Quotes About Faith

prayer is when night descends over thought

What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events.

Patron Saint of Failures St Birgitta of Sweden.

I think the genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.

I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals, and illuminated manuscripts of the faiths.

Doubt is easy when it is not a matter of survival: we are as skeptical as we can afford to be, and it is easiest to be skeptical about things that do not fundamentally sustain us. It is easy to doubt the existence of a table; it is hell to doubt the legitimacy of love.

We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure parts of us, whose presence solves so many of our woes, must be somehow also be able to fix everything about our lives. We exaggerate the other's powers in a curious sort of homage - heard in adult life decades down the line - to a small child's awe at their own parents' apparently miraculous capacities.

Nada que no asuma un riesgo calculado con la fealdad puede ser bello.

I lost the ability to consider the question of predestination with necessary scepticism.

Lorsque les Blancs sont venus en Afrique, nous avions la terre et ils avaient la Bible. Ils nous ont appris à prier les yeux fermés: lorsque nous les avons ouverts, les Blancs avaient la terre et nous la Bible.

God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, Can I be excused the Crucifixion? No!

there was little to choose between Jews and Catholics. The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.

The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.

La sua fede era autentica, ma così duttile e venata d'ironia che Dio era esposto alle sue critiche quanto l'arcivescovo di Canterbury (che in privato lui chiamava Patatone).

Then Rachel said, Mama used to tell me that God saw everything, knew everything, even what was in our hearts. Yes, Catherine agreed, especially there. So, He'd know, wouldn't he, what kind of pain was in your mama's heart when she took that medicine. She didn't wait for a reply. So why can't you trust that God knows enough not to blame her for what she did.

God didn't give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up. "I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death . . . is the true measure of the Divine within us.

I used to wonder, why did God give children leprosy? Now I believe: God doesn't give anyone leprosy. He gives us, if we choose to use it, the spirit to live with leprosy, and with the imminence of death. Because it is in our own mortality that we are most Divine.

Fear is our boon companion but never our master.

If that is your God, Father Kamiano, your Jehovah, who would condemn a kind and tender man to hell for the sin of not believing in him—then I shall follow my Keo to hell, as I followed him to this one, and together we spit on your God and his heaven!

God didn't give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up.

I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death . . . is the true measure of the Divine within us.

I used to wonder, why did God give children leprosy? Now I believe God doesn't give anyone leprosy. He gives us, if we choose to use it, the spirit to live with leprosy, and with the imminence of death, Because it is in our own mortality that we are most Divine.

To see the infinite pity of this place, The mangled limb, the devastated face, The innocent sufferers smiling at the rod, A fool were tempted to deny his God. He sees, and shrinks; but if he look again, Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!— He marks the sisters on the painful shores, And even a fool is silent and adores.

There might be more to the universe than any one religion could explain.