Quotes About Faith

otherwise you will always be running. Have trust and faith to guide you like a torch piercing darkness. Do not believe and do not deny, but find out for yourself – for there is no truth but the one you have earned in your own experience.

The idea is to carry everything on your back, forget your troubles, and let tomorrow take care of itself.

And when we cannot fully understand the significance of something, when we cannot validate the total experience with the senses – can't see, can't taste, can't smell, can't touch, can't hear, and cannot conceive – we are left with a choice: to deny or to believe.

HaMa'alot MiMa'amakim

Today, though, we live in the aftermath of the shattering of Jewish faith, brought on in part by Western secularism and the Holocaust. Whatever faith has managed to survive our experiences in the modern world would be tested to the breaking point by the destruction of Israel. Few Jews, I suspect, would accept another narrative of Divine punishment. Even for many religious Jews, this would be one punishment too many.

Today, though, each faith community suffers from a decline of one or the other aspect of religious vitality. Modernity has not been kind to Jewish spirituality: Large parts of the Jewish people have become severed from basic faith and devotion. The Muslim world has the opposite problem: an erosion of open inquiry and self-critique.

And so, dear neighbor, I end these letters as I began: with the prayer that we will meet. Now we have spent some time together in spirit, but I hope to host you one day in my home—in my sukkah. B'ezrat Hashem. With God's help. Inshallah.

Yossi Klein Halevi

I'm sure things will get better. So...it's okay to stop fighting.

Which would you part with first -- your tobacco, your whiskey, or your religion?

My business is to obey when the Lord commands, and this is the duty of all mankind.

I do not want "Mormonism" to become popular; I would not, if I could, make it as popular as the Roman Catholic Church is in Italy, or as the Church of England is in England, because the wicked and ungodly would crowd into it in their sins.

Suppose you found your brother in bed with your wife, and put a javelin through both of them, you would be justified, and they would atone for their sins, and be received into the kingdom of God. I would at once do so in such a case; and under such circumstances, I have no wife whom I love so well that I would not put a javelin through her heart, and I would do it with clean hands.

Will you love your brothers or sisters likewise, when they have committed a sin that cannot be atoned for without the shedding of their blood? Will you love that man or woman well enough to shed their blood?

What is the duty of a Latter-day Saint? To do all the good he can upon the earth.

One thing is certain, wherever we go there is a proof that the people are keeping the commandments of the Lord, especially the first one -- to multiply and replenish the earth.

It is impossible to unite Christ and Baal -- their spirits cannot unite, their objects and purposes are entirely different; the one leads to eternal life and exaltation, the other to death and final destruction.

You will probably have what is called a Christian Church here; they will not admit that we are Christians, but they cannot think us further from the plan of salvation as revealed from heaven than we know them to be, so we are even on that ground, as far as it goes.

In the name of Israel's God, if every man would do right, and when he has done what he knows is right, then stops till he knows what next, there never would be a jar in the camp. And I defy the man to come forward that ever led so large a people in such difficult and trying circumstances, in so much peace, as I have led this people during this campaign, with the help of God and my brethren.

The worst fear that I have about this people is that they will get rich in this country, forget God and his people, wax fat, and kick themselves out of the Church and go to hell. This people will stand mobbing, robbing, poverty and all manner of persecution, and be true. My greater fear for them is that they cannot stand wealth; and yet they have to be tried with riches, for they will become the richest people on this earth.

Since I embraced the Gospel, with many of my brethren, I have been broken up and compelled to leave my home five times, yet we live as a people, and are as comfortable and as well off as our neighbors who do not belong to the Church; and I do not know that our enemies hate us any more than they hate each other.

I say, if you want to enjoy exquisitely, become a Latter-day Saint, and then live the doctrine of Jesus Christ.

There are sins that men commit for which they cannot receive forgiveness in this world, or in that which is to come, and if they had their eyes open to see their true condition, they would be perfectly willing to have their blood spilt upon the ground, that the smoke thereof might ascend to heaven as an offering for their sins, and the smoking incense would atone for their sins, whereas, if such is not the case, they will stick to them and remain upon them in the spirit world.

We are doing well, notwithstanding all our failings and weaknesses; but the Lord would like to have us a little more diligent; he would like us to cleave a little more closely to the things of his kingdom, have more of his Spirit, and know more of him and of one another, that complete and perfect confidence can be restored.