c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
She fixed a smile that she hoped looked authentic. Pretending to be content continued to be hard work.
— Stacy Hawkins Adams, Lead Me Home
The more I read arguments for atheism, the more I am convinced it takes a very strong faith to be an atheist. And atheism seems to me the least reasonable of all faiths.
— Corrado Ghinamo, The Beautiful Scientist: A Spiritual Approach to Science
Kuamini (mbali na imani, ambayo ni nia ya kujua kisichoweza kujulikana) ni kwa ajili ya vitu usivyoweza kuvielezea. Unaamini kwamba siku moja dawa ya UKIMWI au saratani itapatikana mahali fulani, ilhali huwezi kufanya majaribio ya kisayansi kulithibitisha hilo. Unaweza kusubiri hata miaka mia, lakini kama bado dawa haijapatikana, unaweza kusubiri hata miaka mingine mia. Kuamini ni kujifanya kujua (na mara nyingi kujifanya kujua ni uongo) na kuamini hakuhitaji maarifa. Kujua kunahitaji maarifa na ni kuamini unakoweza kukuthibitisha. Ukiniuliza kama simu yangu ipo mfukoni nitakwambia ndiyo ipo, kwa sababu nitaingiza mkono mfukoni na kuitoa na kuiona. Siamini kama ipo mfukoni, najua.
— Enock Maregesi
To believe in miracles in one thing...to know what miracle you want to manifest right now, and accept it, is another.
— Michelle Cruz-Rosado
Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer?
— Yann Martel
In the beginning there was faith - which is childish
—  trust - which is vain
Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
We must be careful more than ever what we let our hearts believe in.
— Solange nicole
Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.
— G.K. Chesterton
By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.
— Galileo Galilei
As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us.
— Winston  Churchill
Sometimes in life we take a leap of faith. Remember, the leap is not about getting from one side to the other. It's simply about taking the leap....and trusting the air, the universal breath, will support your wings so that you may soar.
— Kristi Bowman
Every worldview has to bring together reason and faith.
— Ravi Zacharias
Some people say it is a shame. Others even imply that it would have been better if the baby had never been created. But the short time I had with my child is precious to me. It is painful to me, but I still wouldn't wish it away. I prayed that God would bless us with a baby. Each child is a gift, and I am proud that we cooperated with God in the creation of a new soul for all eternity. Although not with me, my baby lives.
— Christine O'Keeffe Lafser, An Empty Cradle, a Full Heart: Reflections for Mothers and Fathers after Miscarriage, Stillbirth, or Infant Death
There is no doubt that the United States has much to atone for, both domestically and abroad...To produce this horrible confection at home, start with our genocidal treatment of the Native Americans, add a couple hundred years of slavery, along with our denial of entry to Jewish refugees fleeing the death camps of the Third Reich, stir in our collusion with a long list of modern despots and our subsequent disregard for their appalling human rights records, add our bombing of Cambodia and the Pentagon Papers to taste, and then top with our recent refusals to sign the Kyoto protocol for greenhouse emissions, to support any ban on land mines, and to submit ourselves to the rulings of the International Criminal Court. The result should smell of death, hypocrisy, and fresh brimstone.
— Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
Tell me,' asked Stas, 'what is a wicked deed?' 'If anyone takes away Kali's cow,' he answered after a brief reflection, 'that then is a wicked deed.' 'Excellent!' exclaimed Stas, 'and what is a good one?' This time the answer came without any reflection: 'If Kali takes away the cow of somebody else, that is a good deed.' Stas was too young to perceive that similar views of evil and good deeds were enunciated in Europe not only by politicians but by whole nations.
— Henryk Sienkiewicz, In Desert and Wilderness
The risk is too great. A man cannot place too much faith in any one thing, neither a woman, nor a horse, nor a weapon, nor any single thing.
— Michael Crichton, Eaters of the Dead
Follow the evidence to where it leads, even if the conclusion is uncomfortable.
— Steven James, The Knight
The material world is simply an expression of the mind; that's what so many fail to see. We're so dependent on what is before us that we discount our intuition. Yet if one dismisses instinct, how can one understand or believe in a world that exists beyond one's sight?
— Megan Chance, The Spiritualist
This in essence is my goal. To set an example by doing what is good. If I live openly and honestly, I set an example of virtue, humanness, restoration, and healing. I give others permission to join me on my journey despite the fear of failure or the rejection it might elicit when they know they are not alone in their experience. The more of us who amass the courage to embark openly on this path, the more normal this experience becomes, effectively eliminating the tactic of shame and isolation that the enemy so often uses to cause us to falter.
— Riisa Renee, Breaking the Silence
Those who find no humor in faith are probably those who find the church a refuge for their own black way of looking at life, although I think many of us find the church a refuge for a lot of our personality faults. Those of us, for example, who never learned to dance feel that the church is an ideal place for us if we can find a church that doesn't believe in dancing. Then we can get away with never having learned how to dance. You can carry this in all sorts of directions and see that the church is a refuge for what is really a 'flaw' in your own makeup.
— Charles M. Schulz, Charles M. Schulz: Conversations
Satisfaction in life doesn't jump on you, you work for it, you earn it. You will not sit in a place, fold your hands and expect to be satisfied with life.
— Jaachynma N.E. Agu, The Best Option
just show a little humility. If you know your weaknesses you will not be enslaved by them.
— Fiorella De Maria, Poor Banished Children
Life is full of change, honey. That's how we learn and grow. When we're born, the Good Lord gives each of us a Life book. Chapter by chapter, we live and learn.
— Beth Hoffman, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
My true religion, my faith in God. He gives me love and compassion. I simply return them by loving and being compassionate towards others. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple of God. The teachings of God is to love one another as he loves us. We love by respecting and being compassionate, whatever they decide to do with their life
— Ann Marie Aguilar
It take faith to follow your dreams and courage to reach them.
— E'yen A. Gardner
I have found more inspiration in the cottages of fishermen than in the palaces of the rich.
— Wilfred Grenfell
Someone has said,”Education is going from an unconscious to conscious awareness of one’s ignorance.”..No one has a corner on wisdom. All the name-dropping in the world does not heighten the significance of our character. If anything, it reduces it. Our acute need is to cultivate a willingness to learn and to remain teachable.
— Charles R. Swindoll
Logic kills. Faith burns. Better to be the one with the torch than the one on the pyre.
— Chris Galford, The Hollow March
All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
If the whole universe can be found in our own body and mind, this is where we need to make our inquires. We all have the answers within ourselves, we just have not got in touch with them yet. The potential of finding the truth within requires faith in ourselves.
— Ayya Khema
Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely—a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience. From this one might perhaps gather that the two world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, may have owed their origin and above all their sudden spread to a tremendous collapse and disease of the will. And that is what actually happened: both religions encountered a situation in which the will had become diseased, giving rise to a demand that had become utterly desperate for some "thou shalt." Both religions taught fanaticism in ages in which the will had become exhausted, and thus they offered innumerable people some support, a new possibility of willing, some delight in willing. For fanaticism is the only "strength of the will" that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain, being a sort of hypnotism of the whole system of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling that henceforth becomes dominant— which the Christian calls his faith. Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes "a believer."Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will [ This conception of "freedom of the will" ( alias, autonomy) does not involve any belief in what Nietzsche called "the superstition of free will" in section 345 ( alias, the exemption of human actions from an otherwise universal determinism).] that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
A voice said, "Climb." And he said, "How shall I climb?the mountains are so steep that I cannot climb."The voice said, "Climb or die."He said, "But how?I see no way up those steep ascents. This that is asked is too hard for me."The voice said, "Climb, or perish, soul and body of theemind and spirit of thee. There is no second chance for any son of man. Climb or die."Then he remembered that he had read in the books of the bravest climbers on the hills of the earth that sometimes they were aware of the presence of a Companion on the mountains who was not one of the earthly party of climbers. And he rememberd a word in the Book of Mountaineers...it heartened him,for it told him that he was created to walk in precarious places, not on the easy levels of life.
— Amy Carmichael, A Very Present Help: Life Messages of Great Christans
It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Voices
Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.
— Giordano Bruno
Faith is not a feeling, she says. It's a set of actions. By taking the actions, you demonstrate more faith than somebody who actually has experienced the rewards of prayer and so feels hope.
— Mary Karr
If the church is to survive as a place where head and heart are equal partners in faith, then we will need to commit ourselves once again not to the worship of Christ, but to the imitation of Jesus. His invitation was not to believe, but to follow. (p. 145)
— Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus
Lakewalker legends say the gods abandoned the world when the first malice came. And that they will return when the earth is entirely cleansed of its spawn. If you believe in gods.""Do you?""I believe they are not here, yes. It's a faith of sorts.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, Beguilement
Pain anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed. We will not pretend to say that Heaven always apportions to a man's capability of endurance the anguish with which he afflicts him...Suffering is in proportion to the strength which has been accorded in other words the weak suffer more where the trial is the same than the strong.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask
Faith is always supposed to make it harder, not easier, to ignore the plight of our sisters and brothers. (p. 165)
— Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus
Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ.
— Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite
One, just one, but definitely one of the great benefits of private prayer is that you can’t hide from your motives. In corporate prayer, we can sound like “all that”. We can blow Jesus smoke like nobody’s bizness in a crowd but, get alone with Him, and He won’t let you get away with the fake stuff. Try blowing Jesus smoke in your prayer closet and you’ll cough on it every time. Truth? That penetrating gaze of His hurts, but afterwards, it never fails to heal.
— Shellie Rushing Tomlinson
We believe that faith is the cure that heals all troubles.
— Paul Torday, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
The only sweeter than union is reunion.
— Kathleen McGowan, The Poet Prince
Holding his daughter close with one arm, he pointed toward the distant horizon. "As far as you can see—it all belongs to you, Faith. Someday, I'll take you to the top of a windmill and teach you to dream. When you reach for some of those dreams, you might fall…but your mother and I will be there to catch you because that's what love means: always being there. I love you, little girl." He pressed a kiss to his daughter's cheek. "So much…it hurts. But I reckon that's part of love, too."-Dallas
— Lorraine Heath, Texas Glory
[Knowing God]... call it love, yes, only that can sound too emotional, or call it faith, and that can sound too cerebral. And what is it? Both, and neither... [its] the decision to be faithful, the patient refusal of easy gratifications... of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane and on the cross, that bloody crown of love and faith. That is how I learn finally of a God who will not be fitted into my catergories and expectations... the living truth too great for me to see, trusting that He will see and judge and yet not turn me away... That is the mercy which will never give us, or even let us be content with less than itself and less than the truth... we have seen the truth enacted in our own world as mercy, grace and hope, as Jesus, the only-begotten, full of grace and truth..
— Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust
I tried to convince myself once, when I was a teenager, that I felt God. Alone in the sanctuary, accompanying my mom on an evening errand to the church. I stared at the ceiling and drew deep breath as quickly as I could. I told our youth minister in his ball cap that I had felt Him. That I was blessed. But in the end, it was only the wind and the rain, making noise in the darkness.
— Darin Bradley, Noise
I live in the faith that there is a Presence and Power greater than I am that nurtures and supports me in ways I could not even imagine. I know that this Presence is All knowing and All Power and is Always right where I am
— Ernest Holmes
As far as God goes, I _am_ a nonbeliever. Still am. But when it comes to a devil---well, that's something else.
— William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist
Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion, and faith is a passion.
— Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
That faith be analyzable does not necessarily imply a method for getting by without it. . . .
— Julia Kristeva, This Incredible Need to Believe
We take it for granted that Jesus was not interested in political life: his mission was purely religious. Indeed we have witnessed . . . the 'iconization' of the life of Jesus: 'This is a Jesus of hieratic, stereotyped gestures, all representing theological themes. In this way, the life of Jesus is no longer a human life, submerged in history, but a theological life -- an icon.
— Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation
More profoundly, Nihilist "simplification" may be seen in the universal prestige today accorded the lowest order of knowledge, the scientific, as well as the simplistic ideas of men like Marx, Freud, and Darwin, which underlie virtually the whole of contemporary thought and life.We say "life," for it is important to see that the Nihilist history of our century has not been something imposed from without or above, or at least has not been predominantly this; it has rather presupposed, and drawn its nourishment from, a Nihilist soil that has long been preparing in the hearts of the people. It is precisely from the Nihilism of the commonplace, from the everyday Nihilism revealed in the life and thought and aspiration of the people, that all the terrible events of our century have sprung. The world-view of Hitler is very instructive in this regard, for in him the most extreme and monstrous Nihilism rested upon the foundation of a quite unexceptional and even typical Realism. He shared the common faith in "science," "progress," and "enlightenment" (though not, of course, in "democracy"), together with a practical materialism that scorned all theology, metaphysics, and any thought or action concerned with any other world than the "here and now," priding himself on the fact that he had "the gift of reducing all problems to their simplest foundations." He had a crude worship of efficiency and utility that freely tolerated "birth control", laughed at the institution of marriage as a mere legalization of a sexual impulse that should be "free", welcomed sterilization of the unfit, despised "unproductive elements" such as monks, saw nothing in the cremation of the dead but a "practical" question and did not even hesitate to put the ashes, or the skin and fat, of the dead to "productive use." He possessed the quasi-anarchist distrust of sacred and venerable institutions, in particular the Church with its "superstitions" and all its "outmoded" laws and ceremonies. He had a naive trust in the "natural mom, the "healthy animal" who scorns the Christian virtues--virginity in particular--that impede the "natural functioning" of the body. He took a simple-minded delight in modern conveniences and machines, and especially in the automobile and the sense of speed and "freedom" it affords.There is very little of this crude Weltanschauung that is not shared, to some degree, by the multitudes today, especially among the young, who feel themselves "enlightened" and "liberated," very little that is not typically "modern.
— Seraphim Rose
If you can admit that you haven't yet understood everything,faith can fill the emptiness in heart to confront the hesitation.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
Its as if you think you'd never findReason and the Sacred intertwined
— Molière, Tartuffe
A purposeless virtue is a contradiction in terms. Virtue, like harmony, cannot exist alone; a virtue must lead to harmony between one creature and another. To be good for nothing is just that. If a virtue has been thought a virtue long enough, it must be assumed to have practical justification - though the very longevity that proves its practicality may obscure it. That seems to be what happened with the idea of fidelity...Our age could be characterized as a manifold experiment in faithlessness, and if it has as yet produced no effective understanding of the practicalities of faith, it has certainly produced massive evidence of the damage and disorder of its absence.(pg.115-116, "The Body and the Earth")
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
The woman had gone down on her knees and was shuffling slowly across the cruel ground towards the group of crosses: the dead baby rocked on her back. When she reached the tallest cross she unhooked the child and held the face against the wood and afterwards the loins: then she crossed herself, not as ordinary Catholics do, but in a curious and complicated pattern which included the nose and ears. Did she expect a miracle? And if she did, why should it not be granted her? the priest wondered. Faith, one was told, could move mountains, and here was faith--faith in the spittle that healed the blind man and the voice that raised the dead. The evening star was out: it hung low down over the edge of the plateau: it looked as if it was within reach: and a small hot wind stirred. The priest found himself watching the child for some movement. When none came, it was as if God had missed an opportunity. The woman sat down, and taking a lump of sugar from her bundle, began to eat, and the child lay quiet at the foot of the cross. Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life?
— Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
For many, the search for Jesus is initiated from experiencing an event in life so powerful, it awakens the dragons of faith; from pain so deep, it calls on the hidden fears of the soul in an effort to survive. For others it means a serious personal life survey that ultimately forces the confrontation with the futility, anesthetics, and despair in their lives.
— W. Scott Lineberry, Tragedy and Loss and the Search for Jesus
Some are professors and others are possessors.
— Lawrence Kennedy
Hit ain't sacrilege. Miss Effie Belle says when she cain't think what to have for dinner, she asts God and right off He gives her an idea. To my thinkin', thet's sacrilege."Miss Love really laughed. "There's not a woman in the world who hasn't prayed what to cook for dinner, Rucker!
— Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree
Anti-intellectualism remains strongly entrenched in many parts of the church, but it is grounded in fear, not in faith. (p. 19)
— Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus
People have a hunger to experience the spectacular, but the Lord is supernatural.
— Sherry K. White
Faith doesn't have to be much. Not any bigger than a mustard seed... That small. Only that much faith you'll need in me, God says, because I am so big. I am the Great I Am. So have faith in me.
— Patricia Raybon, I Told the Mountain to Move: Learning to Pray So Things Change
Our witness is only as strong as our freedom is real. We can have the most noble convictions in the world, but if we are snarky and impatient when we don't get our way, those things will interfere with our influence. If we gossip more than we pray, those misspoken words will demolish our influence. If our addictions get in the way of living out our convictions, we'll have mostly a negative influence.
— Susie Larson, Embracing Your Freedom: A Personal Experience of God's Heart for Justice
Ironically for someone who had so long asserted his own individuality as his first and best defense against insults of any kind, I discovered that faith in myself proved to be the least formidable strength I possessed when confronting alone organized inhumanity on a greater scale than I had conceived possible. Faith in myself was important, and remains important to my self esteem. But I discovered in prison that faith in myself alone, sep0arate from other, more important allegiances , was ultimately no match for the cruelty that human beings could devise when they were entirely unencumbered by respect for the God given dignity of man. This is the lesson I learned in prison. It is, perhaps, the most important lesson I have ever learned.
— John McCain, Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir
I prefer a world with many beliefs and religions.It stimulates my faith to keep growing day by day.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
As I ponder my pilgrim’s progress to Orthodoxy, however, I realize that I didn’t make the trip alone, but in a two-seater. And I wasn’t the one driving.
— Frederica Mathewes-Green
A corollary of this has been that Christians have thought that they should only create art with a Pollyanna quality to it: paintings of birds and kittens, movies that extol family life and end happily, songs that are positive and uplifting – in short, works of art that show a world that is almost unfallen where no one experiences conflict and where sin is naughty rather than wicked.
— Steve Turner, Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts
Jesus’s use of the phrasing “a new commandment” is frequently scanted in light of its implicit ramifications. Because Jesus at the Last Supper has executed the “new covenant” with his disciples, the Great Commandment itself now acquires an unprecedented meaning. Its new meaning belongs to this sudden revelation not merely about who God is but also about what love is. Previously the Great Commandment bade us to love God and our neighbor. Now this love can be comprehended only in an incarnational situation. Its incarnate presence is the activation of profound rhizomic relations that explode from the center toward the ends of the earth. We are commanded to be incarnational in relation to one another just as God at the cross was incarnational in Christ. . . . We are no longer simply Christ’s “followers" - the pre-Easter form of relation to a master-and-teacher that is conventionally called “disciple” - but also perpetual Christ incarnators . . .
— Carl Raschke, GloboChrist: The Great Commission Takes a Postmodern Turn
The greatest hindrance to growth in faith is comfortable living.
— John Carey
Faith" will help put us together on the same direction. Faith is building a relationship with God where he is in control. It is about believing although we do not always see. Do we love God with all our heart, mind, and soul? Can we follow his voice?
— Phil Mitchell
An ironic religion -- one that never claims to be absolutely true but only professes to be relatively beautiful, and never promises salvation but only proposes it as a salubrious idea. A century ago there were people who thought art was the thing that could fuse the terms of this seemingly insuperable oxymoron, and no doubt art is part of the formula. But maybe consumerism also has something to teach us about forging an ironic religion -- a lesson about learning to choose, about learning the power and consequences, for good or ill, of our ever-expanding palette of choices. Perhaps . . . the day will come when the true ironic religion is found, the day when humanity is filled with enough love and imagination and responsibility to become its own god and make a paradise of its world, a paradise of all the right choices.
— Alex Shakar, The Savage Girl
Take faith, for example. For many people in our world, the opposite of faith is doubt. The goal, then, within this understanding, is to eliminate doubt. But faith and doubt aren't opposites. Doubt is often a sign that your faith has a pulse, that it's alive and well and exploring and searching. Faith and doubt aren't opposites, they are, it turns out, excellent dance partners.
— Rob Bell, What We Talk about When We Talk about God
Faith has won it! Fear has lost it! When you get full of faith, the devil gets filled with fear! Keep your faith in light every day and you will keep the devil in fright always!
— Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes
But you'd get arguments from all kinds of people that the Bible has got to be perfect. That God would not permit such errors to be made in the Holy Word.""I thought God gave everyone free will. Which would presumably - and evidently - include the freedom to be incorrect when translating one language into another.""Stop making me think. I'm believing over here.
— Jim Butcher, White Night
Keep the faith. The vision is always for the appointed time. Be patient, prayerful and wait for the fulfillment of your visions.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Sometimes we can focus so much on nothing that we make it a big something of nothing
— Ricky Maye, An Emerging Spirituality
Proverbs 9:10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.
— Bible KJV
The religionist is a living fossil, embedded in that rock called faith.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
She had walked to the brink, abandoning all belief, and just before the bitter end, she was pulled from the abyss by faith.
— Sage Steadman, Upon Destiny's Song
The creation of man is evidence for the love of God, the preservation of man is evidence for the patience of God, and Christ is evidence for the forgiveness of God. It is when we are wrapped up in our own little peeves that we begin to displace His benevolence with malevolence.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
There are many faiths, but the spirit is one — in me, and in you, and in him. So that if everyone believes himself, all will be united; everyone be himself and all will be as one.
— Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection
Faith is a process of leaping into the abyss not on the basis of any certainty about where we shall land, but rather on the belief that we shall land.
— Carter Heyward
... challenge the church to do better, be more of who Christ wants us to be ...
— Justin Lee, Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate
Pious people spoke to God, and crazy people imagined that God spoke back.
— Philip K. Dick, VALIS
Google, Facebook helps people than people helps people, in today's world
— Jeevagan Nagarajan
Faith is the choice of the nobler hypothesis.' Not the noblest, one never knows what that is. But the nobler, the best one can see when the choice is made.
— Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant As Leader
They all believed in him because of the authenticity of his musical talent and his faith in it.
— Amit Kalantri, One Bucket of Tears
Faith?” The word popped out before I could think about it. “Faith in what? A higher power? The gods? The universe?” My voice cracked at the end, and I realized what this whole thing had done to my faith, if I’d had any to begin with. I realized that the thought of a higher being in charge of all this made me angry.
— Brodi Ashton, Evertrue
You have such faith,” he tells me. “Let it be bigger than your fears.
— Celia McMahon, Skye
When comprehending how different people truly are, you also comprehend the absolute necessity of some divine authority.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
A man has to have something he can put faith in. Can't you see that? What I want is someone that will love me
—  she would have me and I her. Otherwise a man may just go hang himself
There are six reasons anyone does anything: Love. Faith. Greed. Boredom. Fear..." he said, ticking them off on his fingers; but he lingered on the last, drawing a deep breath before he said, "Revenge.
— Ally Carter, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover
There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do
—  our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.
Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred, the greater his need of love. Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. In such love there is not inner discord between the private person and official capacity. In both we are disciples of Christ, or we are not Christians at all.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
The Christian should work as if all depended upon him, and pray as if it all depended upon God.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Logic cannot comprehend love
—  so much the worse for logic.
‎Those who aren't following Jesus aren't his followers. It's that simple. Followers follow, and those who don't follow aren't followers. To follow Jesus means to follow Jesus into a society where justice rules, where love shapes everything. To follow Jesus means to take up his dream and work for it.
— Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow
Any faith that does not command the one who holds it is not a real belief
—  it is a pseudo belief only. And it might shock some of us profoundly if we were brought suddenly face to face with our beliefs and forced to test them in the fires of practical living.
Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.
— Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
Celebrating faith over reason is merely a way of denying what is, in favor of embracing any whim that strikes your fancy.
— Terry Goodkind, Confessor
Comparing yourself to others does nothing for you. Society has conditioned us to value people who fit a secular mold of perfection".
— Michele Woolley, God's Favor - Breath Of Heaven
Faith is stronger than so-called reason.
— Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East
Little faith sees God's hand in great things. Established faith sees God's hand in little things.
— Ralph Bouma
On the concept of unity- “Thatʼs right-Jesusʼ most pressing concern beforeleaving the earth was our unity. He was looking ahead, to every generation ofbeliever. And as he prayed, he made it clear that our witness as his body in thisfractured , messed-up, chaotic world would depend on our love for another.
— Ed Galisewski, A Simpler Faith: Hope For Those Who Struggle With Church
Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not there.
— Laura Wilson, My Best Friend
Addressing the concept of man made additions to the faith - “These additions-standards, practices, and allegiances supposedly created for our spiritual beneﬁt-have had the opposite effect.
— Ed Galisewski, A Simpler Faith: Hope For Those Who Struggle With Church
Un sceptique qui adhère à un croyant cela est simple comme la loi des couleurs complémentaires.Ce qui nous manque nous attire.
— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
In essence, we are deeper than being; we are character, which contains the conscious forces of love, justice, kindness, faith, and forgiveness.
— Garey  Gordon, The Values Pursued Life: Excellence and Greatness from Within
He is the light in my life and the rock beneath my feet. (Referring to the Lord Jesus)
— Kimberly McRae, Living by Faith: Beginning Your Walk as a New Believer
It's because we have little faith that we look within instead of without.
— Ralph Bouma
بحكم المنطق الداخلي للأشياء يتوازى كل من التطور و الحضارةو العلم والطوبيا مع الإلحاد، بينما يتوازى الخلق والثقافة و الفن و الأخلاق مع الدين.
— علي عزت بيجوفيتش, الإسلام بين الشرق والغرب
No man succeeds without faith. Whether you call it religious faith or label it something else. I don't feel anything worthwhile is accomplished without it. When you believe there is a Supreme Being guiding the destiny of this universe and that within each of us there is a little part of that Being, then you will have faith in yourself, in your country, in that Supreme Being, and in humanity itself.
— Walter Knott
Two natures beat within my breastThe one is foul, the one is blessedThe one I love, the one I hate.The one I feed will dominate.-Anonymous
— Tara Leigh Cobble, Crowded Skies: Letters To Manhattan
Imagine a land where people are afraid of dragons. It is a reasonable fear: dragons possess a number of qualities that make being afraid of them a very commendable response. Things like their terrible size, their ability to spout fire, or to crack boulders into splinters with their massive talons. In fact, the only terrifying quality that dragons do not possess is that of existence.Now, the people of this land know about dragons because their leaders have warned them about them. They tell stories about cruel dragons with razor teeth and fiery breath. They recount legends of dragons hunting by night on silent wings. In short, the leaders make sure that the people believe in all the qualities of dragons, including that key quality of existence. And then they control the people — when they need to — with their fear of dragons. The people pay a dragon-slaying tax … everyone stays indoors after dark to avoid being snatched by swooping claws … and nobody ever strays out of bounds for fear of being eaten well and truly up. one. And so it is necessary from time to time to provide evidence: a burnt tree or two, a splintered rock, the mysterious absence of a villager. The population is controlled by the dragons in its collective mind. It’s contrived superstition, and it is possible because the people do not know enough about the way the world works to know that dragons do not exist.
— David Whiteland, Book of Pages
Love and respect all people. Hate and destroy all faith.
— Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales
I started having doubts right on top of my certainty.
— David James Duncan, The Brothers K
The more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith.
— Jon Stewart
Our duty is found in the revealed will of God in the Scriptures. Our trust must be in the sovereign will of God as He works in the ordinary circumstances of our daily lives for our good and His glory.
— Jerry Bridges, Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts
In all my travels, I've never seen a country's population more determined to forgive, and to build and succeed than in Rwanda.
— Rick Warren, The Bishop of Rwanda: Finding Forgiveness Amidst a Pile of Bones
The heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 ... obeyed by faith ... obedience is the pathway to holiness ... no one will become holy apart from a life of faith. Faith enables us to claim the promises of God, but it also enables us to obey the commands of God.
— Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day: Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journey
I see now that my faith was becoming an ally rather than an enemy because I could vent anger freely, even toward God, without fearing retribution.
— Gerald L. Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss
Everything depends on One Word : "Maktub" !
— Paulo Coelho
Are you aware of who you really are in relationship to the very God who created the Universe, who scattered the stars and aligned the planets? Only to those who remember and realize that they are literally spirit children of a God who knows and loves them, can the fire of refinement be welcome. Otherwise, pain and adversity are just that, pain and adversity. Fire doesn’t purify; it only burns.
— Toni Sorenson
As prayer without faith is but a beating of the air, so trust without prayer [is] but a presumptuous bravado. He that promises to give, and bids us trust His promises, commands us to pray, and expects obedience to his commands. He will give, but not without our asking.
— Thomas Lye
There are no atheists in the foxhole.
— Ernie Pyle
Surprisingly, the Christian faith today is perceived as disconnected from the supernatural world – a dimension that the vast majority of outsiders believe can be accessed and influenced.
— David Kinnaman, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters
Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic, and thus it is faith that keeps the whole terrible edifice of religious certainty still looming dangerously over our world.
— Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape (...)
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
It seems we are all too vulnerable to having our heart lead us astray from what is right
— Abigail Reynolds, Impulse and Initiative
Ah, but it is an interesting thing, that these things can so seldom be proved. If I were to perform some piece of, hrmf, magic for you, here in this room, you would claim a thousand ways it could have been done. Indeed, those ways might be exceedingly unlikely, but you would cling to them rather than accept the, mmn, the chance that magic, the eternal inexplicable, might be the true agent, and if you were strong enough in yourself, unafraid, unthreatened, here in your own chambers, well perhaps there would be no magic worked at all. It is a subjective force, you see, whereas the physical laws of the artificers are objective. A gear-train will turn without faith, but magic may not. And so, when your people demand, mmn, proof, there is none, but when you have forgotten and dismissed it, then magic creeps back into the gaps where you do not look for it.
— Adrian Tchaikovsky, Dragonfly Falling
Every Christian should be both conservative and radical
—  conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it.
It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.
— Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology
You are all soldiers of Christ," he said, "and now is an opportunity given to you to show that you are worthy soldiers. When the troops of a worldly monarch go into battle they do so with head erect, with proud and resolute bearing, with flashing eye, and with high courage, determined to bear aloft his banner and to crown it with victory, even though it cost them their lives. Such is the mien that soldiers of Christ should bear in the mortal strife now raging round us. Let them show the same fearlessness of death, the same high courage, the same unlimited confidence in their Leader. What matter if they die in His service? He has told them what their work should be. He has bidden them visit the sick and comfort the sorrowing. What if there be danger in the work? Did He shrink from the Cross which was to end His work of love, and is it for His followers to do so? 'Though you go down into the pit,' He has said, 'I am there also'; and with His companionship one must be craven indeed to tremble. This is a noble opportunity for holding high the banner of Christ. There is work to be done for all, and as the work is done, men should see by the calm courage, the cheerfulness, and the patience of those that do it, that they know that they are doing His work, and that they are content to leave the issue, whatever it be, in His hands.
— G.A. Henty
Faith may want answers, but somehow it is able to survive without them.
— Carolyn Custis James, The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules
The beauty of Catholicism is every human being's right.
— Matthew Kelly, Our Father
For when God is said by these things to try men and prove them, to see what is in their hearts and whether they will keep His commandments or no, we are not to understand, that it is for His own information, or that He may obtain evidence Himself of their sincerity (for he needs no trials for His information); but chiefly for their conviction, and to exhibit evidence to their consciences...So when God tempted or tried Abraham with that difficult command of offering up his son, it was not for His satisfaction, whether he feared God or no, but for Abraham's own greater satisfaction and comfort, and the more clear manifestation of the favour of God to him.
— Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections
To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man.
— Blaise Pascal
Waiting is an exercise of faith that demonstrates the condition of our hearts. Waiting on God is an act of faith. And faith is what separates the men from the boys.
— Steve Farrar, God Built (Joseph) - Forged By God...In The Bad And Good Of Life
Faith is not knowledge of an object but communion with it.
— Nicolás Gómez Dávila
I get glimmers of the bad nineteenth-century teaching which has made Mother remove God from the realm of mystery and beauty and glory, but why do people half my age think that they don't have faith unless their faith is small and comprehensible and like a good old plastic Jesus?
— Madeleine L'Engle, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother
I look for a sign. Where to go next. you never know when you'll get one. Even the most faithless among us are waiting to be proven wrong.
— Jillian Lauren, Pretty
Great faith overcomes laws of nature that govern physical world.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
We are spiritual children of God the Father. We preach it. We sing it. But do we really understand it? Sometimes it’s easy to tell others they are loved, but not so easy to believe it of ourselves — not because we don’t think God loves His children, but because we may feel undeserving of His love. The adversary loves to remind us who we are not. Not pretty. Not smart. Not strong. But God would not have sacrificed His Son to save us if we aren’t worth saving.
— Toni Sorenson, Women of Christ: Of Infinite Worth
The top 10% of the people who are most creative, constructive and thoughtful, do not have much to do with churches. To them the canons of reason come first, making faith secondary and questionable.
— Joseph Fletcher
I open my heart to her and lay it on the table.
— Jennifer Haigh, Faith
We have very little faith in the Lord, very little trust. If we trusted the Lord as much as we trust a friend when we ask him to do something for us, neither we as individuals nor our whole country would suffer so much.
— Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives:  The Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
Life is a misery, death an uncertainty. Suppose it steals suddenly upon me, in what state shall I leave this world? When can I learn what I have here neglected to learn? Or is it true that death will cut off and put an end to all care and all feeling? This is something to be inquired into.But no, this cannot be true. It is not for nothing, it is not meaningless that all over the world is displayed the high and towering authority of the Christian faith. Such great and wonderful things would never have been done for us by God, if the life of the soul were to end with the death of the body. Why then do I delay? Why do I not abandon my hopes of this world and devote myself entirely to the search for God and for the happy life?
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
True virtue never appears so lovely as when it is most oppressed; and the divine excellency of real Christianity is never exhibited with such advantage as when under the greatest trials; then it is that true faith appears much more precious than gold, and upon this account is "found to praise and honour and glory.
— Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections
Unless there is within us that which is above us, we shall soon yield to that which is about us.
— P.T. Forsyth
The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic world.
— Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy
This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found--I have letters that even the blind will be able to see. . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,--I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race...
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti Christ
What the hell are you getting so upset about?" he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrite amusement. "I thought you didn't believe in God.""I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. "But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be.
— Joseph Heller, Catch-22
The pure perfect truth of life is that we are here to create heaven on earth, to bring the perfection of what is above down to us, and in doing so to become transformed as human being into something great and beautiful.
— Kathleen McGowan, The Poet Prince
Perhaps it is our obligation to be noble before it is our obligation to be happy.
— Kathleen McGowan, The Poet Prince