Quotes About Faith

Is he nuts? I think the expression used to be 'touched by God'. So that would be a yes.

It's the side-by-side culture of the Talmud I like so much. 'On the one hand' and 'on the other hand' is frustrating for people seeking absolute faith, but for me it gives religion an ambidextrous quality that suits my temperament.

The test of faith is whether I can make space for difference. Can I recognize God's image in someone who is not in my image, who language, faith, ideal, are different from mine? If I cannot, then I have made God in my image instead of allowing him to remake me in his.

We encounter God in the face of a stranger. That, I believe, is the Hebrew Bible's single greatest and most counterintuitive contribution to ethics. God creates difference; therefore it is in one-who-is-different that we meet god. Abraham encounters God when he invites three strangers into his tent.

God does not want us to understand the suffering of the innocent but to fight for a world in which the innocent no longer suffer.

Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.

I tried the key in all the doors, even though he said he didn't recognize it. It's not that I didn't trust him, becuase I did. It's that at the end of my search I wanted to be able to say: I don't know how I could have tried harder.

She] always knew he was a fiction but believed in him anyway.

I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.

Memories are small prayers to God, if we believed in that sort of thing.

Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal be sad about. And if He doesn't exist, then that too would make Him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.

And she would say, Today you believe in God? And he would say, Today I believe in love.

Abraham didn't say, "What do you want?" He didn't say, "Yes?" He answered with a statement: "Here I am." Whatever God needs or wants, Abraham is wholly present for Him, without conditions or reservations or need for explanation.

Jacob wrestled with God for the blessing. He wrestled with Esau for the blessing. He wrestled with Isaac for the blessing, with Laban for the blessing, and in each case he eventually prevailed. He wrestled because he recognized that the blessings were worth the struggle. He knew that you only get to keep what you refuse to let go of.

We believed in our grandmother's cooking more fervently than we believed in God.

If god exists, he is not to be believed in.

he enclosed pieces of string that he used to measure out his body--his head, thigh, forearm, finger, neck, everything. He wanted me to sleep with them under my pillow. He said that when he came back, we would remeasure his body against the string as proof that he hadn't changed.

The animals are those things that God likes but doesn't love.

I believed him. I was not stupid. I was his wife.

She would say to him, "But you are no priest." And he would say, "I am today." And she would say, "Today you believe in God?" And he would say, "Today I believe in love.

And you can't force someone to believe, not even with better and louder and more virtuous arguments, not even with irrefutable evidence

I trust that you have a good purpose for your ignorance

Rabbi, I feel no despair anymore. For seventy years I had only nightmares, but I have no nightmares anymore. I feel only gratitude for my life, for every moment I lived. Not only the good moments. I feel gratitude for every moment of my life. I have seen so many miracles.

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? I can't remember. Which? Do you know what those words mean? Not really. An optimist is positive and hopeful. A pessimist is negative and cynical. I'm an optimist. Well, that's good, because there's no irrefutable evidence. There's nothing that could convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to.