Belief

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

"Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them."

"Credat Judæus Apella non ego."

"Better trust all and be deceived, And weep that trust, and that deceiving, Than doubt one heart that, if believed, Had blessed one's life with true believing."

"O thou, whose days are yet all spring, Faith, blighted once, is past retrieving; Experience is a dumb, dead thing; The victory's in believing."

"They believed—faith, I'm puzzled—I think I may call Their belief a believing in nothing at all, Or something of that sort; I know they all went For a general union of total dissent."

"Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know."

"Tarde quæ credita lædunt credimus."

"And when religious sects ran mad, He held, in spite of all his learning, That if a man's belief is bad, It will not be improved by burning."

"Do not believe what I tell you here any more than if it were some tale of a tub."

"I have believed the best of every man, And find that to believe it is enough To make a bad man show him at his best, Or even a good man swing his lantern higher."

"Begin by regarding every thing from a moral point of view, and you will end by believing in God."

"The man who goes through life with an uncertain doctrine not knowing what he believes, what a poor, powerless creature he is! He goes around through the world as a man goes down through the street with a poor, wounded arm, forever dodging people he meets on the street for fear they may touch him."

"If that impression does not remain on this intrepid and powerful people, into whose veins all nations pour their mingling blood, it will be our immense calamity. Public action, without it, will lose the dignity of consecration. Eloquence, without it, will miss what is loftiest, will give place to a careless and pulseless disquisition, or fall to the flatness of political slang. Life, without it, will lose its sacred and mystic charm. Society, without it, will fail of inspirations, and be drowned in an animalism whose rising tides will keep pace with its wealth."

"There is no unbelief; Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod And waits to see it push away the clod, He trusts in God."