Quotes About Belief

It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea. But I do. That's how I believe.

I read the newspapers with lively interest. It is seldom that they are absolutely, point-blank wrong. That is the popular belief, but those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo of truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl, round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament.

I know I am awful. But how much more awful I should be without the Faith.

As there was no form of government common to the peoples thus segregated, nor tie of language, history, habit or belief, they were called a Republic.

Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea. But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea. But I do. That's how I believe.

I've usually found every Catholic family has one lapsed member, and it's often the nicest.

I don't believe,' said Mr Prendergast, 'that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed. Don't you agree?

Lady Marchmain,10 no I am not on her side; but God is, who suffers fools gladly;

Do you know last year, when I thought I was going to have a child, I'd decided to have it brought up a Catholic? I hadn't thought about religion before; I haven't since; but just at that time, when I was was waiting for the birth, I thought, 'That's the one thing I can give her. It doesn't seem to have done me much good, but my child shall have it.' It was odd, wanting to give something one had lost oneself

he was not a man of religious habit, but he knew more than most Catholics about their Church;

Most English gentlemen at this time believed that they had a particular aptitude for endearing themselves to the lower classes. Guy was not troubled by this illusion, but he believed he was rather liked by these particular thirty men. He did not greatly care.

But how do you know He *doesn't* want us to have it—the cross, I mean? I bet He's just waiting for one of us to go and find it—just at this moment when it's most needed. Just at this moment when everyone is forgetting it and chattering about the hypostatic union, there's a solid chunk of wood waiting for them to have their silly heads knocked against. I'm going off to find it

We don't get much time to read the papers." "No, I suppose you don't. I envy you. There's nothing in them but lies," he added sadly. "You can't believe a word they say. But it's all good. Very good indeed. It helps to keep one's spirits up," he said from the depths of his gloom.

D'you know, Bridey, if I ever felt for a moment like becoming a Catholic, I should only have to talk to you for five minutes to be cured. You manage to reduce what seem quite sensible propositions to stark nonsense." "It's odd you should say that. I've heard it before from other people. It's one of the many reasons why I don't think I should make a good priest.

We look back already to the time of the persecution as though it were the heroic age, but have you ever thought how awfully few martyrs there were, compared with how many there ought to have been?

The Church isn't a cult for a few heroes. It is the whole of fallen mankind redeemed.

The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms. Whatever the outcome there was a place for him in that battle." This was the belief of Guy Crouchback in 1939 when he heard the news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty. What follows is the story of his attempt to find his "place in that battle.

I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream, He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is...

You probably think you know...The failure and the success both believe in their hearts that they have accurately balanced points of view, the success because he's succeeded, and the failure because he's failed. The successful man tells his son to profit by his father's good fortune, and the failure tells his son to profit by his father's mistakes.

Truth can shrink and fancy can grow much in five centuries." "You really think it takes that long?" Woermann said, taking in a final survey of the pass before he turned away. It can happen in a matter of a few years.

I'm a cynical idealist.

People over forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything. At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

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...