quotations about faith
No piece of evidence--or lack of evidence--can either support or refute faith. Unfortunately, few people realize that. Some people search for proof of spiritual things in the material world. That is foolish and doomed, because nothing material has any bearing on anything spiritual. Spiritual truths can only be learned via spiritual means.
BOB LONSBERRY
A Various Language
Faith is a recognition of those things which are above the senses.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A golden thread, woven into the Old Testament history, renders the various lives whose stories it recounts only different phases of the same experience. That golden thread is faith.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures.
MARTIN LUTHER
"An Introduction to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans", Dr. Martin Luthers Vermischte Deutsche Schriften
A man who cannot stand upright, cannot, of course, walk. And a man whose faith has no backbone to it, can do nothing but crawl or float about, to and fro, with the advancing and receding tide.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
The want of faith, as well as faith itself, is best shewn by works. If a sceptic avoid the fire as much as those who believe it dangerous to go into it, we can hardly avoid thinking his scepticism to be feigned, and not real.
THOMAS REID
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
All of our lives are governed by a certain degree of faith in bullshit.
DAN SIMMONS
Carrion Comfort
Faith is reason denying absurdity in the face of the unknown.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
The Blazing Star
We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Anima Hominis", Per Amica Silentia Lunae
We may still say perhaps "faith governs the world"--but the faith of the present is no longer in revelation or in the priest--it is in reason and science.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Faith is a coat against ... nakedness. For most of us, most of the time, faith functions so as to screen off the abyss of mystery that surrounds us. But we all at certain times call upon faith to provide nerve to stand in the presence of the abyss--naked, stripped of life supports, trusting only in the being, the mercy and the power of the Other in the darkness. Faith helps us form a dependable "life space," an ultimate environment. At a deeper level, faith undergirds us when our life space is punctured and collapses, when the felt reality of our ultimate environment proves to be less than ultimate.
JAMES W. FOWLER
introduction, Stages of Faith
To keep a faith pure, man had better retire to a monastery.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Stakes of Diplomacy
Faith has not lost its power. The soul still enjoys this privilege of receiving inspiration from above. It is not the special prerogative of a few saints. It is the common right of all. It is not an occasional, exceptional gift. It is constant, continuous, the law of our being. It is not a miracle, interfering with the operations of the human soul. It is the condition of our soul's true life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Funny thing about faith ... it goes a lot faster than it comes.
ROB THURMAN
Nightlife
If you hate anyone because of your faith, you're doing it wrong.
ANONYMOUS
In the isolation of his clear, cold intellect, the sceptic abides in a glacial and spectral universe. No glow from the affections lights up the frost and shadow of the grave. He feels no prophecy in the thrill of the human heart--in the incompleteness of nature. He believes merely in things tangible, and sees only in the daytime. He will not confess the authenticity of that paler light of faith which was meant to shine when the sunshine of reason falls short, and the firmament of mystery is over our heads.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
We do not compromise our own faith by admitting the honesty of another's doubt.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
To follow, under all circumstances, the highest promptings within you; to be always true to the divine self; to rely upon the inward Voice, the inward Light, and to pursue your purpose with a fearless and restful heart, believing that the future will yield unto you the need of every thought and effort; knowing that the laws of the universe can never fail, and that your own will come back to you with mathematical exactitude -- this is faith and the living of faith.
JAMES ALLEN
Morning and Evening Thoughts
I believe faith is a human universal. We are endowed at birth with nascent capacities for faith. How these capacities are activated and grow depends to a large extent on how we are welcomed into the world and what kinds of environments we grow in. Faith is interactive and social; it requires community, language, ritual and nurture. Faith is also shaped by initiatives from beyond us and other people, initiatives of spirit or grace. How these latter initiatives are recognized and imaged, or unperceived and ignored, powerfully affects the shape of faith in our lives.
JAMES W. FOWLER
introduction, Stages of Faith