See also

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