Quotes About Belief

what's wrong with you? Or what's wrong with me? Why does everything you know, and everything you've learned, confirm you in what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece more. With every month that passes, the corners are knocked off the certainties of this world: and the next world too.

He has always rated Anne highly as a strategist. He has never believed in her as a passionate, spontaneous woman. Everything she does is calculated, like everything he does.

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them. If your law exacts a penalty, you must be able to enforce it – on the rich as well as the poor, the people on the Scottish borders and the Welsh marches, the men of Cornwall as well as the men of Sussex and Kent.

those sectaries in Europe who are always expecting the end of the world, but who hope that, after the earth has been consumed by fire, they will be seated in glory: grilled a little, crisp at the edges and blackened in parts, but still, thanks be to God, alive for eternity, and seated at his right hand.

You must believe everything and nothing of what you read.

The cardinal, in his days as master of the realm, had spoken of God as if He were a distant policy adviser from whom he heard quarterly: gnomic in his pronouncements, sometimes forgetful, but worth a retainer on account of his experience. At times he sent Him special requests, which the less well-connected call prayers;

Henry had sat up: 'I can do as it pleases me,' his monarch said. 'God would not allow my pleasure to be contrary to his design, nor my designs to be impeded by his will.' A shadow of cunning had crossed his face. 'And Gardiner himself said so.' Henry

I can pity you, without entirely believing you.

was proud of what he did. He thought if you let the people read God's word for themselves, Christendom would fall apart. There would be no more government, no more justice.' 'He believed this? Truly?' 'That we needed the constraint of ignorance? Yes.' 'He did not give much credit to his fellow man.

Let us say, his will is convinced, but not his conscience.

distrusted the permanent snare for his temporary opinions.

So many words,' Gregory says. 'So many words and oaths and deeds, that when folk read of them in time to come they will hardly believe such a man as Lord Cromwell walked the earth. You do everything. You have everything. You are everything. So I beg you, grant me an inch of your broad earth, Father, and leave my wife to me.

And yet … he feels something, in his heart, and then he sits down and works out the logic of it, in his head. Then he says that the head part came first; and we believe him.

Because Islam doesn't," he said, his voice toneless

He doesn't believe the dead need our prayers, nor can they use them. But anyone who know the Bible as he does, knows that our God is a capricious God, and there's no harm in hedging your bets.

I can remember the days,' Mirabeau said, 'when we didn't have public opinion. No one had ever heard of such a thing.

You wonder what else you have always believed, believed without foundation.

You feel nauseous, from the sticky heat and what you know of human nature, and you wonder why you have come. But you have been told that a man must go at least once in his life, or he won't believe it when other people tells him what went on.

Do you think it (hedgehog) can possibly have gone to Heaven?" This was Ruth's ritual question when confronted with death and Naomi was always firm. "No", she said at once. "Because what would it do when it got there? Eat slugs and snails that had gone to hell? It's just died, that's all. No good getting all drippy about it.

No sane person should believe that something is subjective merely because it cannot be settled beyond controversy.

To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology.

It is much easier to believe lies than the truth." "Why?" asked Janna. "Because lies are manufactured to satisfy the emotions. A mother would rather believe her pretty girl lazy than accept the fact that she's a dumb cluck. Germans would rather believe they were stabbed in the back than that they lost a fair fight. And anyone would rather blame someone else for his misfortunes. The truth is hard. Don't fool with it unless you realize that.

It is much easier to believe lies than the truth." "Why?" asked Janna. "Because lies are manufactured to satisfy the emotions. A mother would rather believe her pretty girl lazy than accept the fact that she's a dumb cluck. Germans would rather believe they were stabbed in the back than that they lost a fair fight. And anyone would rather blame someone else for his misfortunes. The truth is hard.

The worst thing that can happen in a democracy - as well as in an individual's life - is to become cynical about the future and lose hope.