Quotes about faith

Christianity has the ring, the feel of unique truth. Of essential truth. By it, life is made full instead of empty, meaningful instead of meaningless.

A choice was necessary: and there is no certainty. One can only choose a side. So I — I now choose my side: I choose beauty; I choose what I love. But choosing to believe is believing.

Ah, Lord, if I doubt You, it is perhaps because You hide Yourself so well.

Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.

He had remembered Vardy’s melancholy, the rage in him, and what Collingswood had once said. She was right. Vardy’s tragedy was that his faith had been defeated by the evidence, and he could not stop missing that faith. He was not a creationist, not any longer, not for years. And that was unbearable to him. He could only wish that his erstwhile wrongness had been right.

“I know, I know,” Moore said. “Mad beliefs like that, eh? Must be some metaphor, right? Must mean something else?” Shook his head. “What an awfully arrogant thing. What if faiths are exactly what they are? And mean exactly what they say?”

“You search for truth,” Jasnah said, “but you also hold to your faith. There is much to admire in that. Seek out the Devotary of Sincerity. They are one of the very smallest of the devotaries, but this book is their guide.”

“One with blank pages?”

“Indeed. They worship the Almighty, but are guided by the belief that there are always more answers to be found. The book cannot be filled, as there is always something to learn. This devotary is a place where one is never penalized for questions, even those challenging Vorinism’s own tenets.”

“I thought you were a believer.”

“I am. But just because I honor the Almighty doesn’t mean I’m going to accept any explanation, Kabsal. It might be religion, but it still has to make sense.”

Let the Vorin believe as they wish—the wise among them will find goodness and solace in their faith; the fools would be fools no matter what they believed.

Most of all, faith brings recognition that our quest never leads us to certainty. We are always uncertain, always in doubt that our way is God's way. That self-doubt makes it possible to be reconciled to one another. It is faith that makes the reconciling work of politics possible.

Harry Dresden: But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn’t about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn’t about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine. Faith is about what you do. It’s about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It’s about making sacrifices for the good of others—even when there’s not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.

No faith can possibly suffice. It’s always undermined by ignorance.