Quotes About Belief

if I lost faith in the order of things, if I were convinced that everything is a disorderly, damnable, devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusion—still I should want to live.

Avevo letto da qualche parte la parola 'nichilismo' e a scuola chiesi al mio insegnante di inglese cosa significasse. Significa non credere in niente mi rispose, e subito seppi di aver trovato un nome per il mio stato d'animo. Non era solo mancanza di qualcosa in cui credere, era non credere, di fatto, in niente.

If there is no justice in this world, try the next.

It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he'd experienced it.

He had met this sort of white man before, earnest and believing what came out of their mouths. The veracity of their words was another matter, but at least they believed them. The southern white man was spat from the loins of the devil and there was no way to forecast his next evil act.

If you believed in the holy circulation of envelopes, everything that went down happened because a man took an envelope and didn't do his job. An envelope is an envelope. Disrespect the order and the whole system breaks down.

Don't be afraid: you have a best seller on your hands.

Plenty of boys had talked of the secret graveyard before, but as it had ever been with Nickel, no one believed them until someone else said it.

She has always considered herself an atheist, not realizing she had a religion.

Sucker. The mistake was to believe he'd become someone else. That the circumstances that shaped him had been otherwise, or that to outrun those circumstances was as easy as moving to a better building or learning to speak right. Hard stop on the t. He knew where he stood now, had always known, even if he'd gotten confused; there was the matter of redress.

Poetry and prayer put ideas in people's heads that got them killed

Maybe everything the slave catcher said was true, Cora thought, every justification, and the sons of Ham were cursed and the slave master performed the Lord's will. And maybe he was just a man talking to an outhouse door, waiting for someone to wipe her ass.

And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers

The world had whispered its rules to him for his whole life and he refused to listen, hearing instead a higher order. The world continued to instruct: Do not love for they will disappear, do not trust for you will be betrayed, do not stand up for you will be swatted down. Still he heard those higher imperatives: Love and that love will be returned, trust in the righteous path and it will lead you to deliverance, fight and things will change.

Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth. Nothing

True faith is too serious to have room for the distraction of passion.

Anyone can start a religion. They just need the need of others.

Hope is a gateway drug, don't do it.

Brother Mingo made some good points, Lander said. We can't save everyone. But that doesn't mean we can't try. Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth. Nothing's going to grow in this mean cold, but we can still have flowers.

There is always room for at least two truths.

Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.

He told me once that there was no better faith than a wounded faith and sometimes I wonder if that is what he was doing all along --trying to wound his faith in order to test it--and I was just another stone in the way of his God.

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

An optimist is a braver cynic.