quotations about faith
A faithful person sees life from the perspective of trust, not fear. Bedrock faith allows me to believe that, despite the chaos of the present moment, God does reign; that regardless of how worthless I may feel, I truly matter to a God of love; that no pain lasts forever and no evil triumphs in the end. Faith sees even the darkest deed of all history, the death of God's Son, as a necessary prelude to the brightest.
PHILIP YANCEY
Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?
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
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 makes it possible to achieve that which man's mind can conceive and believe.
BRUCE LEE
Tao of Jeet Kune Do
Faith comes in different tempers: there's the hard, brittle faith that shatters when it meets an obstacle it can't cut through, and the tough, springy faith that bounces off unchipped.
K. J. PARKER
Devices and Desires
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"
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
To keep a faith pure, man had better retire to a monastery.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Stakes of Diplomacy
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
Faith I have, in myself, in humanity, in the worthwhileness of the pursuits in entertainment for the masses. But wide awake, not blind faith, moves me.
WALT DISNEY
The Gospel According to Disney
That mysterious stone on which Jacob reposed was faith. Let us, too, sleep on its breast, and our future greatness will be revealed to us.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles," The Writings of Madame Swetchine
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
The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other ... except through faith.
STEPHEN KING
Danse Macabre
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 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
When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.
CHARLES DICKENS
Nicholas Nickleby
I practice a faith that's been long abandoned
Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road
BOB DYLAN
"Ain't Talkin'"
At bottom, knowledge of God in faith is always this indirect knowledge of God, knowledge of God in His works, and in these particular works in the determining and using of certain creaturely realities to bear witness to the divine objectivity. What distinguishes faith from unbelief, erroneous faith and superstition is that it is content with this indirect knowledge of God.
KARL BARTH
Church Dogmatics
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