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date: 24 September 2023

Faith 

see also Belief
  1. The Sea of Faith
    Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
    Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
    But now I only hear
    Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.
     
    Matthew Arnold 1822–88 English poet and essayist: ‘Dover Beach’ (1867) l. 21
  2. Faith without works is dead.
     
    The Bible (Authorized Version, 1611): James ch. 2, v. 20
  3. You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
    Samuel Butler 1835–1902 English novelist: Notebooks (1912) ch. 20
  4. The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803–82 American philosopher and poet: Essays (1841) ‘The Over-Soul’
  5. The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.
    Benjamin Franklin 1706–90 American politician, inventor, and scientist: Poor Richard's Almanac (1758) July
  6. And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
     
    And he replied:
     
    ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’
    quoted by George VI in his Christmas broadcast, 1939
    Minnie Louise Haskins 1875–1957 English teacher and writer: Desert (1908) ‘God Knows’
  7. The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 1841–1935 American lawyer: letter to William James, 24 March 1907
  8. A man with God is always in the majority.
    John Knox c.1505–72 Scottish Protestant reformer: inscription on the Reformation Monument, Geneva
  9. Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
    H. L. Mencken 1880–1956 American journalist and literary critic: Prejudices 3rd series (1922)
  10. Oh Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade.
    Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882–1945 American Democratic statesman, 32nd President 1933–45: address to the nation, D-Day, 6 June 1944
  11. A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles…Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.
    George Bernard Shaw 1856–1950 Irish dramatist: Saint Joan (1924) sc. 2
  12. 'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry—every man of every nation has done that—'tis the living up to it that is difficult.
    William Makepeace Thackeray 1811–63 English novelist: The History of Henry Esmond (1852) bk. 1, ch. 6
  13. In the darkness…the sound of a man
    Breathing, testing his faith
    On emptiness, nailing his questions
    One by one to an untenanted cross.
     
    R. S. Thomas 1913–2000 Welsh poet and clergyman: ‘Pietà’ (1966)