quotations about faith
Faith is private capital, kept in one's own house. There are public savings-banks and loan-offices, which supply individuals in their day of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Faith was a longing that pretended to be a conviction.
IVAN KLIMA
Waiting for the Dark
The discoveries of science have proved that the opinions concerning a firmament above, and a flat earth beneath, are completely inaccurate; but faith delights more in sublimity than truth; it soars far above science in its discoveries, and holds accuracy in contempt.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
However logical our induction, the end of the thread is fastened upon the assurance of faith.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
I practice a faith that's been long abandoned
Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road
BOB DYLAN
"Ain't Talkin'"
The shade of faith and the cloak of true godliness is the best equipage for the storm of adversity.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
All the answers you may wish for lie within faith, but it demands a complete and incontinent surrender, an immersion as total as any baptism. Indeed baptism is a kind of enactment of the surrender: you bathe in faith, you swim in it, you live by it, surrounded by it, buoyed up by it, engulfed by it. You drown in it, for at times it takes your breath away as entirely as any lungful of water.... All the answers lie in faith; and when you lose your faith you have no choice but to substitute for if a philosophy that deliberately and coldly offers no answers at all.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
The struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.
RONALD REAGAN
speech for National Association of Evangelicals, March 8, 1983
I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.
PHILIP YANCEY
Finding God in Unexpected Places
I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.
ALEISTER CROWLEY
The Book of Lies
The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
WILLIAM JAMES
"The Dilemma of Determinism"
For, no: not faith by fable lives,
But from the faith the fable springs
-- It never is the song that gives
Tongue life, it is the tongue that sings;
And sings the song.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
Love's Voice
Faith is belief without proof. Faith is fine, but don't call it science.
LOYD AUERBACH
Esp
Faith doth both admit and reject disputation with difference.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
Faith ... is a conscious apprehension of something inevident, something which unlike this desk and this chair is not seen to be there, even if it enters into the fabric of our personal relations to reality with at least as much force, relevance, and moment as things which are seen to be there.
BERNARD LONERGAN
A Second Collection
Through faith we are restored to paradise and created anew. We have no need of works in order to be righteous; however, in order to avoid idleness and so that the body might be cared for an disciplined, works are done freely to please God.
MARTIN LUTHER
The Freedom of a Christian
Scepticism has never founded empires, established principles, or changed the world's heart. The great doers of history have always been men of faith.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
I'm wary of faith outside of actions. I'm wary of religiosity that ignores the wider world.
BONO
Rolling Stone, Nov. 3, 2005
Christianity, just as much as Islam, teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue. You don't have to make the case for what you believe. If somebody announces that it is part of his faith, the rest of society, whether of the same faith, or another, or of none, is obliged, by ingrained custom, to "respect" it without question; respect it until the day it manifests itself in a horrible massacre like the destruction of the World Trade Center, or the London or Madrid bombings.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
Faith is like an inner tube shaped by unseen air. In the same way, faith fills our life and shapes each circumstance.
MEL CURTISS
Inkspirations: Devotions for a Lifetime