c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.
— Pearl S. Buck
It would be unjust toward children to introduce them to Christian teaching and existence only as little pagans and catechumens, in order to leave it up to them to choose the Faith on their own responsibility at a point in time difficult to determine.
— Hans Urs von Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child
Some things have to be believed to be seen
— Ralph Hodgson
A faith to live by, a self to live with, and a purpose to live for.
— Bob Harrington
Faith reveals the potential.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Doubter wants proof which contributes nothing to her faith.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
God blesses to the degree in which you believe.
— Pamela R. Jeffers, Something Old, New, Borrowed & True
The question is not, who uses faith and who uses reason? Everyone uses both. The question instead should be, who has the most reasonable faith?
— J.F. Baldwin
Just think of what would have happened to poor old Naaman if he had decided to dunk himself only once?
— Lawana Blackwell, The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter
Spiritual victory is not something you earn - it is something you accept. The Christian life is not so much about what you have done - it's about what Christ has done. It's not so much about how strong you are - it's about how strong God is.
— Alan D. Wright, Lover of My Soul: Delighting in God's Passionate Love
Judged by the normal standards of human affairs, the lives of men and women of God may look overburdened with suffering, and even inconclusive.
— Eknath Easwaran, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan: A Man to Match His Mountains
It seems to me some people just go around lookin' to get their faith unsettled. That has been the fashion for the last hundred years or so.
— Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
I honestly do not know if love vanquishes death as our traditional faiths teach but I do know that our vulnerabilities trump our ideologies and that love leavens the purity and logic of our beliefs propelling us to connect as the fiercely gracious human beings we are.
— Irwin Kula
We have not reached the consensus that to eat is a basic human right. This is an ethical crisis. This is a crisis of faith.
— Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization
Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.
— Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
You just don't have faith!" Frank repeated."Well I hope I never get it! It's like being hit by a hammer in the head!
— Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
The unqualified affirmation of the univeral will of salvation has radically changed the way of conceiving the mission of the Church in the world. . . . The work of salvation is a reality which occurs in history.
— Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation
Now listen. Faith is like oxygen. It keeps you afloat at all times. Sometimes you need it. Sometimes you don’t. but when you do need it you better be practiced at having faith, otherwise it won’t work. That’s why the missionaries built all the churches. Before we got those churches we weren’t practicing enough. That’s what prayers are for—practice, children. Practice.
— Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip
Why then should witless man so much misweeneThat nothing is but that which he hath seene?
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
To come to faith on the basis of experience alone is unwise, though not so foolish as to reject faith altogether because of lack of experience ... the quality of a Christian's experience depends on the quality of his faith, just as the quality of his faith depends in turn on the quality of his understanding of God's truth.
— Os Guinness, In Two Minds
Promise has faith as premise. Only men of faith can promise.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Our greatest challenge today...is to couple conviction with doubt. By conviction, I mean some pragmatically developed faith, trust, or centeredness; and by doubt I mean openness to the ongoing changeability, mystery, and fallibility of the conviction.
— Kirk J. Schneider
Do not think that we say that these things are only to be received by faith, but also that they are to be asserted by reason. For indeed it is not safe to commit these things to bare faith without reason, since assuredly truth cannot be without reason.
— Clement of Alexandria
So you say faith is not enough for you and you want knowledge, too. But knowledge does not involve spiritual effort; knowledge is obvious. Faith assumes effort. Knowledge is repose and faith is motion.
— Evgenij Vodolazkin, Laurus
...he felt God the same way arthritic monks felt rain coming in their joints. He felt only a hint of him.
— Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair
They have no gods. They work magic, and think they are gods themselves. But they are not. And when they die, they (...) become dust and bone, and their ghosts whine on the wind a little while till the wind blows them away. They do not have immortal souls.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan
Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
I have lost the consolation of faith/ though not the ambition to worship
— Forrest Gander
Answers based in truth are the foundation of wisdom.
— Jayce O'Neal
They will become Godly when they will have God in their hearts.
— Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi, The Religion of God
Maybe heaven entailed more than a soul residing in a single place, but instead having pieces of yourself spread among the hearts and memories of people you've touched.
— Kristina McMorris, The Pieces We Keep
Pray for change in your heart and not your circumstance, and you will see what will happen.
— Unarine Ramaru
Special Logan Kiss...Yeah, but you didn't know that I'd recited how i felt for you right then, in that moment, in my mins. The words flowed silently, so easily. There's no mistaking them. When I gave you those kisses, I was telling myself and you....He peck my nose "I..."He kisses my forehead "..LOVE.."My heart swells asHe presses his lips to my chin, then he whispers " YOU...
— E.L. Montes, Perfectly Damaged
Is it possible to love someone so completely, so intensely, they could never die? To give them more than just your heart or your soul? What if you could give then the miracle of immortality?
— Kellie Thacker, Grace
I once heard a Chicago-area pastor put it this way: we don't need more Americans bowing down to the Democrat donkey or the Republican elephant. We need more Americans bowing down to the Lion of Judah.
— Todd Starnes, God Less America: Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack on Traditional Values
Sometimes we place faith in the wrong people for the right reasons. We're too blind to their faults, and they're too blind to appreciate us.—Brighton Hayes
— Kelli McCracken, Heartstrings
How did you merit so much devotion so quickly?' I asked, making no attempt to keep the sarcasm from my voice.'I show them Heaven', said she, without a trace of irony. 'People are so desperate for light'.
— Rachel Hartman, Shadow Scale
Your little choices become habits that affect the bigger decisions you make in life.
— Elizabeth George
Usually without realizing it, our ultimate peace starts and ends in the authority of God alone, which means the solution to living in joy, peace, and harmony with our fellow men has been here for all since the beginning of mankind and throughout civilization. I have yet to feel the urge to argue politics: it reminds me of getting off the freeway to sit in raging traffic.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
I have to serve with all my might.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Joyfully we undertake our daily work.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.Never shall I forget that smoke.Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.Never.
— Elie Wiesel, Night
When we do the hard, intimate work of friendship, we bring a little more of the divine into daily life.
— Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life
If you allow it, [suffering] can be the means by which God brings you His greatest blessings.
— Charles R. Swindoll
Nobody think about that broken heart... life goes on, broken heart never join together but it tries very hard to get joined again. That;swhy may be it said "Heart is like a mirror, if its broken can never be joined.
— Shahid Islam
For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all
—  I think it finally is a matter of love.
It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.
— Zadie Smith, White Teeth
Faith is a question of eyesight
—  even the blind can see that.
I lose faith in mathematics, logical and rigid. What with those that even zero doesn’t accept?
— Dejan Stojanovic, The Shape
Deepen your faith in yourself.Nothing will be ableTo frighten or weaken you.
— Sri Chinmoy, The Wings of Joy: Finding Your Path to Inner Peace
By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
I reckon it does take a powerful trust in the Lord to guard a fellow, though sometimes I think that Cora’s a mite over-cautious, like she was trying to crowd the other folks away and get in closer than anybody else.
— William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
The door wasn’t closing. Shiloh’s spirit opened up as she considered the possibilities.
— Stacy Hawkins Adams, Lead Me Home
I came to understand that belief is a preconception about the way reality should be; faith is the willingness to experience reality as it is, including the acceptance of the unknown. An interesting way to understand the difference is to use the words interchangeably in the same sentence: I believe in Santa Claus. I have faith in Santa Claus. Belief can impede spiritual unfoldment; faith is supremely necessary for it.
— Judith Hanson Lasater
The Good News does not hinge on words like do or change but on the powerless, irrelevant, and frightening words like belief and faith.
— Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit
I have wandered freely in mystical traditions that are not religious and have been profoundly influenced by them. It is my church, however, that I keep returning, for she is my spiritual home.
— Anthony de Mello S.J.
I have lost my faith, but I gained the truth! It is not important at all to lose your candle as long as you find a torch!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
As to the doubt of the soul I discover it to be false: a mood not a conclusion. My conclusion is the Faith. Corporate, organized, a personality, teaching. A thing, not a theory. It.
— G.K. Chesterton
The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.
— Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace
Deep, contended joy comes from a place of complete security and confidence [in God] - even in the midst of trial.
— Charles R. Swindoll
Jesus lets us be real with our life and our faith.
— Bob Goff, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World
Of all the religions in the world, perhaps the religion of liberty is the only faith capable of purity.
— Tiffany Madison
The process of secularisation arises not from the loss of faith but from the loss of social interest in the world of faith. It begins the moment men feel that religion is irrelevant to the common way of life and that society as such has nothing to do with the truths of faith.
— Christopher Henry Dawson, Religion and World History: A Selection from the Works of Christopher Dawson
Why do many believers insist on repeatedly pointing to the crimes of 20th century dictators who led officially atheistic societies as some sort of evidence of their god's existence? It makes no sense.If the rivers of blood on Stalin's hands and Mao's hands, for example, are supposed to prove there is a god, then what do the oceans of blood on the hands of several thousand years' worth of religious kings, queens, presidents, popes, priests, generals, Crusadersm jihadists and tribal chiefs prove? It's not, of course, but if bodycount is somehow the measure of a god's likelihood of existence, then believers lose.It is clear that humans are quite capable of killing with or without images of gods bouncing around in their heads. If anything, however, history suggests that the concept of gods makes the idea of massacring your fellow man (and women and children, too, of course) a lot easier to act upon.
— Guy P. Harrison
Worse still, he doesn’t know how to follow the piper anymore because it’s a path Tom has lost faith in.And the piper knows it. Tom can see it in his father’s eyes now. And the more he stares, the clearer it becomes.
— Melina Marchetta, The Piper's Son
A faith that can only exist in the light of victory and certainty is one which really affirms the self while pretending to affirm Christ, for it only follows Jesus in the belief that Jesus has conquered death. Yet a faith that can look at the horror of the cross and still say ‘yes’ is one that says ‘no’ to the self in saying ‘yes’ to Christ.
— Peter Rollins
That eye which sees anything good in the creature is a blind eye; that eye which fancies it can discern anything in man, or anything in anything he can do to win the Divine favor, is as yet stone blind to the Truth of God, and needs to be lanced and cut, and the cataract of pride removed from it!
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
But if I could just get som ehint, some sign..." Conchita smiles, without humor, but with great affection. "That's the point behind faith," she says. "It's not something you can prove....I know you hate to hear this, but you either have it, or you don't.
— Charles de Lint, The Mystery of Grace
He who has two grounds of trust is lost! He who relies upon twosalvations, and cannot say of Christ, “He is all my salvation and all my desire,” that man is not only in danger of beinglost, but he is already condemned; because, in fact, he believes not on the Son of God! He is not alive to God at all, but rests partly on the Cross, and then in some measure on something else.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, we carry forward the basic insight our fundamental relationship to the world is one of love. Christians say that “God is Love,” that God created the universe out of love. The source of God’s Creation is love, and our relationship to the possibility of meaning within this created world is in and through love. The Christian community is a reciprocal relationship among subjects who love and are loved. The subject maintains the meaning of God’s Creation by taking up a Christ-like love toward others. The appearance of meaning in the world—love’s product—is always a manifestation of the divine. Liberalism turns away from this entire tradition of thought, in party because of its association with religion, and in part because this tradition resists the analytic form of reason. For liberalism, religion is individualized and privatized, and thus it cannot be used in the explanation or justification of a public space. If it does invade the public, it threatens irrationality. But religion is no less an effort to understand the character of our experience, and even a secular philosophy must not ignore that experience. We cannot simply deny what we cannot place within our categories of analysis. (221)
— Paul W. Kahn, Putting Liberalism in Its Place
So it goes for those of us who live in a cul-de-sac, where babies are brought home from the hospital and watched over, where hearts stop and feet slip, where we wonder if there is a hidden road that leads somewhere.We believe and we doubt. Believing and doubting share the same inevitability, but they are not equal. They cannot lay the same claim on our allegiance. They do not share the same power.If there are places beyond the cul-de-sac, doubt cannot take us there.
— John Ortberg
You've a right to believe that we're governed by Nature and the hidden Force within her. You can think that the gods, including my Melitele, are merely a personification of this power invented for simpletons so they can understand it better, accept its existence. According to you, that power is blind. But for me, Geralt, faith allows you to expect what my goddess personifies from nature: order, law, goodness. And hope.
— Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish
It is better to live ready than to get ready!
— Smith Wigglesworth
...we need to stop plotting the course and instead just land the plane on our plans to make a difference by getting to the "do" part of faith.
— Bob Goff, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World
Before God and high heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?
— Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
My friend Bob, who is both a student of Yoga and a neuroscientist, told me that he was always agitated by this idea of the chakras, that he wanted to actually see them in a dissected human body in order to believe they existed. But after a particularly transcendent meditative experience, he came away with a new understanding of it. He said,'Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But they are both equally true
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
They tried to believe in their classmates. They must have believed that if we could all get together, then we might end up being saved. We should commend them for that. We couldn't do that.
— Koushun Takami, Battle Royale
Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense his own already ... It is like a small child going to its father and saying, 'Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.' It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
How is faith to endure, O God, when you allow all this scraping and tearing on us? You have allowed rivers of blood to flow, mountains of suffering to pile up, sobs to become humanity's song--all without lifting a finger that we could see. You have allowed bonds of love beyond number to be painfully snapped. If you have not abandoned us, explain yourself.We strain to hear. But instead of hearing an answer we catch sight of God himself scraped and torn. Through our tears we see the tears of God.
— Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
I was utterly convinced that an intellectual could never be anything but an intellectual, was simply not capable of being anything else, that his intellectuality would, sooner or later, erode his faith or erode whatever he'd masked it with . . . For example, intellectuals like to dress themselves up as peasants . . . but it never works. The intellectual's constitution is impervious to such things - it permits only one object of worship - oneself. Generally speaking, an intellectual in the contemporary version is an exceptionally resourceful and, essentially, pitiful being.
— Leonid Borodin, Partings
He respected the power of faith, the benevolence of churches, the strength religion gave so many people . . . and yet, for him, the one intellectual suspension of disbelief that was imperative if one were truly going to "believe" had always proved too big an obstacle for his academic mind. "I want to believe," he heard himself say.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them. They knew that the team and the wagon were worth much more. They knew the buyer man would get much more, but they didn't know how to do it. Merchandising was a secret to them.
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
When you're young, faith is often a matter of rules. What you should do and shouldn't do, that kind of thing. But as you get older, you realize that faith is really a matter of relationship - with God, with the people around you, with the members of your community.
— Rhoda Janzen
The Father is truly the only Promise Maker who is in earnest a Promise Keeper. A promise from God is a promise kept.
— Sheila Walsh
Tom has been having a difficult patch, and we meet at the church of IKEA as often as possible, because it is equidistant from our houses and always cheers us up. Yesterday I asked, 'In your depression, and with so many people having such a hard time, where is Advent?' He tried to wiggle out of it by saying, 'You Protestants and your little questions!' Then, when pushed, he said: 'Faith is a decision. Do we believe we are ultimately doomed and fucked and there's no way out? Or that God and goodness make a difference? There is heaven, community, and hope - and hope that there is life beyond the grave.' 'But Tom, at the same time, the grave is very real, dark and cold and lonely.' 'Advent is not for the naive. Because in spite of the dark and cold, we see light - you look up, or you make light, with candles, or with strands of lightbulbs on trees. And you give light. Beauty helps, in art and nature and faces. Friends help. Solidarity helps. If you ask me, when people return phone calls, it's about as good as it gets. And who knows beyond that.
— Anne Lamott
Fe es aquello que nos permite creer en cosas que sabemos que no son ciertas.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
It took a couple of months before we were both convinced there were no rules about sexual activities in Hell and our spouses were not going to show up out of the blue. It was hard to start a sexual relationship in circumstances of such bizarre uncertainty, especially for an active Mormon and a good Christian, both lost in a Zoroastrian Hell. We were like virgin newlyweds. All my life I’d been raised to believe this kind of thing was wrong. All my life I had lived with a strong sense of morality. How do you give it up? How do you do things you thought you’d never do? Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth? How do you know how or on what to take a moral stand, how do you behave when it turns out there are no cosmic rules, no categorical imperatives? It was difficult. So tricky to untangle.
— Steven L. Peck, A Short Stay in Hell
In addition to the kind of critical reflection on one's previous assumptive or tacit system of values we saw Jack undertake, there must be, for Stage 4, a relocation of authority within the self. While others and their judgments will remain important to the Individuative-Reflective person, their expectations, advice and counsel will be submitted to an internal panel of experts who reserve the right to choose and who are prepared to take responsibility for their choices. I sometimes call this the emergence of the executive ego. The two essential features of the emergence of Stage 4, then, are the critical distancing from one's previous assumptive value system and the emergence of the executive ego. . . . We find that sometimes many persons complete half of this double movement, but do not complete the other.
— James W. Fowler, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning
Why God should want and need us is a mystery. But it is true: otherwise he would not have created us and life would ultimately have no meaning for us. It is good to remember that in God the is a constancy, a consistency of attitude which never changes, irrespective of what we are or how we act: he never changes in is wanting us or needing us.
— Basil Hume, Searching for God
Science is getting knocked on all sides these days, not only from religious fundamentalists, but from all kinds of people who perceive science as arrogant, one-sided, and the source of the troubles that come with the technology it produces. It's true that individuL scientists can be so arrogant and narrowly focused, they're blind to any but their own truths, and that new discoveries bring new problems with them. Still, I don't know many people who would refuse a biopsy for a newly discovered lump because they think science needs to be taken down a peg or two.Religion gets knocked for the same kinds of reasons as science: for its arrogance, narowmindedness, and tendency to create more trouble than it's worth. Religion is also accused of concealing reality under a comforting blanket of measureless faith -- the flip side, perhaps of the scientist for whom nothing can be real until she has measured it.My own sojourn into religion convinced me that good religion reveals rather than conceals. Religion is the soul in search of itself and its relationship to the cosmos. This journey requires looking at all of it: the joy, the sorrow, the beauty and the horror of life. We hope for the best. We want meaning and love to exist not only in ourselves, but in the very soul of the universe. At times this great hope might tempt us to pick and choose only the data that supports our desires. But in religion as in boat-building, the design must be tested in all conditions. When I say that I'm trying to pay attention, and that paying attention means being willing to look at all of it, I think I'm trying for the same moment of clarity that Graham experienced when the wind blew all over his theory. Looking at all of it is what good science is about. I believe that it's also what good religion is about.
— Margaret D. McGee
In my return to church, I had learned the hard way to avoid assumptions about other people's faith. For one thing, people kept surprising me. If I listened carefully to them, my conjectures about what they thought usually turned out to be wrong. For another thing, I was insecure enough about my own faith, such as it was, to resent other people telling me what they thought I believed and why they thought I believed it. So I tried to hear what my friends say about joining their loved ones after death without assuming I knew exactly what they meant.
— Margaret D. McGee
But the witness of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus is that God's most difficult promise has been kept.
— Sheila Walsh
You are the hybrids of golden worlds and ages splendidly conceived.
— Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry
A guilty suffering spirit is more open to grace than an apathetic or smug soul.' - Bread & Wine (day 5)
— Edna Hatlestad Hong
Nature" is another name for the miracles that are so commonplace in our lives that we take for granted and have grown used to seeing them.
— Shalom Arush, Women's Wisdom: The Garden of Peace for Women
God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers. ... It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor. ... Instead of explaining our suffering God shares it.
— Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
Strange are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and these many-coloured pigments of the imagination! Strange, too, that no one of them tallies with another!
— H. Rider Haggard, She
Trying to justify a world we don't hold all the answers to is what bedevils the best of us. Sometimes it's better just to accept that things are as we see them.
— Megan Chance, The Spiritualist
Logic only tells us what's there
—  it can't really address what isn't. Even the most devoted empiricist must admit that we have no hope of understanding the universe. Some things are unknowable.
Faith is a footbridge that you don't know will hold you up over the chasm until you're forced to walk out onto it.
— Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
On faith’s battered back calm eyes etch prayers that cool a nation’s hot rage.
— Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
The daily circumstances of life will afford us opportunities enough of glorifying God in trust, without our waiting for any extraordinary calls upon faith, our faith. Let us remember that the extraordinary circumstances of life are but few; that much of life may slip past without their occurrence; and that if we be not faithful and trusting in that which is little, we are not likely to be so in that which is great... Let our trust be reared in the humble nursery of our own daily experience, with its ever recurring little wants and trials, and sorrows; and then, when need be, it will come forth, to do such great things as are required of it.
— Philip Bennett Power
The average man has no central core of moral assurance, no spring within his breast, no inner strength to place him above the need for repeated psychological shots to give him the courage to go on living. He has become a parasite on the world, drawing his life from his environment, unable to live a day apart from the stimulation which society affords him.
— A.W. Tozer
I would rather believe God doesn't exist than believe he doesn't care.
— Eric Wilson, Expiration Date
Should one continue to follow the faith of a group that's cast him out? Shouldn't it stand to reason that if he was true to that faith that the group should have been true to him? Is it unreasonable to ask forgiveness of one who is all-forgiving?
— T.A. Miles, Six Celestial Swords
It seems all spirits need theatrics, eh? Even Christ himself requires incense and holy water. We're a skeptical people. We need convincing.
— Megan Chance, The Spiritualist
What a failure her life had been. Would she have lied to God if she’d had more faith, been more righteous? How could she possibly have a son at her age? And yet, if she had believed all along . . .
— Jill Eileen Smith, Sarai
Faith which does not doubt is dead faith. -Miguel de Unamuno, philosopher and writer (1864-1936)
— Miguel de Unamuno
Faith, sir, as to that matter, I don't believe one half of it myself.
— Diedrich Knichkerbocker
A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition. -Jose Bergamin, author (1895-1983)
— Jose Bergamin
Molitveni jezik jedini je jezik u kojem nema jezičnih zabrana. Kako je već rečeno, on je obuhvatniji od jezika vjere koja je sigurna u samu sebe. U jeziku molitve može se naime reći i to da se ne može vjerovati.
— Johann Baptist Metz, Memoria passionis: Ein provozierendes Gedächtnis in pluralistischer Gesellschaft
Have faith little one ‘til your hopes and your wishes come true. You must try to be brave.
— The Rescuers
A strong, vague persuasion that it was better to go forward than backward, and that I could go forward— that a way, however narrow and difficult, would in time open— predominated over other feelings: its influence hushed them so far, that at last I became sufficiently tranquil to be able to say my prayers and seek my couch. I had just extinguished my candle and lain down, when a deep, low, mighty tone swung through the night. At first I knew it not; but it was uttered twelve times, and at the twelfth colossal hum and trembling knell, I said: “I lie in the shadow of St. Paul’s.
— Charlotte Brontë, Villette
I am not functioning very well. Living with the knowledge that the baby is dead is painful. I feel so far away from you, God. I can only try to believe that you are sustaining me and guiding me through this. Please continue to stand by my side.
— Christine O'Keeffe Lafser, An Empty Cradle, a Full Heart: Reflections for Mothers and Fathers after Miscarriage, Stillbirth, or Infant Death
Os ventos do destino são imutáveis.
— Susana Almeida, Sombras de Morte
Prophet,' he said, 'Your doctrines I do not know; therefore if I accepted them, I would do it out of fear like a coward and a base man. Are you anxious that your faith be professed by cowards and base people?
— Henryk Sienkiewicz, In Desert and Wilderness
No coward soul is mine,No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:I see heaven's glories shine,And faith shines equal, arming me from fear
— Emily Brontë
Watching you has taught me that a man need not be weak to have a faith, but is made strong by it.
— Roseanna M. White, A Stray Drop of Blood
Eres mío para jugar contigo a mi antojo
— Nalini Singh, Visions of Heat
Levi," Maria called. "Come back. We're not finished yet."He paused"What, Maria?""You asked me what I believe in? I believed in you."He nodded his head sadly. "Yes, you did. And before you met me, you believed in nothing. But that's the thing with belief, Maria. It's easy to believe in something when it doesn't require anything from you. It's much harder, though, when the object of your belief requires something of you or asks for something you don't want to give. That's when real belief occurs.
— Brian Keene, Ghost Walk
I loved my father, but I was not like him. I never needed to believe the best of people. I took them as they were: two-faced, desperate, kind - perhaps all at once. But to Pa, they were all children of god, poor troubled sheep, who only needed love and an even break. He needed the world to back up what his religion told him about people. And when it came down to a choice between reason and faith, he let go of reason.
— Marcel Theroux, Far North
[Faith] was something other than an intellectual exercise. There were no words, no lofty concepts, that could take away the pain. Faith was living with the pain.
— Margaret Coel, The Eagle Catcher
Solo mirarte me proporciona el placer más intenso que jamás haya sentido.
— Nalini Singh, Visions of Heat
Keep marching boys and girls. Keep marching
— Rodman Philbrick, The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg
As your faith is strengthened, you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will and that you will flow with them to your great delight and benefit.
— Emmanuel Teney
Sophie Bach from The Maker:You’re a human being with a personality and a will, and you make choices and think and create. Is there no meaning to you, Adrien Bach?And what about us? Is the way we feel about each other just simulated emotions from some biological process—nothing more?
— Wes Moore, The Maker
He who asserts belief with absolute certainty knows nothing of faith and makes himself into a fool. He who is wise, upon realizing they have done this, recants and searches themselves for further enlightenment.
— Cristina Marrero
Just as He had been doing even before the moment I consciously embarked on this journey, He revealed to me that it was all about love. It always has been—before the foundations of the earth—and it always will be—throughout eternity. The answers I was seeking were found in love, the healing I desperately needed also found in love. The love I sought and so desperately wanted to give was enabled, empowered, and actualized by His divine love. So nothing remains but for me to LOVE as an expression of my appreciation for His love for me: L-live an O-openly V-virtuous E-existence.
— Riisa Renee
A life which has never been laid open in penitence and faith before God has little permanence in eternity.
— R.K. Harrison
faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts... [you] still experience the same greed, resentment, lust, and anger that everyone else experienced... the lines between sinner and saved [are] more fluid; the sins of those who come to church are not so different from the sins of those who don't... You [need] to come to church precisely because you [are] of this world, not apart from it; rich, poor, sinner, saved you [need] to embrace Christ precisely because you had sins to wash away... that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world...
— Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Faith belongs to the human spirit. Faith is faith. Humanity is divided by religion, religion is the divider of humanity. If every human could be removed of their blindfolds and see that faith is in itself faith and that this is something which belongs to each and every human being, then at that time the dividers of religion will suddenly mean nothing and we will all see that we are united by faith in and of itself. There is only one faith and it is called faith. And no man needs to prove to another man that what he believes in exists, because even if it does not exist, his faith is his belief that it is there, that something is there, and that in itself is faith. So I do not need to prove to any man that what I believe in exists or not, there is no such contest between man, my faith breathes in the body of my belief; the fact that I believe is the breath of my faith.
— C. JoyBell C.
Every time we turn to Christ in faith it is like a moment of Sabbath, a little foretaste of eternal rest and glory. The gift of that moment lies not in what we do but what we receive. It is the holy time set aside to receive the greatest gift of God ever has to give, which is himself, in his own beloved Son.
— Phillip Cary, Good News for Anxious Christians: Ten Practical Things You Don't Have to Do
Oh, sometimes I like to put the sand of doubt into the oyster of my faith." (Br. Cadfael)
— Ellis Peters, The Leper of Saint Giles
I still find my corrupt heart longing for tomorrow's bread. I can make a good argument to the Lord about how effective I can be if He would supply me with enough advance funds. It's a little frightening to pray for TODAY's bread. That means I must pray again for tomorrow and believe again for tomorrow. My greedy heart is willing to be corrupted by a little bit of riches so that I see my warehouse full of loaves. I can make a good argument about how God won’t have to be bothered with me every day if He would only advance me about ten years worth of bread.
— Gayle D. Erwin, The Yhwh Style
ليس لأحدنا أن يتنبّأ بأحداث اللحظة القادمة ، ومع ذلك ترانا نمضي قُدُماً ، لأننا نمتلك الثقة ، ولأننا نتحلّى بالإيمان
— Paulo Coelho, Brida
Many things the gods achieve beyond our judgement,'" said the sorrowful girl. "'What we thought is not confirmed and what we thought not God contives.
— John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
In the beginning, the call of God was not propositional. It was experiential. (p. 10)
— Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus
Вера в себя способна творить такие же чудеса, как вера в Господа Бога.
— Honoré de Balzac, Béatrix
And whose rules will choose to you follow? God's? Or man's? You say you want to break the outmoded patterns and crate a new model? Then do it. That is part of your destiny, boy.
— Kathleen McGowan, The Poet Prince
In this nonfundamentalist understanding of faith, practice is more important than theory, love more important than law, and mystery is seen as an insight into truth rather than an obstacle. It is the great lie of our time that all religious faith has to be fundamentalist to be valid.
— Andrew Sullivan
This is the one who will find us. He's the one who will lead them all back to me someday. He's the explorer. El curioso.
— Sandra Rodriguez Barron, Stay with Me: A Novel
Acuerdate de lo que te digo, mi niño. No tengas miedo. Todo lo que te ha pasado te ayudará. Vas a salir adelante.
— Sandra Rodriguez Barron, Stay with Me: A Novel
I believe in study. I believe that men learn much through study. As a matter of fact, it has been my observationthat they learn little concerning things as they are, as they were, or as they are to come without study. I alsobelieve, however, and know, that learning by study is greatly accelerated by faith.
— Marion G. Romney
(from the short story The Honorary Shepherds)...you can't be kicked out of a faith. Faith starts inside your heart and ends up in eternity. All you can be kicked out of is a building, which is the bus stop of faith, sort of, and what's a building?
— Gregory Maguire, Am I Blue?: Coming Out from the Silence
Nou, Stanley Donne legde ons uit dat alle godsdiensten ter wereld, occulte broederschappen, alle mystici en sjamanen, of het nu Rozenkruisers, Ridders van de Ronde Tafel, Egyptische hogepriesters, Tibetaanse boeddhistishce monniken, Zuid-Amerikaanse naguals, Indiase yogi's, Keltische druïden of discipelen van Jezus waren, allemaal hetzelfde doel nastreefden, namelijk om het bewustzijn van het individu dusdanig te vergroten en te verheffen dat hij of zij uiteindelijk tot een kosmisch bewustzijn komt en toetreedt tot hogere dimensies.
— Tim Ray, De gelofte
Humility rests upon the shores of your sorrows and blossoms upon the mountain of your faith
— Jeremy Aldana
Religion consists much in holy affection
—  but those exercises of affection which are most distinguishing of true religion are these practical exercises. Friendship between earthly friends consists much in affection
Religious sentiments are many a times much above reality. All are aware of reality but blinded by faith and faith has always led to many a myths become reality".
— Amit Abraham
The people who pray together build together a better world
— Ocean Crisstopher Poet
Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (...) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit.
— Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture
His spells portrayed the spirit as a frail thing, contstantly under attack and in need of stength, always threatening to die inside you. Inman found this notion dismal indeed, since he had been taught by sermon and hymn to hold as truth that the soul of man never dies.
— Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
Manifest in this trade (commercial sale of indulgences via bankers) at the same time was a pernicious tendency in the Roman Catholic system, for the trade in indulgences was not an excess or an abuse but the direct consequence of the nomistic degradation of the gospel. That the Reformation started with Luther’s protest against this traffic in indulgences proves its religious origin and evangelical character. At issue here was nothing less than the essential character of the gospel, the core of Christianity, the nature of true piety. And Luther was the man who, guided by experience in the life of his own soul, again made people understand the original and true meaning of the gospel of Christ. Like the “righteousness of God,” so the term “penitence” had been for him one of the most bitter words of Holy Scripture. But when from Romans 1:17 he learned to know a “righteousness by faith,” he also learned “the true manner of penitence.” He then understood that the repentance demanded in Matthew 4:17 had nothing to do with the works of satisfaction required in the Roman institution of confession, but consisted in “a change of mind in true interior contrition” and with all its benefits was itself a fruit of grace. In the first seven of his ninety-five theses and further in his sermon on “Indulgences and Grace” (February 1518), the sermon on “Penitence” (March 1518), and the sermon on the “Sacrament of Penance” (1519), he set forth this meaning of repentance or conversion and developed the glorious thought that the most important part of penitence consists not in private confession (which cannot be found in Scripture) nor in satisfaction (for God forgives sins freely) but in true sorrow over sin, in a solemn resolve to bear the cross of Christ, in a new life, and in the word of absolution, that is, the word of the grace of God in Christ. The penitent arrives at forgiveness of sins, not by making amends (satisfaction) and priestly absolution, but by trusting the word of God, by believing in God’s grace. It is not the sacrament but faith that justifies. In that way Luther came to again put sin and grace in the center of the Christian doctrine of salvation. The forgiveness of sins, that is, justification, does not depend on repentance, which always remains incomplete, but rests in God’s promise and becomes ours by faith alone.
— Herman Bavinck
Fear is the ghost of ancient.It consumes faithless human.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
When I think of the Crucifixion, I commit the sin of envy.
— Simone Weil, Waiting for God
If our future generations were much wilier than us,then it might be them who have led us all this time,to make decisions which fit to their pre-existence,left us live in the world of uncertainty or by faith.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
The South African artist William Kentridge speaks to this type of certainty: 'To say that one needs art, or politics, that incorporate ambiguity and contradiction is not to say that one then stops recognizing and condemning things as evil. However, it might stop one being so utterly convinced of the certainty of one's own solutions. There needs to be a strong understanding of fallibility and how the very act of certainty or authoritativeness can bring disasters.'The outcome of the current crisis is already determined.
— Nick Flynn, The Ticking Is the Bomb: A Memoir
There we go, that word again: faith. Pajo fuckin loves it. I fuckin hate it. I hate it cos there's no way o trickin yerself into it, no amount o thinkin about it can get yeh there - yeh have it or yeh don't. And I don't.
— Trevor Byrne, Ghosts & Lightning
- A sentyment staje się uciążliwy. W końcu jest coś nazbyt fizycznego w próbie zachowania cząstki dzieciństwa na swoim mostku. - Nie pan pierwszy sprowadza wiarę do zmysłu dotyku.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin
Duty performed gives clearness and firmness to faith, and faith thus strengthened through duty becomes the more assured and satisfying to the soul.
— Tryon Edwards
You don't need great faith to move mountains, you only need to use the poor faith you say you have.
— Neil Velez
Faith has size.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Even fear afraid of faith.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
Going back to legalistic roots contaminates the blood of Jesus.
— Sherry K. White
Faith, he had learned that night in front of the flickering television, was most glorious when it was most untouched by reason.
— Michael Thomas Ford, Looking For It
My faith likes mountains just where they are.
— Marty Rubin
We need to retrain our brains, our hearts, and our wills to seek a comfort that truly satisfies.
— Erin M. Straza, Comfort Detox: Finding Freedom from Habits That Bind You
By extending love and comfort to the broken places around us, we keep watch with Jesus in his sorrow.
— Erin M. Straza, Comfort Detox: Finding Freedom from Habits That Bind You
What if our common sense has been negatively influenced by our addiction to comfort?
— Erin M. Straza, Comfort Detox: Finding Freedom from Habits That Bind You