Selected faith quotes

1. When I was crossing into Gaza, I was asked at the checkpost whether I was carrying any weapons. I replied: Oh yes, my prayer books.

2. When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.

3. Immortality alone could teach this mortal how to die.

4. I don't want to convert people to Buddhism - all major religions, when understood properly, have the same potential for good.

5. I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I do know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, He will not ask, 'How many good things have you done in your life?,' rather He will ask, 'How much love did you put into what you did?

6. I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?

7. The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved they are Jesus in disguise.

8. Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too; at all events, I think it such a great blessing when a man has found his work that I cannot count myself among the unfortunate. I mean, I may be in certain relatively great difficulties, and there may be gloomy days in my life, but I shouldn't like to be counted among the unfortunate, nor would it be correct if I were.

9. When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

10. I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

11. There may be a time in life when one is tired of everything and feels as if all one does is wrong, and there maybe some truth in it - do you think this is a feeling one must try to forget and to banish, or is it 'the longing for God,' which one must not fear, but cherish to see if it may bring us some good? Is it 'the longing for God' which leads us to make a choice which we never regret? Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil.

12. We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.

13. He is your friend who pushes you nearer to God.

14. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.

15. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

16. The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient.

17. Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred.

18. I believe that Providence would never have allowed us to see the victory of the Movement if it had the intention after all to destroy us at the end.

19. I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.

20. Only so you can appeal to your God and pray Him to support and bless your courage, your work, your perseverance, your strength, your resolution, and with all these your claim on life.

21. In this world him who does not abandon himself the Almighty will not desert. Him who helps himself will the Almighty always also help; He will show him the way by which he can gain his rights, his freedom, and therefore his future.

22. I believe in Providence and I believe Providence to be just. Therefore I believe that Providence always rewards the strong, the industrious, and the upright.

23. If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us. In the long run He never leaves decent folk in the lurch. Often He may test them, He may send trials upon them, but in the long run He always lets His sun shine upon them once more and at the end He gives them His blessing.

24. Remain strong in your faith, as you were in former years. In this faith, in its close-knit unity our people to-day goes straight forward on its way and no power on earth will avail to stop it.

25. May therefore God give us the strength to continue to do our duty and with this prayer we bow in homage before our dead heroes, before those whom they have left behind in bereavement, and before all the other victims of this war.

26. I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.

27. I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.

28. If I would follow your advice and Jesus could perceive it, he, as a Jewish teacher, surely would not approve of such behavior.

29. God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.

30. What has been presented as Christianity during these nineteen centuries is only a beginning, full of mistakes, not full blown Christianity springing from the spirit of Jesus.

31. Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any kind of untruth proves to be a departure from the straight way of faith.

32. 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.

33. Today a new faith is stirring: the myth of blood, the faith that along with blood we are defending the divine nature of man as a whole.

34. Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

35. In the end, all journeys are spiritual. So go off the main road. Be givers of hospitality and gracious takers of it too. Accept the serendipitous moments of life because, when all is said and done, you may find out that they were not serendipitous at all. And know that faith is as real as bread broken among friends. What you believe will take you far on your journey. If you search carefully, you will find good food all along the way.

36. When you fuse Christianity with power, it isn't long before Christians start imposing the cross on others rather than taking it up for themselves.

37. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

38. It is to hope, though hope were lost.

39. Once I returned to the Church and began to see the universe as a place that really did incorporate redemption and really tried to understand the implications of there being a God, my identification with the vampires as outcasts, as outsiders and lost souls began to totally wane. It no longer worked for me. I had done it. It had led me to this point.

40. I promised that from now on I would write only for the Lord.

41. 'There is no God,' the wicked saith, 'And truly it's a blessing, For what He might have done with us It's better only guessing.'

42. He who serves our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, serves Germany, and he who serves Germany, serves God.

43. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

44. I believe there is one Supreme most perfect being. ... I believe He is pleased and delights in the happiness of those He has created; and since without virtue man can have no happiness in this world, I firmly believe He delights to see me virtuous.

45. The Way to see by Faith, is to shut the Eye of Reason.

46. Well, I kind of split my life into two pieces. One was where my chess career lies. There, I kept my sanity, so to speak, and my logic. And the other was my religious life. I tried to apply what I learned in the church to my chess career too. But I still was studying chess. I wasn't just 'trusting in God' to give me the moves.

47. Finally, two days ago, I succeeded- not on account of my hard efforts, but by the grace of the Lord. Like a sudden flash of lightning, the riddle was solved. I am unable to say what was the conducting thread that connected what I previously knew with what made my success possible.

48. You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.

49. Wherever religion is resorted to as a strong drink, and as an escape from the dull, monotonous round of home, those of its ministers who pepper the highest will be the surest to please. They who strew the Eternal Path with the greatest amount of brimstone, and who most ruthlessly tread down the flowers and leaves that grow by the wayside, will be voted the most righteous; and they who enlarge with the greatest pertinacity on the difficulty of getting into heaven will be considered, by all true believers, certain of going there: though it would be hard to say by what process of reasoning this conclusion is arrived at.

50. The other day [the President] said, I know you've had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. (He paused, then said) Would you like a puppy?

51. 'I care more about what God knows than what man says.'

52. The best proof of love is trust.

53. Our hearts seemed safe in our breasts and sang to the Light - The marrow in the bone We dreamed was safe. . . the blood in the veins, the sap in the tree Were springs of Deity.

54. Unless you can muse in a crowd all day On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love, as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behoving and unbehoving; Unless you can die when the dream is past - Oh, never call it loving!

55. Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

56. 'Faith' is a fine invention When Gentlemen can see - But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency.

57. Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.

58. Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.

59. O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.

60. 'I simply state that I'm a product of a versatile mind in a restless generation-with every reason to throw my mind and pen in with the radicals. Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we were all blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and my sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones. I've thought I was right about life at various times, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn't seeking for the grail it may be a damned amusing game.

61. Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. . . .

62. Can the 'word' be pinned down to either one period or one church? All churches are, of course, only more or less unsuccessful attempts to represent the unseen to the mind.

63. To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.

64. Religious men are and must be heretics now - for we must not pray, except in a 'form' of words, made beforehand - or think of God but with a prearranged idea.

65. I wondered a little why God was such a useless thing. It seemed a waste of time to have him. After that he became less and less, until he was: nothingness.

66. All good moral philosophy is but the handmaid to religion.

67. Make friends with the angels, who though invisible are always with you.... Often invoke them, constantly praise them, and make good use of their help and assistance in all your temporal and spiritual affairs.

68. Writing is a form of prayer.

69. What the inner voice says Will not disappoint the hoping soul.

70. If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest.

71. Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness.

72. There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.

73. Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense.

74. Catholic - which I was until I reached the age of reason.

75. I credit that eight years of grammar school with nourishing me in a direction where I could trust myself and trust my instincts. They gave me the tools to reject my faith. They taught me to question and think for myself and to believe in my instincts to such an extent that I just said, 'This is a wonderful fairy tale they have going here, but it's not for me.'

76. I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don't have as many people who believe it.

77. Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.

78. The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts ... his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them.

79. The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.

80. Our Lord Jesus Christ, my brethren, is our hero, a hero all the world wants.

81. You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing, interest ceases also.... But a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty: without certainty, without formulation there is no interest;... the clearer the formulation the greater the interest.

82. Thou mastering me God! giver of breath and bread; World's strand, sway of the sea; Lord of living and dead; Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, And after it almost unmade, what with dread, Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh? Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

83. Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist-slack they may be-these last strands of man In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

84. The best ideal is the true And other truth is none. All glory be ascribed to The holy Three in One.

85. Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it[.]

86. These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.

87. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.

88. In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation - it is a convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry.

89. The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.

90. A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a shape.

91. Indeed the Book of Job avowedly only answers mystery with mystery. Job is comforted with riddles; but he is comforted. Herein is indeed a type, in the sense of a prophecy, of things speaking with authority. For when he who doubts can only say 'I do not understand,' it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat 'You do not understand.' And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding.

92. You have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don't you think there's a lot in those old wives' tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say about them as a Catholic?' 'I say I'm an agnostic,' replied Father Brown, smiling. 'Nonsense,' said Aylmer impatiently. 'It's your business to believe things.' 'Well, I do believe some things, of course,' conceded Father Brown; 'and therefore, of course, I don't believe other things.'

93. 'I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with gruff humour, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.' 'You'll never be a practical man till you do,' said Father Brown. 'Look here, doctor; you know me pretty well; I think you know I'm not a bigot. You know I know there are all sorts in all religions; good men in bad ones and bad men in good ones.

94. Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

95. that peculiarly American religion, President-worship.

96. Man is the only animal that knows he's going to die, so we invent a heaven to keep from going crazy. Most people are hypnotized by organized religion from childhood.

97. 'Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.'

98. 'Religion is not a burden, not a weight, it is wings.'

99. 'The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.'

100. My soul, there is a country Far beyond the stars Where stands a winged sentry All skillful in the wars: There, above noise and danger, Sweet Peace is crowned with smiles, And One born in a manger Commands the beauteous files.