Quotes About Belief

We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical ill-considered criticism.

I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't.

She knew few words and believed in none.

Man in his hunger for faith will feed his mind with the nearest and most convenient food.

It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

The truth was that for some months he had been going through that partitioning of the things of youth wherein it is decided whether or not to die for what one no longer believes.

I'm a cynical idealist.' He paused and wondered if that meant anything.

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.

Good luck to you and bad luck to your theories.

You're not sentimental?' 'No, I'm romantic-- a sentimental person thinks things will last-- a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't. Sentiment is emotional.

Of course I've got one--a man can't live without a moral code. Mine is that I'm against the burning of witches. Whenever they burn a witch I get all hot under the collar.

It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people- with the single mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.

I'm romantic - a sentimental person thinks things will last - a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't.

I am glad you are happy--but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed page, they never really happen to you in life.

In fact, I once imagined you loved me a little bit, if you'll excuse the presumption.

The instant her voice broke off ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said.

She had once been a Catholic, but discovering that priests were infinitely more attentive when she was in process of losing or regaining faith in Mother Church, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude.

Astenersi dal giudicare implica un'infinita speranza.

It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

I was adept at fooling the deity. I prayed immediately after all crimes until eventually prayer and crime became indistinguishable to me.

The truth was that for some months he had been going through that partitioning of the things of youth wherein it is decided whether or not to die for what one no longer believes. In the dead white hours in Zurich staring into a stranger's pantry across the upshine of a streetlamp, he used to think that he wanted to be brave and wise, but it was all pretty difficult. He wanted to be loved, too, if he could fit that in.

Tell me. I'll believe it. I always believe anything anyone tells about myself – don't you?

one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on YOU with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.