Quotes About Faith

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.

He said, Let there be light. And there was darkness.

Is this why you think you are chosen by God, because only you can understand the funnies that you make about yourself?

We believed in our grandmother's cooking more fervently than we believed in God. Her culinary prowess was one of our family's primal stories, like the cunning of the grandfather I never met, or the single fight of my parents' marriage. We clung to those stories and depended on them to define us. We were the family that chose its battles wisely, and used wit to get out of binds, and loved the food of our matriarch.

It is said that the Messiah will come at the end of the world. But it was not the end of the world, Grandfather said. It was. He just did not come.

The burning bush must not be consumed.

Herschel was a Jew. And he was my best friend. He was his best friend. And I murdered him.

Is God sad? He would have to exist to be sad, wouldn't He? I know, she said, giving his shoulder a little slap. That's why I was asking, so I might finally know if you believed! Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal to 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.

Love me, because love does not exist, and I tried everything.

Parents don't have the luxury of being reasonable, not any more than a religious person does. What can make religious people and parents so utterly insufferable is also what makes religion and Parenthood so utterly beautiful: the All or nothing wager. The Faith.

This is the lesson we learned from everything that happened -- there is no God. It took all of the hidden faces for Him to prove this to us. What if it was a challenge of your faith? I said. I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this. What if it was not in His power? I could not believe in a God that could not stop what happened. What if it was man and not God that did all of this? I do not believe in man, either.

What if it was man and not God that did all of this? I do not believe in man, either.

Were we praying, Forgive our oppressors for what they have done? Or, Forgive us for what has been done to us? Or, Forgive You for Your inscrutability?

I used to be an atheist, which means I didn't believe in things that couldn't be observed. I believed that once you're dead, you're dead forever, and you don't feel anything, and you don't even dream. It's not that I believe in things that can't be observed now, because I don't. It's that I believe that things are extremely complicated.

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

Yankel's lipstick autobiography came flaking off his bedroom ceiling, falling gently like blood-stained snow to his bed and floor. You are Yankel. You love Brod. You are a Sloucher. You were once married, but she left you. You don't believe in an afterlife.

Oskar: I'm God! Thomas: You're an atheist. Oskar: I don't exist!

The ground is still filled iwth rings, and money, and pictures, and Jewish things. I was only able to find a few of them, but they fill the earth. The hero did not ask me once what she was saying. I am not certain if he knew what she was saying, or if he knew not to inquire.

We would have been safe.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: WHY UNCONDITIONALLY BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD PEOPLE They never do.

If nothing matters, there's nothing to save.

My dad once told me that before I was born, when the only proof of my life was sonograms, he had to believe in me. In other words, being born allows your parents to stop believing in you.

She was unhappy, although unconvinced that her unhappiness wouldn't be someone else's happiness. She felt unfulfilled desire—profound amounts of it—but presumably so did every other married and unmarried person. She wanted more, but didn't know if there was more to be found. Not knowing used to feel inspiring. It felt like faith. Now it felt agnostic. Like not knowing.

And so it is with prayer, with true prayer, which is never a request, and never praise, but the expression of something of extreme significance that would otherwise have no way to be expressed. As Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, 'Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.' We are made worthy, made righteous, by expression.