Quotes About Belief

An ideal translation should, I believe, reproduce the effect of the original, but I have found that the best any translator can even hope for is to reproduce the effect that the originals have had on him. (Preface, vi)

In Lincoln's mind, at least as Lamon interpreted the story, "the illusion was a sign." Both the president-elect and his wife believed it meant he would not only survive his term in office, but four years later win reelection to a second one, only to die before it ended.

Regardless of your feelings, you must remind yourself that you are a person of value in God's sight.

Christian faith must be personal in the sense that each person individually understands the historic faith and personally commits himself to it, but not in the sense that he decides what it should be.

A nontheological faith cannot explain itself, but a too theological faith loses contact with the reason for its existence.

There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

I'm not a believer in the pratfall. I don't think it's funny just to have someone fall down.

As you know, Francis, I hate like the dickens to have to send any boy to the reformatory. I refuse to believe that any child is intentionally bad. The entire theory behind my work is to prove to certain people that incorrigible children are only incorrigible because we make them that way—that their failure is not theirs alone, but ours as well." She smiled at me. "Do you understand what I'm saying?

I never went to Hebrew school or to a church or synagogue afterward, but then I never gave much thought to God either. I felt confident that I would be able to deal with Him when the time came for me to have to—just as I would deal with everything else in my life, when the time came and not before.

The individual' is an idea like other ideas.

God's job is not to make sick people healthy. That's the doctor's job. God's job is to make sick people brave.

God is the One who is with us when we have to do something we don't think we are capable of doing.

Think of it this way: no scientist has ever seen an electron, but all scientists agree that electrons exist. No physicist has ever seen a quark, but all physicists believe that quarks are real. Why? Because when they look into their microscopes, they see things happening that could only happen if quarks and electrons existed. I believe in the reality of God the way scientists believe in the reality of electrons. I see things happening that would not happen unless there is a God.

Bad things do happen to good people in this world, but it is not God who wills it. God would like people to get what they deserve in life, but He cannot always arrange it. Forced to choose between a good God who is not totally powerful, or a powerful God who is not totally good, the author of the Book of Job chooses to believe in God's goodness.

for all those people who wanted to go on believing, but whose anger at God made it hard for them to hold on to their faith and be comforted by religion.

Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be?

I believe in the reality of God the way scientists believe in the reality of electrons. I see things happening that would not happen unless there is a God.

God does not send the problem, the illness, the accident, the hurricane, and God does not take them away when we find the right words and rituals with which to beseech Him. Rather, God sends us strength and determination of which we did not believe ourselves capable, so that we can deal with, or live with, problems that no one can make go away.

cuando las cosas le vayan mal, no abandone su fe en Dios. Él tiene sus propias razones para lo que hace y, si usted se mantiene firme en su fe el tiempo preciso, le recompensará por sus sufrimientos.

observant but not compulsive" and the absence of a belief in a God who would punish us for disobedience would go on to become cornerstones of my personal and professional life.

The task of religion is not to teach us to bow our heads and accept God's inscrutable will. It is to help us find the resources to live meaningfully and to go on believing, even in a world where people often don't get what they deserve.

not take them away when we find the right words and rituals with which to beseech Him. Rather, God sends us strength and determination of which we did not believe ourselves capable, so that we can deal with, or live with, problems that no one can make go away.

God does not send the problem. God sends us the strength to deal with the problem.