c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Do not be afraid
—  our fateCannot be taken from us
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.
— Paulo Coelho, Brida
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?
— C.S. Lewis
[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
— Carl Sagan
Doubt everything. Find your own light.
— Gautama Buddha
You can never really know someone completely. That’s why it’s the most terrifying thing in the world, really—taking someone on faith, hoping they’ll take you on faith too. It’s such a precarious balance, It’s a wonder we do it at all. And yet..
— Libba Bray
I dont think that we're meant to understand it all the time. I think that sometimes we just have to have faith.
— Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember
In this hour, I do not believe that any darkness will endure.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.
— Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place
Your children are the greatest gift God will give to you, and their souls the heaviest responsibility He will place in your hands. Take time with them, teach them to have faith in God. Be a person in whom they can have faith. When you are old, nothing else you've done will have mattered as much.
— Lisa Wingate
Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.
— Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: a True Story
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.
— Abraham Lincoln
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
— Madeleine L'Engle
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
— Alan W. Watts
Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.
— Elizabeth Gilbert
When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.
— Edward Teller
If we can just let go and trust that things will work out they way they're supposed to, without trying to control the outcome, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully. The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself.
— Goldie Hawn
No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith.
— R.A. Salvatore, Streams of Silver
No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.
— Orson F. Whitney
Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.
— Albert Einstein
Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
Faith ― acceptance of which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.
— Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
There will always be someone willing to hurt you, put you down, gossip about you, belittle your accomplishments and judge your soul. It is a fact that we all must face. However, if you realize that God is a best friend that stands beside you when others cast stones you will never be afraid, never feel worthless and never feel alone.
— Shannon L. Alder
Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.
— Voltaire, The Works: Voltaire
You can't know, you can only believe - or not.
— C.S. Lewis
there is a God, there always has been. I see him here, in the eyes of the people in this [hospital] corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him... there is a God, there has to be, and now I will pray, I will pray that He will forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years, forgive that I have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity only to turn to Him now in my hour of need. I pray that He is as merciful, benevolent, and gracious as His book says He is.
— Khaled Hosseini
Sometimes when you lose your way, you find YOURSELF.
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
There's a reason we refer to "leaps of faith" - because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
When you are in troubled and worried and sick at heartAnd your plans are upset and your world falls apart,Remember God's ready and waiting to shareThe burden you find much to heavy to bear--So with faith, "Let Go and Let GOD" lead your wayInto a brighter and less troubled day
— Helen Steiner Rice
Rejection is an opportunity for your selection.
— Bernard Branson
Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.
— Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.
— Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them.
— Elisabeth Elliot, A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael
Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Because you believed I was capable of behaving decently, I did.
— Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym
Realize that if a door closed, it’s because what was behind it wasn’t meant for you.
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full.
— John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life Study Guide
when we are powerless to do a thing, it is a great joy that we can come and step inside the ability of Jesus
— Corrie ten Boom
The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ would take the slums out of people, and then they would take themselves out of the slums.The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.
— Ezra Taft Benson
This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.
— Terry Tempest Williams, Leap
We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.
— Sam Harris
Radical obedience to Christ is not easy... It's not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us.
— David Platt, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically.
— Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth
It’s OKAY to be scared. Being scared means you’re about to do something really, really brave.
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
God will never give you anything you can't handle, so don't stress.
— Kelly Clarkson
It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
— Abraham Lincoln
You have as much laughter as you have faith.
— Martin Luther
I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.
— Martin Luther
There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.
— Alfred Tennyson
I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.
— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
— Ben Goldacre, Bad Science
Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.
— Isaac Asimov
Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.
— A.W. Tozer
Don't you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead. Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.
— Jeffrey R. Holland
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
— E.B. White
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith
—  it is an element of faith.
To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.
— Thomas Aquinas
Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark.
— Elizabeth Gilbert
It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you.
— Timothy J. Keller
True love is taking the risk that it won't be a happily-ever-after. True love is joining hands with the man who loves you for who you are, and saying, "I'm not afraid to believe in you.
— Cara Lockwood, I Do -- But I Don't
In order to have faith in his own path, he does not need to prove that someone else's path is wrong.
— Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light
We live by faith and not by sight.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides,flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from oneend to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terroristattacks, "Are we sure this is a good time to take God out ofthe Pledge of Allegiance?
— Jay Leno
The word I think of is precarious. I am struck by how precarious it all is. How the things that hold us are only as strong as the faith we have in them.
— David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility
Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.
— Kahlil Gibran
Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.
— Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes - many times - my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens - and it happens every day in some measure - I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth.
— John Piper, Finally Alive: What Happens When We Are Born Again?
In order to share one's true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool: genius is like a wheel that spins so fast, it at first glance appears to be sitting still.
— Criss Jami, Venus in Arms
What is it with science these days? Everyone is so quick to believe in it, in all these new scientific discoveries, new pills for this, new pills for that. Get thinner, grow hair, yada, yada, yada, but when it requires a little faith in something you all go crazy.' He shook his head, 'If miracles had chemical equations then everyone would believe.
— Cecelia Ahern, The Gift
If it can be verified, we don't need faith... Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason. Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.
— Madeleine L'Engle
I have one desire now - to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it.
— Elisabeth Elliot, Through Gates of Splendor
Go where your best prayers take you.
— Frederick Buechner
Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in. 
— Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Wait on the Lord" is a constant refrain in the Psalms, and it is a necessary word, for God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not his way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come.
— J.I. Packer, Knowing God
Lord, when I feel that what I'm doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.
— Brennan Manning, Souvenirs of Solitude: Finding Rest in Abba's Embrace
A man who is intimate with God is not intimidated by man.
— Leonard Ravenhill
A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
— Alan W. Watts
Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.
— Paul Tillich
Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing.... Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
True faith rests upon the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the One who cannot lie.
— A.W. Tozer
Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.
— Thomas Merton
Sometimes it takes a wrong turn to get you to the right place.
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
Faith is not Desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the space around us,...
— Paulo Coelho, The Witch Of Portobello
I was a terrible believer in things,but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn't know where to put my faith,or if there was such a place,or even what the word faith meant, in all of it's complexity. Everything seemed to be possibly potent and possibly fake.
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces.
— Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible
There's a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don't lose courage. You've already escaped the gravest danger: selection. So now, muster your strength, and don't lose heart. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life. Above all else, have faith. Drive out despair, and you will keep death away from yourselves. Hell is not for eternity. And now, a prayer - or rather, a piece of advice: let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive.
— Elie Wiesel, Night
Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Works Of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. Iii
Everyone would like to have stronger faith. By themselves, the scriptures may not strengthen your faith, but being faithful to what they teach, does. In other words, faith cannot be separated from faithfulness.
— John Bytheway, When Times Are Tough: 5 Scriptures That Will Help You Get Through Almost Anything
Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I've stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street again.
— David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern – and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.
— Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
There is something more powerful than any army. Something strong enough to topple kings, and even Darklings. Do you know what that thing is?”I shook my head, inching away from him.“Faith,” he breathed, his black eyes wild. “Faith.
— Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone
Shepherd Book: What are we up to, sweetheart? River: Fixing your Bible. Book: I, um... What? River: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense. Shepherd Book: No, no. You-you-you can't... River: So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem. Shepherd Book: Really? River: We'll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat. Shepherd Book: River, you don't fix the Bible. River: It's broken. It doesn't make sense. Book: It's not about making sense. It's about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It's about faith. You don't fix faith, River. It fixes you.
— Ben Edlund
Accidents. It's all about the accidents.
— Gayle Forman, Just One Year
The deep roots never doubt spring will come.
— Marty Rubin
All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.
— Martin Luther
The search for God is a reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order. In search for God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult. You abandon your comforting and familiar habits with the hope (the mere hope!) that something greater will be offered you in return for what you have given up.. if we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be.. a prudent insurance policy.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly.
— Patrick Overton, The leaning tree: [poems]
Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.
— Frederick Buechner
If you can see the invisible, God will do the impossible.
— Joel Osteen
I think of how life takes unexpected twists and turns, sometimes through sheer happenstance, sometimes through calculated decisions. In the end, it can all be called fate, but to me, it is more a matter of faith.
— Emily Giffin, Love the One You're With
Profound joy of the heart is like a magnet that indicates the path of life.
— Mother Teresa
Love- the infatuation kind- 'he's so handsome, she's so beautiful'- that can shrivel. As soon as something goes wrong, that kind of love can fly out the window. 
— Mitch Albom
Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.
— Stanisław Lem
A few songs with Him might change the way you sing. Forever.
— Max Lucado, Next Door Savior
Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name.
— Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
I believe in my mask-- The man I made up is meI believe in my dance-- And my destiny
— Sam Shepard
History dressed up in the glow of love’s kiss turned grief into beauty.
— Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
True faith manifests itself through our actions.
— Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
The only thing that stands between a person and what they want in life is the will to try it and the faith to believe it is possible.
— Rich DeVos
Oh what a wonderful soul so bright inside you. Got power to heal the sun’s broken heart, power to restore the moon’s vision too.
— Aberjhani, Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player
The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
— Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light.
— James Joyce
There is no conclusive evidence of life after death, but there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know, so why fret about it?
— Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone. I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery. 
— Brennan Manning
It must be comforting, to have a faith like that. To believe so concretely that there’s someone—something— out there watching guard, keeping us safe, testing us only with what we can handle.
— Hannah Harrington, Saving June
Faith is not so much something we believe
—  faith is something we live.
Disbelief is more resistant than faith because it is sustained by the senses.
— Gabriel García Márquez, Of Love and Other Demons
Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
— Martin Luther
Never, ever stop believing in magic, no matter how old you get. Because if you keep looking long enough and don't give up, sooner or later you're going to find Mary Poppins.
— Steve Kluger, My Most Excellent Year
I learned that the search for God is a Dark Night, that Faith is a Dark Night. And that’s hardly a surprise really, because for us each day is a dark night. None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, and yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.
— Paulo Coelho, Brida
He showed me a sketch he'd drawn once during meditation. It was an androgynous human figure, standing up, hands clasped in prayer. But this figure had four legs, and no head. Where the head should have been, there was only a wild foliage of ferns and flowers. There was a small, smiling face drawn over the heart. To find the balance you want," Ketut spoke through his translator, "this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Leap, and the net will appear.
— Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way
We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation
—  he is unworthy even of man.
Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.
— Franz Kafka
Nobody wants to look like a fool. Nine times out of ten, thatreason alone keeps people from allowing themselves to believe.
— Darynda Jones, First Grave on the Right
Addiction" might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society. Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests in "the distant country," leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled. In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father's home. The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in "a distant country." It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming
Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile. No one gets upset about the belief that rocks fall down as opposed to up, because all sane people can see it with their own eyes. Not so for the belief that babies are born with original sin or that God exists in three persons or that Ali is the second-most divinely inspired man after Muhammad. When people organize their lives around these beliefs, and then learn of other people who seem to be doing just fine without them--or worse, who credibly rebut them--they are in danger of looking like fools. Since one cannot defend a belief based on faith by persuading skeptics it is true, the faithful are apt to react to unbelief with rage, and may try to eliminate that affront to everything that makes their lives meaningful.
— Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world
— H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
— William James
What is belief - what is faith - if you don't continue it after failure?
— Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire
But to mean it when I say that I want my life to count for His glory is to drive a stake through the heart of self - a painful and determined dying to me that must be a part of every day I live.
— Louie Giglio
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
— Eric Hoffer
It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"!(Institutio III.2.3)
— John Calvin
Adam understood, then, that Gansey and Blue’s awe changed this place. Ronan and Adam may have seen this place as magical, but Gansey and Blue’s wonder made it holy.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue
Faith in God includes Faith in God's timing.
— Neal A. Maxwell
Say I feel all sad and self-indulgent, then get stung by a wasp, my misery feels quite abstract and I long just to be in spiritual pain once more - 'damn you tiny assassin, clad in yellow and black, how I crave my former innocence where melancholy was my only trial'.
— Russell Brand, Articles of Faith
If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées
The man who was once starved may revenge himself upon the world not by stealing just once, or by stealing only what he needs, but by taking from the world an endless toll in payment of something irreplaceable, which is the lost faith.
— Anaïs Nin
There’s something really cool about knowing that your destiny is SO big that you’re not meant to share it with anyone. At least not yet.
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.
— William Sloane Coffin Jr., Credo
I can only say that I am nothing but a poor sinner, trusting in Christ alone for salvation.
— Robert E. Lee
When you are down to nothing, God is up to somethng. It is up to you to reach out to find what God is up to for you.
— Robert Schuler
Shine your soul with the same egoless humility as the rainbow and no matter where you go in this world or the next, love will find you, attend you, and bless you.
— Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that have ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room -- room for the human mind.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Ghosts and Other Lectures
Faith is a fine inventionWhen gentlemen can see,But microscopes are prudentIn an emergency.
— Emily Dickinson
Does your love reach this far, God? And if it extends to heaven and beyond… why can’t it seem to find me?
— Jenny B. Jones, There You'll Find Me
Faith doesn't mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.
— Orson Scott Card, Sarah
Science tells me God must exist.My mind tells me I'll never understand God.My heart tells me I'm not meant to. [Vittoria Vetra]
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Surrender is the ultimate sign of strength and the foundation for a spiritual life. Surrendering affirms that we are no longer willing to live in pain. It expresses a deep desire to transcend our struggles and transform our negative emotions. It commands a life beyond our egos, beyond that part of ourselves that is continually reminding us that we are separate, different and alone. Surrendering allows us to return to our true nature and move effortlessly through the cosmic dance called life. It's a powerful statement that proclaims the perfect order of the universe.When you surrender your will, you are saying, "Even though things are not exactly how I'd like them to be, I will face my reality. I will look it directly in the eye and allow it to be here." Surrender and serenity are synonymous; you can't experience one without the other. So if it's serenity you're searching for, it's close by. All you have to do is resign as General Manager of the Universe. Choose to trust that there is a greater plan for you and that if you surrender, it will be unfolded in time. Surrender is a gift that you can give yourself. It's an act of faith. It's saying that even though I can't see where this river is flowing, I trust it will take me in the right direction.
— Debbie Ford, Spiritual Divorce: Divorce as a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life
A competitive and insecure woman will tell you that “true love” is never giving up on someone you're in love with. A confident and spiritual woman knows that “moving on” doesn’t mean you never loved someone. She realizes that letting go is what God needs her to do because both your happiness and hers requires taking different journeys for spiritual growth. Letting go is sometimes the hardest thing, but it is the most “real love” you will ever experience.
— Shannon L. Alder
Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps.
— Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness.
— G.I. Gurdjieff
Faith and science, I have learned, are two sides of the same coin, separated by an expanse so small, but wide enough that one side can't see the other. They don't know they are connected.
— Mary E. Pearson, The Adoration of Jenna Fox
Faith is not about finding meaning in the world, there may be no such thing -- faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives.
— Terry Tempest Williams, Leap
But maybe it's what the world needs. A little less sense, and a little more faith.
— Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Gifts of grace come to all of us. But we must be ready to see and willing to receive these gifts. It will require a kind of sacrifice, the sacrifice of believing that, however painful our losses, life can still be good — good in a different way then before, but nevertheless good. I will never recover from my loss and I will never got over missing the ones I lost. But I still cherish life. . . . I will always want the ones I lost back again. I long for them with all my soul. But I still celebrate the life I have found because they are gone. I have lost, but I have also gained. I lost the world I loved, but I gained a deeper awareness of grace. That grace has enabled me to clarify my purpose in life and rediscover the wonder of the present moment.
— Gerald L. Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss
What we are waiting for is not as important as what happens to us while we are waiting. Trust the process.
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
To believe that what has not occurred in history will not occur at all, is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: It comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.
— Henry Miller
[The] insistence on the absolutely indiscriminate nature of compassion within the Kingdom is the dominant perspective of almost all of Jesus' teaching.What is indiscriminate compassion? 'Take a look at a rose. Is is possible for the rose to say, "I'll offer my fragrance to good people and withhold it from bad people"? Or can you imagine a lamp that withholds its rays from a wicked person who seeks to walk in its light? It could do that only be ceasing to be a lamp. And observe how helplessly and indiscriminately a tree gives its shade to everyone, good and bad, young and old, high and low; to animals and humans and every living creature -- even to the one who seeks to cut it down. This is the first quality of compassion -- its indiscriminate character.' (Anthony DeMello, The Way to Love)...What makes the Kingdom come is heartfelt compassion: a way of tenderness that knows no frontiers, no labels, no compartmentalizing, and no sectarian divisions.
— Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
What do people fear most about death? I asked the reb."Fear?" he thought for a moment. 'Well, for one thing, what happens next? Where do we go? Is it what we imagined?"That's big."Yes. But there's something else."What else?He leaned forward."Being forgotten," he whispered.
— Mitch Albom
We're stronger than we think.
— Joe Kelly, I Kill Giants
What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
— Thomas Henry Huxley
In prison, I fell in love with my country. I had loved her before then, but like most young people, my affection was little more than a simple appreciation for the comforts and privileges most Americans enjoyed and took for granted. It wasn't until I had lost America for a time that I realized how much I loved her. 
— John McCain, Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir
When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.
— Alberto Moravia, The Time of Indifference
Living in a world such as this is like dancing on a live volcano.
— Kentetsu Takamori
Do not ask directions from the people around you. Ask directions from the person who called you.
— Bo Sánchez
God’s revelation does not need the light of human genius, the polish and strength of human culture, the brilliancy of human thought, the force of human brains to adorn or enforce it; but it does demand the simplicity, the docility, humility, and faith of a child’s heart.
— E.M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer
Unless you are willing to do the ridiculous, God will not do the miraculous. When you have God, you don’t have to know everything about it; you just do it.
— Mother Angelica
In Love's service, only wounded soldiers can serve.
— Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.
— Michel de Montaigne
I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.)
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
[Y]ou have to stop loving and pursuing Christ in order to sin. When you are pursuing love, running toward Christ, you do not have opportunity to wonder, *Am I doing this right?* or *Did I serve enough this week?* When you are running toward Christ, you are freed up to serve, love, and give thanks without guilt, worry or fear. As long as you are running, you're safe.
— Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness... and perhaps even Satan - Satan, in spite of himself - somehow serves to work out the will of God.
— William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist
Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.
— Kahlil Gibran
Today is today, only today... tomorrow...it will only be yesterday.
— L. Curt Erler
Faith is accepting what makes no sense, what we cannot prove, but know down deep in our souls is real.
— Megan McCafferty, Bumped
Reason excludes faith," Alessandro responded, watching the blood-red mite as it made a dash for the rim. "It's deliberately limited. It won't function with the materials of religion. You can come close to proving the existence of God by reason, but you can't do it absolutely. That's because you can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason. God is a postulate. I don't think God is interested in the verification of His existence, and, therefore, neither am I. Anyway, I have professional reasons to believe. Nature and art pivot faithfully around God. Even dogs know that.
— Mark Helprin
Daughter, we didn't need your note - or a prince's visit - to tell us you'd done nothing wrong. We know the daughter we raised. We fear for your future, but never for your character. You take our love and our trust wherever you wander. Father.
— Gail Carson Levine, Fairest
Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you're waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you'll never make it.
— Criss Jami, Healology
The difference between faith and insanity is that faith is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence, whereas insanity is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence.
— William Harwood, Dictionary of Contemporary Mythology
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.
— Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
Faith makes all things possible. Love makes them easy.
— Dwight L. Moody
if someone has just hurt you or broken your heart, if someone has just died, all the grace you need is there-waiting for you to receive it. As long as we are pulled inward-despair and self attention, we aren't free to reach for God's grace. If we mean to leave ourselves alone, we must keep a hand free.
— Eugenia Price
A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment...For imagination sets the goal ‘picture’ which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of ‘will,’ as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.
— Maxwell Maltz, The New Psycho-Cybernetics: The Original Science of Self-Improvement and Success That Has Changed the Lives of 30 Million People
Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.
— Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last 'trick', whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.'But how?' we ask.Then the voice says, 'They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'There they are. There *we* are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung to faith. My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Why did they believe? Because they saw miracles. Things one man took as chance, a man of faith took as a sign. A loved one recovering from disease, a fortunate business deal, a chance meeting with a long lost friend. It wasn't the grand doctrines or the sweeping ideals that seemed to make believers out of men. It was the simple magic in the world around them.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages
Your faith will not fail while God sustains it
—  you are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you.
Trust and faith bring joy to life and help relationships grow to their maximum potential.
— Joyce Meyer, Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind
Does trust have to be earned. Or is it simply a matter of faith?
— Nicholas Sparks, At First Sight