Virtues

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true."

"Religion is based on faith alone, and faith stands in no need of logical demonstrations, but is itself justified in postulating its content as a necessary hypothesis."

"The general rule is, that Truth should never be violated, because it is of the utmost importance to the comfort of life, that we should have a full security by mutual faith; and occasional inconveniences should be willingly suffered that we may preserve it. There must, however, be some exceptions. If, for instance, a murderer should ask you which way a man is gone, you may tell him what is not true, because you are under a previous obligation not to betray a man to a murderer."

"It's faith, Hawkgirl. You're not supposed to understand it... you just have it."

"Charity keepeth us in Faith and Hope, and Hope leadeth us in Charity. And in the end all shall be Charity."

"Our faith is a light by nature coming of our endless Day, that is our Father, God. In which light our Mother, Christ, and our good Lord, the Holy Ghost, leadeth us in this passing life. This light is measured discreetly, needfully standing to us in the night. The light is cause of our life; the night is cause of our pain and of all our woe: in which we earn meed and thanks of God. For we, with mercy and grace, steadfastly know and believe our light, going therein wisely and mightily."

"If he were To be made honest by an act of parliament I should not alter in my faith of him."

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves."

"Be thou faithful unto death."

"The German is the discipline of fear; ours is the discipline of faith — and faith will triumph."

"Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?"

"Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

"Truly I say to you, if you have faith, and do not doubt, you shall not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, "Be taken up and cast into the sea," it shall happen."

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

"I have long defended to my own students the lawfulness of voluntarily adopted faith; but as soon as they have got well imbued with the logical spirit, they have as a rule refused to admit my contention to be lawful philosophically, even though in point of fact they were personally chock full of some faith or other themselves."

"It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true."

"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."

"Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble."

"Our faith begins at the point where atheists suppose it must be at an end. Our faith begins with the bleakness and power which is the night of the cross, abandonment, temptation and doubt about everything that exists! Our faith … must be born of nothingness, it must taste this nothingness and be given it to taste in a way that no philosophy of nihilism can imagine."

"Never confuse faith, or belief — of any kind — with something even remotely intellectual."

"I believe it was Magellan who said, "The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.""

"As it is with all matters of faith, though, I found nothing that could not sustain at least two interpretations."

"It’s a real shame that I let something as insignificant as simple belief rob me of my right to profound experience."

"My faith is great: out of the transient darkness of the present the shadows will flee away, and Day will yet dawn. I am an Anarchist. No man who believes in force and violence is an Anarchist. The true Anarchist decries all influences save those of love and reason. Ideas are his only arms. Being an Anarchist I am also a Socialist. Socialism is the antithesis of Anarchy. One is the North Pole of Truth, the other the South."

"Mirror of constant faith, revered and mourn'd!"

"Faith, as an intellectual state, is self-reliance, which, if you have a metaphysical turn, you will find is not so much of a paradox as it sounds at first."

"The idealists give away their case when they write books. For it shows that they have done the great act of faith and decided that they are not God."

"The great act of faith is when a man decides that he is not God."

"Faith draws the poison from every grief, takes the sting from every loss, and quenches the fire of every pain; and only faith can do it."

"Faith is a gift of God, which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menace of torture."

"Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated."

"What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine? The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?— They sought a faith's pure shrine!"

"Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it — especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible."

"I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith — it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe."

"Faith is generally nothing more than the permission religious people give to one another to believe things strongly without evidence."

"The moderation we see among nonfundamentalists is not some sign that faith itself has evolved; it is, rather, the product of the many hammer blows of modernity that have exposed certain tenets of faith to doubt."

"A Faith that sets bounds to itself, that will believe so much and no more, that will trust thus far and no further, is none. It is only Doubt taking a nap in an elbow chair. The husband, whose scepticism is prurient enough to contemplate the possibility of his wife's proving false, richly deserves that she should do so."

"Faith, Quinn mused, was a strange power. They had committed their lives to the sect, never questioning its gospels. Yet in all of that time, they had the reassurance of routine … The bedrock of every religion, that your God is a promise, never to be encountered in this life, this universe."

"Faith is a grasping of Almighty power; The hand of man laid on the arm of God; — The grand and blessed hour In which the things impossible to me Become the possible, O Lord, through Thee."

"God comes down in the rain, And the crop grows tall— This is the country faith, And the best of all."

"Faith is the backbone of the social and the foundation of the commercial fabric; remove faith between man and man, and society and commerce fall to pieces. There is not a happy home on earth but stands on faith; our heads are pillowed on it, we sleep at night in its arms with greater security for the safety of our lives, peace, and prosperity than bolts and bars can give."

"Faith cannot be given to man. Faith arises in a man and increases in its action in him not as the result of automatic learning, that is, not from any automatic ascertainment of height, breadth, thickness, form and weight, or from the perception of anything by sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste, but from understanding. Understanding is the essence obtained from information intentionally learned and from all kinds of experiences personally experienced."

"Faith of consciousness is freedom Faith of feeling is weakness Faith of body is stupidity."

"If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?"

"Faith in an order, which is the basis of science, will not (as it cannot reasonably) be dissevered from faith in an Ordainer, which is the basis of religion."

"Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breath life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded, not of thinking, rational men."

"If you have any faith, give me, for heaven's sake, a share of it! Your doubts you may keep to yourself, for I have a plenty of my own."

"Die Botschaft hör' ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Glaube; Das Wunder ist des Glaubens liebstes Kind."

"If you find it hard to believe in me, maybe it would help you to know that I believe in you."

"We lean on Faith; and some less wise have cried, "Behold the butterfly, the seed that's cast!" Vain hopes that fall like flowers before the blast! What man can look on Death unterrified?"