Great Throughts Treasury

"Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark." -

"Faith is belief, and belief has, over and above its intellectual character, an aspect of irmness, persistence, and subjective certainty." - Ralph Barton Perry

"Faith makes us, and not we it; and faith makes its own forms." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Our faith comes in moments: our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The Americans have no faith, they rely on the power of a dollar; they are deaf to sentiment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A believer, a mind whose faith is consciousness, is never disturbed because other persons do not yet see the fact which he sees." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hand on the door-latch they die outside." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away with every new perception, our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The faith that stand on authority is not faith." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed and the quest sees now how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Our faith comes in moments, our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word... Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into you as life, place yourself in the full center of that flood, then you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

"Experiences are fleeting. Sometimes one has a strong awareness of the ultimate mystery of the divine, and sometimes one is troubled by what mystics call periods of dryness. For me the main point is that the experience of faith is a total attitude toward the mystery of God and life which includes commitment, love, and hope." -

"The fragmentary character of human life is not regarded as evil in Biblical faith because it is seen from the perspective of a center of life and meaning in which each fragment is related to the plan of the whole, to the will of God. The evil arises when the fragment seeks by its own wisdom to comprehend the whole or attempts by its own power to realize it." -

"The final test of religious faith... is whether it will enable men to endure insecurity without complacency or despair, whether it can so interpret the ancient verities that they will not become mere escape hatches from responsibilities but instruments of insights into what civilization means." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, Therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; Therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"For just as faith teaches us that the supreme felicity of the other life consists only in this contemplation of the Divine Majesty, so we continue to learn by experience that a similar meditation, though incomparably less perfect, causes us to enjoy the greatest satisfaction of which we are capable of in this life." - René Descartes

"Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; these are its sign, and note, and character." - Robert Browning

"Faith must be not only living, but lively, too; it must be brightened and stirred up by a particular exercise of those virtues specifically requisite to a due performance of duty." -

"Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepares the way for the faith of tomorrow." - Romain Rolland

"Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe." -

"As for our proper peace, we have it double with God; here below by faith, and hereafter above by sight. But all peace we have here, be it public or peculiar, is rather a solace to our misery, than any assurance of our felicity." -

"God is to be worshiped by faith, hope and love." -

"Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest understand." -

"Do not seek to understand that you might have faith; seek faith that you might understand." -

"What are these virtues of spirit? They are faith, which shows us truths entirely elevated above the senses; hope, which makes us aspire to things invisible; charity, which makes us love not of sense, not of nature, not of self-interest, but with a love pure, solid and unchangeable, having its foundation in God." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word (by whom light as well as immortality was brought into the world) which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart - which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions." -

"You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair." - Samuel Ullman

"Faith is not trying to believe something regardless of the evidence. Faith is daring to do something regardless of the consequences." - Sherwood Eddy, born George Sherwood Eddy

"I can see no hope for our unhappy world save that which lies in the renewal of the moral and spiritual values which our common ideal of faith has created." - Sholem Asch, born Szalom Asz, also written Shalom Asch

"Faith lights us through the dark to Deity." - William Davenant, fully Sir William Davenant, also spelled D'Avenant

"The first and finest lesson that parents can teach their children is faith and courage." - Smiley Blanton

"For the unified mind in accord with the Way all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value. In this world of Suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self." - Sosan Zenji, aka Chien-chih Seng-Tsan or Ch'an Seng-ts'an

"One thing, all things: move along and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about nonperfection. To live in this faith is the road to nonduality, because the nondual is one with the trusting mind." - Sosan Zenji, aka Chien-chih Seng-Tsan or Ch'an Seng-ts'an

"So long as the bee is outside the petals of the lotus and has not tasted its honey, it hovers around the flower, emitting its buzzing sound; it drinks its nectar noiselessly. So long as man quarrels and disputes about doctrines and dogmas, he has not tasted the nectar of true faith; when he tastes it he becomes still." -

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace where there is hatred... let me sow love. Where there is injury... pardon. Where there is doubt... faith. Where there is despair... hope. Where there is darkness... light. Where there is sadness... joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled... as to console, to be understood... as to understand; to be loved... as to love, for it is in giving... that we receive. It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned, it is in dying... that we are born to eternal life." - Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

"What good is it if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?" -

"He that hath faith hath wisdom; he that hath wisdom hath peace. He that hath no wisdom and no faith, whose soul is one of doubt, is destroyed." - Mahabharata or The Mahabharata NULL

"He who recites his prayer aloud, in order that it might be heard, belongs to those of little faith." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"Intelligence must follow faith, never precede it, and never destroy it." - Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken

"Faith is loyalty to some inspired Teacher, some spiritual Hero. And what therefore is loyalty proper, the life-breath of all society, but an effluence of Hero-worship, submissive admiration for the truly great? Society is founded on Hero-worship." - Thomas Carlyle

"Pin thy faith to no man’s sleeve. Has thou not two eyes of they own?" - Thomas Carlyle

"Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness; he has a life purpose. Labor is life. From the heart of the worker rises the celestial force, breathed into him by Almighty God, awakening him to all nobleness, to all knowledge. Has thou valued patience, courage, openness to light, or readiness to own thy mistakes. In wrestling with the dim, brute powers of Fact, thou wilt continually learn. For every noble work, the possibilities are diffused through immensity - undiscoverable, except to Faith." - Thomas Carlyle

"The improver of knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog

""Psychological modernism," an uncritical acceptance of the values of the modern world. It includes blind faith in technology, inordinate attachment to material gadgets and conveniences, uncritical acceptance of the march of scientific progress, devotion to the electronic media, and a life-style dictated by advertising. This orientation toward life also tends toward a mechanistic and rationalistic understanding of matters of the heart." - Thomas Moore

"Faith is a gift of spirit that allows the soul to remain attached to its own unfolding. When faith is soulful, it is always planted in the soil of wonder and questioning." - Thomas Moore

"Our life must answer for our faith." - Thomas Wilson

"Modern thought is the prison of the soul and stands between man and his spiritual mind. The logical mind cannot know absolute faith, nor can it know pure thought, for the logic feeds upon logic and does not accept things that cannot be known and proven by the flesh. Thus man has created a prison for himself and for his spirit, because he lacks belief and purity of thought. Faith needs no proof nor logic, yet man needs proof before he can have faith. Man then has created a cycle which cannot be broken, for where proof is needed, there can be no faith." - Tom Brown, Jr.