Quotations: Faith

Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.
Henri Fredric Amiel

Every life is a possession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent propaganda.
Henri F Amiel

Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith.
Saint Francis of Assisi

Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W H Auden

By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.
Saint Augustine

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.
James Baldwin

But every act in consequence of our faith, strengthens faith.
Anna Letitia Barbauld

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.
Dan Barker

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. We should live for the future, and yet find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is only the method of the first.
Henry Ward Beecher

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.
Tony Benn

Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it.
Georges Bernanos

A man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool.
G K Chesterton

Death came very easily to her. She had lived such an innocent and loving life of service to others and held such a simple faith, that she had no fears at all and did not seem to mind very much.
Winston Churchill

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.
Cicero

All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things unseen. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.
James Freeman Clarke

Faith is a fine invention/ When Gentleman can see --/ But Microscopes are prudent/ In an Emergency
Emily Dickinson

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.
Christopher Fry

Faith is building on what you know is here, so you can reach what you know is there.
Cullen Hightower

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Eric Hoffer

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H L Mencken

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
Wilson Mizner

Faith goes out through the window when beauty comes in at the door.
George Moore

Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted.
Albert Pike

Anybody who has been seriously engaged is scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.' It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.
Max Planck

A miracle is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles. . . . Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.
George B Shaw

Faith and doubt both are needed -- not as antagonists, but working side by side -- to take us around the unknown curve.
Lillian Smith

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults.
Socrates

A little in drink, but at all times your faithful husband.
Richard Steele

Tis only noble to be good./ Kind hearts are more than coronets,/ And simple faith than Norman blood.
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Disillusion comes only to the illusioned. One cannot be disillusioned of what one never put faith in.
Dorothy Thompson

Faith is believing what you know ain't so.
Mark Twain