This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"To put more faith in lies and hate than truth and love is the true atheism." - James Russell Lowell
"Given a man full of faith, you will have a man tenacious in purpose, absorbed in one grand object, simple in his motives, in whom selfishness has been driven out by the power of a mightier love, and indolence stirred into unwearied energy." - Alexander Maclaren
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." - Wilson Mizner
"The institutions of a country depend in great measure on the nature of its soil and situation. Many of the wants of man are awakened or supplied by these circumstances. To these wants, manners, laws, and religion must shape and accommodate themselves. The division of land, and the rights attached to it, alter with the soil; the laws relating to its produce, with its fertility. The manners of its inhabitants are in various ways modified by its position. The religion of a miner is not the same as the faith of a shepherd, nor is the character of the ploughman so war-like as that of the hunter. The observant legislator follows the direction of all these various circumstances. the knowledge of the natural advantages or defects of a country thus form an essential part of political science and history." - Justus Möser
"Faith is the inspiration of nobleness, it is the strength of integrity; it is the life of love, and is everlasting growth for it; it is courage of soul, and bridges over for our crossing the gulf between worldliness and heavenly-mindfulness; and it is the sense of the unseen, without which we could not feel God nor hope for heaven." - William Mountford
"The light of genius is sometimes so resplendent as to make a man walk through life, amid glory and acclamation; but it burns very dimly and low when carried into “the valley of the shadow of death.” But faith is like the evening star, shining into our souls the more brightly, the deeper is the night of death in which they sink." - William Mountford
"The experience of life nearly always works toward the confirmation of faith. It is the total significance of life that it reveals God to man; and life only can do this; neither thought, nor demonstration, nor miracle, but only life, weaving its threads of daily toil and trial and joy into a pattern on which, at last, is inscribed the name of "God."" - Theodore T. Munger
"To live well we must have a faith fit to live by, a self fit to live with, and a work fit to live for." - Joseph Fort Newton
"Belief is a truth held in the mind. Faith is a fire in the heart." - Joseph Fort Newton
"The Christian faith is a sacrifice: a sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Without faith a man can do nothing; with it all things are possible." - William Osler, fully Sir William Osler
"A man's happiness requires a great deal more than any material thing. We all find it out sooner or later. If we live our lives thoughtlessly, we defeat our purpose; because our faith in God becomes shattered and there is no greater loss." - Paramananda, fully Swami Paramananda, born Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta NULL
"Have faith in your immortal nature. Know that you are Spirit. Those who think they are limited and mortal, that they are born and that they die, are superstitious. Anything that is weakening, anything that is degenerating, anything that tells us that we are limited human beings is a terrible superstition. By all the means in our power we must overcome it. Let us tear aside this veil of superstition, recognize our true nature, and know that we are eternal, imperishable and immortal." - Paramananda, fully Swami Paramananda, born Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta NULL
"One cannot have faith without optimism. Faith and hope are inseparable. Depression is a great obstacle in the spiritual life and we must strive to conquer it... Cheerfulness is one of the essential spiritual qualities we must guard ourselves against dejection, self-denunciation, or even feeling a little down-hearted... Dejection invariably distorts our vision - it magnifies our troubles." - Paramananda, fully Swami Paramananda, born Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta NULL
"I have become convinced that there is a definite relationship between medical science and religious faith and that God has given us both as weapons against disease." - Robert C. Peale
"Of all the duties, the love of truth, with faith and constancy in it, ranks first and highest. Truth is God. To love God and to love truth are one and the same." - Silvio Pellico
"Religion is the fear of God, and its demonstration good works; and faith is the root of both: “For without faith we cannot please God;” nor can we fear what we do not believe." - William Penn
"Religion should be the motor of life, the central heating plant of personality, the faith that gives joy to activity, hope to struggle, dignity to humility, zest to living." - William Lyon Phelps
"Here is a mystery, the stupendous mystery of the Christian religion, the ineffable mystery of three persons in one God. We cannot define it. Every human attempt at definition involves it in deeper mystery. The arithmetic of heaven is beyond us. Yet this is no more mysterious and inexplicable than the trinity of our own nature; body, soul, and spirit; and no man has ever shown that it involved a contradiction or in any way conflicted with the testimony of our senses or with demonstrated truth; and we must accept it by the power of a simple faith, or rush into tritheism on the one hand or unitarianism on the other." - Frederick D. Power, fully Frederick Dunglison Power
"Justice is that which is most primitive in the human soul, most fundamental in society, most sacred among ideas, and what the masses demand today with most ardor. It is the essence of religions and at the same time the form of reason, the secret object of faith, and the beginning, middle and end of knowledge. What can be imagined more universal, more strong, more complete than justice?" - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"There is a grand fearlessness in faith. He who in his heart of hearts reverences the good, the true, the holy - that is, reverences God - does not tremble at the apparent success of attacks upon the outworks of faith. They may shake those who rest on those outworks - they do not move him whose soul reposes on the truth itself. He needs no prop or crutches to support his faith. Founded on a Rock, Faith can afford to gaze undismayed at the approaches of Infidelity." -
"There is a power in the soul, quite separate from the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvelous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above the reach of the atheism of science. It does not rest on the wonderful, but on the eternal wisdom and goodness of God... No science can sweep away the everlasting love which the heart feels, and which the intellect does not even pretend to judge or recognize." -
"In true friendship, the meaning of life gets enfleshed... The meaning of life breaks in upon us with insistence, making us realize that we can never really be separated from someone we love so long as we carry with us always, as if in a little sack, the other person’s heart... Faith and hope lead to the... most thrilling virtue: unconditional love. It encourages us to risk it all with our whole hears open." - Barry Sanders
"When the American poor turn to religion, as most of them do, they turn not to faith in revolution, but to a more radical revolt against faith in their fellow man." - Herbert Wallace Schneider
"Without our faith in free will the earth would be the scene not only of the most horrible nonsense but also of the most intolerable boredom." - Arthur Schnitzler
"No ray of sunshine is ever lost, but the green which it wakes into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted to the sower to live to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith." - Albert Schweitzer
"Fear makes us not only less than we might be but less than we think we are. Faith reminds us we should doubt our fears." - Noah benShea
"Happiness is the sense that one matters. Happiness is an abiding enthusiasm. Happiness is single-mindedness. Happiness is whole-heartedness. Happiness is a by-product. Happiness is faith." - Sam Shoemaker, fully Samuel "Sam" Moor Shoemaker, III
"Faith, love and sorrow are three elements that mysteriously blend in human experience, each having its own tale to tell of the relation which we bear to the Supreme Being." - O. J. Simon
"Serenity comes to the man who lives with an unfaltering faith in an unfailing God. The person who lives with eternity in his heart will find a strange calm in his spirit." - Joseph R. Sizoo
"I should like to persuade religious people that some of us who reject their faith, nevertheless do have an experience which is at least very much like their essential religious experience. We feel, sometimes with remarkable intensity and clarity, our ‘at-oneness’ with something which might be the fundamental reality behind appearances." - Olaf Stapledon, fully William Olaf Stapledon
"Faith is the revealer of knowledge; it is the office of reason to defend that knowledge and to preserve it pure. Independent knowledge - the knowledge that comes not though faith - whether it be of things earthly or things heavenly, never can be ours." - Sunday School Times NULL
"Religion is not a fractional thing that can be doled out in fixed weekly or daily measures as one among various subjects in the school syllabus. It is the truth of our complete being, the consciousness of our personal relationship with the infinite; it is the true center of gravity of our life. This we can attain during our childhood by daily living in a place where the truth of the spiritual world is not obscured by a crowd of necessities assuming artificial importance; where life is simple, surrounded by fullness of leisure, by ample space and pure air and profound peace of nature; and where men live with a perfect faith in the eternal life before them." -
"A religion without mystery must be a religion without God. In dwelling on divine mysteries, keep thy heart humble, thy thoughts reverent, thy soul holy. Let not philosophy be ashamed to be confuted, nor logic to be confounded, nor reason to be surpassed. What thou canst not prove, approve; what thou canst not comprehend, believe; what thou canst believe, admire and love and obey. so shall thine ignorance be satisfied in thy faith, and thy doubt be swallowed up in thy reverence, and thy faith be as influential as sight. Put out thing own candle, and then shalt thou see clearly the sun of righteousness." - Jeremy Taylor
"Faith is a certain image of eternity. All things are present to it - things past, and things to come; it converses with angels, and antedates the hymns of glory. Every man that hath this grace is as certain there are glories for him, if he perseveres in duty, as if he had heard and sung thanksgiving song for the blessed sentence of doomsday." - Jeremy Taylor
"Despotism may govern without faith, but Liberty cannot." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"Not prayer without faith, nor faith without prayer, but prayer in faith, is the cost of spiritual gifts and graces." - Henry Clay Trumbull
"Doubt is the disease of this inquisitive, restless age. It is the price we pay for our advanced intelligence and civilization - the dim night of our resplendent day. But as the most beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith that springs from conflict is often the strongest and the best." - Robert James Turnbull
"Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say." - William M. Watt, fully William Montgomery Watt
"The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of special revelation from God; but it is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow man." - Daniel Webster
"As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works." - Richard Whately
"The poet is the equable man, not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns, nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad, he bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less, he is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key... As he sees the farthest he has the most faith, his thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things, in the dispute on God and eternity he is silent, he sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement, he sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as dreams or dots." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"The willingness to take risks is our grasp of faith." - George Edward Woodberry
"Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death." - Edward Young