quotations and passages on faith

Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers
strength, more from practice
than from speculations.

Joseph Addison

Prayer is asking for rain
and faith is carrying the umbrella.

It need not discourage us if we are full of doubts. Healthy questions keep faith dynamic. In fact, unless we start with doubts we cannot have
a deep-rooted faith. One who believes lightly and unthinkingly has not much of a belief. One who has a faith which is not to be shaken has won it through blood and tears--has worked his or her way from doubt to truth as one who reaches a clearing through a thicket of brambles and thorns.

Helen Keller

Faith is not an easy virtue; but, in the broad world
of a person's total voyage through time to eternity,
faith is not only a gracious companion,
but an essential guide.

Theodore M. Hesburgh

The wise person in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger, but for
deliverance from fear. It is the storm within
which endangers us, not the storm without.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You call for faith: I show you doubt,
to prove that faith exists. The more
of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,
If faith o'ercomes doubt.

Robert Browning

Our creator would never have made such lovely days,
and have given us the deep
hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought,
unless we were meant to be immortal.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Faith marches at the head of the army of progress.
--It is found beside the most refined life,
the freest government, the profoundest philosophy,
the noblest poetry, the purest humanity.

Theodore T. Munger

God is the hardest taskmaster I have known on this earth, and he tries you through and through. And when you find that your faith is failing or your body is failing you, and you are sinking, he comes to your assistance somehow or other and proves to you that you must not lose your faith and that he is always at your beck and call, but on his terms, not on your terms. So I have found. I cannot really recall a single instance when, at the eleventh hour, he has forsaken me.

Mahatma Gandhi

Rose Kennedy

The most important element in human life is faith; if God were to take away all His blessings--
health, physical fitness, wealth, intelligence--and leave me with but one gift I would ask Him for faith.
For with faith in Him and His goodness, mercy and love for me, and belief in everlasting life,
I believe I could suffer the loss of all my other gifts and still be happy.

Faith is not belief without proof,
but trust without reservations.

Elton Trueblood

What keeps our faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness
and humor. Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music, and books, raising kids--all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time
of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see
the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life,
it would be good enough to live for their sake.

Garrison Keillor

Faith is not only daring to believe, it is also daring to act. When I believe in myself
as a son of God, I attribute to all people the same quality. This goes for people
of every class, creed and color. The proof that I believe this way will be measured
by the way I act towards others. . . .To me God is all the goodness in the universe,
available to me here and now, and it is up to me to help convert that goodness into action.
"God is love," but He is infinitely more than that. God is love, hope, courage,
good will, peace--He is all the eternal, everlasting, indestructible values
of ongoing creative life. With God underneath my life I have
the faith to build toward the stars.

Wilferd A. Peterson

Pippa's Song

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world.

Robert Browning

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see;
the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.

St. Augustine

The best definition of faith that I know is that it is reason grown courageous. Moreover,
that is all that Christ ever asked us for, and the reason that he asked us for that was
because he wants to use us. He needs our help. It is almost impossible to believe it,
but God Almighty wants our help, so Christ tells us. Theoretically or mathematically
this is unintelligible, that God should want human help. But this is the bottom of all
Christ's teaching. The faith he asks for is not to understand him but to follow him.
By that and that alone can people convert the tragedy of human life, full of disappointments,
disillusionments, and with so-called death ever looming ahead, into the most glorious field
of honor, worthy of the dignity of a son of God. What Christ asks is that we shall try it out.
He actually dares us to follow him. In that way, he says, you shall win that prize in life,
for which any man can with perfect reason afford to give everything else.

Wilfred T. Grenfell

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Faith is the centerpiece of a connected life. It allows us to live
by the grace of invisible strands. It is a belief in a wisdom superior
to our own. Faith becomes a teacher in the absence of fact.

Terry Tempest Williams

If it can be verified, we don't need faith. . . . Faith is for that
which lies on the other side of reason. Faith is what makes life bearable,
with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.

Madeleine L'Engle

Faith is a process of leaping into the abyss not on the basis of any certainty about where we shall land, but rather on the belief that we shall land.

Carter Heyward

Faith given back to us after a night of doubt is a stronger thing, and far more valuable to us than faith that has never been tested.

Elizabeth Goudge

Faith is so rare--and religion so common--because no one wants to live
between first base and second base. Faith is the in-between space
where you're not sure you'll make it to second base. You've let go
of one thing and haven't yet latched into another.
Most of us choose the security of first base.

Richard Rohr

The light of faith confers upon us undreamed-of enhancement
of our vision, an extension of our understanding, and enrichment
of our natural powers beyond the powers of words to convey.

Rosalind Murray

Yes, I have doubted. I have wandered
off the path. I have been lost.
But I always returned. It is beyond
the logic I seek. It is intuitive--an
intrinsic, built-in sense of direction.
I seem to find my way home.
My faith has wavered but has saved me.

Helen Hayes

Faith strips the mask from the world and reveals God in everything.
It makes nothing impossible and renders meaningless such words
as anxiety, danger, and fear, so that the believer goes through life
calmly and peacefully, like a child, hand in hand with his or her mother.

Charles de Foucauld

Life is not a level, smooth path, but rather a series of hills and valleys.
There are times spent on the mountain top, when everything seems clear
and perfect. Then there are those times when we feel like we’re wandering
around in a dark cavern, feeling our way along and trusting God for every step
of faith. Runners get a “second wind” after forcing themselves to go on when
they feel they can’t. We feel the joy of God’s Spirit lift us up and carry us on
when we choose to continue in faith, no matter how we feel or what’s going on
around us. Take a moment and set your heart to be persistent in faith—faith in
God to lead you, pick you up when you have fallen, give you strength to go on,
and ultimately bring you to victory.

Unattributed

Sometimes we want things we were not meant to have. Because He
loves us, the Father says no. Faith trusts that no. Faith is
willing not to have what God is not willing to give. Furthermore,
faith does not insist upon an explanation. It is enough to know His
promises to give what is good--He knows so much more about us than we do.

Elisabeth Elliot

It's a sweet thing, faith. With it, you can handle any circumstance,
any crisis, because you know God always has your back. And when
God is for you, who can be against you? Nobody. As my
Aunt Hattie says, "One and God are a majority."

Patti LaBelle

I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed,
you can say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move.
Nothing will be impossible for you.

Jesus of Nazareth