Quotes About Doubt

I wonder if I am capable of being somebody's sun, somebody's everything. Am I centered enough now to be the center of somebody else's life?

If I'd had any way of knowing that things were- as Lily Tomlin once said- going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse, I'm not sure how I would have slept that night.

Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this earth to do?

Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is American, too-the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness.

With death, all suffering would end. Doubt would end. Shame and guilt would end. All her questions would end. Memory—most mercifully of all—would end. She could quietly excuse herself from life.

How many people have I heard claim their children as the greatest accomplishment and comfort of their lives? It's the thing they can always lean on during a metaphysical crisis, or a moment of doubt about their relevancy- If I have done nothing else in this life, then at least I have raised my children well.

Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be…a prudent insurance policy.

I'm not sure anybody out there really knows what they're doing. Apparently not

How did they let the world get so out of control?" "I don't know, honey. But I'm not sure anybody out there really knows what they're doing.

Then he said, "Strange…," which is something you never want to hear from either your palm-reader or your dentist.

My spiritual investigations interest my sister mostly from a point of intellectual curiosity. 'I think that kind of faith is so beautiful,' she whispers to me in the church, 'but I can't do it, I just can't...

By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later - again, for its own mysterious reasons. And a shared private heaven can quickly descend into a failed private hell.

why' is a hard question to answer in any language

Everything is so goddamn scary.

The philosopher Odo Marquard has noted a correlation in the German language between the word zwei, which means "two," and the word zweifel, which means "doubt"—suggesting that two of anything brings the automatic possibility of uncertainty to our lives.

Don't believe a single thing any cunt or bastard tells you in this world. You go find out.

Hadn't I wanted this? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life. So why didn't I see myself in any of it? The only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn't wanna hurt anybody, I wanted to slip quietly out the back door and not stop running until I reached Greenland. Instead I made a decision: to pray.. you know...like... to God. And it was such a foreign concept to me that I swear I almost began with: I'm a big fan of your work.

Jim was such a nice man. I had to give him that. (But be careful here, Angela: whenever a woman says about her suitor, He's such a nice man, you can be sure she is not in love.)

Asking no further questions is the song of my people.

People have a strange trust in their devils, indeed.

Los devotos del mundo entero practican sus ritos sin tener garantizado que les sirva de nada.

But then again, maybe a woman never really knew the men in her life.

I don't know what God intends, or what qualifies Him to forgive me,' Sobran said

I wondered again if I might not actually be dead-if this was some terrible version of death, which I had momentarily mistaken for a continuation of life.