quotations about faith
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
Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, Jun. 28, 2006
Faith is like a floodlight that lights our path and provides illumination to our dark world.
MEL CURTISS
Inkspirations: Devotions for a Lifetime
Faith is a gift of God, which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menace of torture.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
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
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 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
A faith is something you die for; a doctrine is something you kill for: there is all the difference in the world.
TONY BENN
The Observer, April 16, 1989
The Church has consistently and justly refused to allow that reason might stand in opposition to faith, and yet be placed under subjection to it. The human spirit in its inmost nature is not something so divided up that two contradictory elements might subsist together in it. If discord has arisen between intellectual insight and religion, and is not overcome in knowledge, it leads to despair, which comes in the place of reconciliation. This despair is reconciliation carried out in a one-sided manner. The one side is cast away, the other alone held fast; but a man cannot win true peace in this way. The one alternative is, for the divided spirit to reject the demands of the intellect and try to return to simple religious feeling. To this, however, the spirit can only attain by doing violence to itself, for the independence of consciousness demands satisfaction, and will not be thrust aside by force; and to renounce independent thought, is not within the power of the healthy mind. Religious feeling becomes yearning hypocrisy, and retains the moment of non-satisfaction. The other alternative is a one-sided attitude of indifference toward religion, which is either left unquestioned and let alone, or is ultimately attacked and opposed. That is the course followed by shallow spirits.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion
As a reason is superior to sense, so faith has the preeminence over reason. Be reason reverenced in matters that fall within her sphere; but when she ventures into deeps of God, the seas where faith has all the sovereignty, when acting like herself, she lowers her sails. As sense would seem to tell us many things which reason contradicts, so faith will rectify the fond mistakes of reason: nor ought she to be dissatisfied. Faith only shuts the eye of reason, not picks it out. Nor these alone submit themselves before this noble grace; even others her fellow virtues do obeisance. Though, as a gracious quality, she stands upon a level with the rest; yet, as an instrument, she far excels in glory. She cannot boast indeed of her intrinsic worth, but of the post of honor which she fills by heaven's appointment. She only is the general receiver of all the blessings of the gospel. By her we call heaven's rich unfathomable mines our own. Because she humbleth herself, therefore hath God highly exalted her, and given her a name above every grace. Even charity herself is only greater in duration: for, she abideth when faith shall fail, as to its actings; and die like Moses, in the mount. Such is her humble nature, that even the jealous God, who will not give his glory to another, even he is found to give his glory unto her. We are saved by faith; we are justified by faith. She faithfully returns the glory to her object. He has regarded the low estate of his handmaid, because himself has said, them that honor me, I will honor.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On Faith", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
The shade of faith and the cloak of true godliness is the best equipage for the storm of adversity.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
How necessary it is for our happiness now, and to come, that we possess faith. The dog has faith in its master, the child in its parent, then why have we not more childlike faith in God? Let us try and bear in mind the implicit faith of Abraham, and strive more to imitate the partriarch of old. We are too apt to put faith in man, and how often we have to bitterly regret it when too late; and man only turns to God when he has tried every other source and found it fail. Why not, from the beginning, trust in God, and God alone; for he who puts his trust in man, God help him. May God give us strength, then, to nourish in all its perfection and simplicity, the faith of the patriarchs who feared and trusted God alone.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Faith", Short Essays
If faith ever rises to manly vigour, it must be by enlarging the mind's acquaintance with the whole extent of saving truth. Believers who would be strong and healthy, must not be detained upon the milk of babes, but must aspire to strong meat, and go on unto perfection. For faith to be strong and conquering, we must have variety of food. The entire truths of religion must enter into the regimen.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER
Faith
I will not doubt, though sorrows fall like rain,
And troubles swarm like bees about a hive;
I shall believe the heights for which I strive
Are only reached by anguish and by pain;
And though I groan and tremble with my crosses,
I yet shall see, through my severest losses,
The greater gain.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Faith"
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 an orientation of the total person, giving purpose and goal to one's hopes and strivings, thoughts and actions.
JAMES W. FOWLER
Stages of Faith
Faith is the enemy of discovery.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
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
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"
Noble faith, thou giant power,
Leading men to action high,
Source of every grand endeavor,
And the deeds that deify--
May you stand throughout the ages
Towering o'er the wrecks of time,
Bearing fruit of thy inspiring
In the deeds that are sublime.
WILLIAM HENRY SMITH
Ornithoidichnites