A collection of quotes on the topic of positive, faith, faith, faithful.
“What is to give light must endure burning.”
“Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”
Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), p. 237. Part 8 : How I Conquered Worry,
“Whoso loves
Believes the impossible.”
Book V.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)
Variant: Whoso loves
Believes the impossible.
“You are what you believe yourself to be.”
Source: The Witch of Portobello (2007), p. 152.
Context: You are what you believe yourself to be.
Don't be like those people who believe in "positive thinking" and tell themselves that they're loved and strong and capable. You don't need to do that because you know it already. And when you doubt it — which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution — do as I suggested. Instead of trying to prove that you're better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it. Now go back and meet all those people who think you know everything. Convince yourself that they're right, because we all know everything, it's merely a question of believing.
Believe.
“Faith activates God - Fear activates the Enemy.”
“To live is to not know that one is living”
Diary (20 April, 1930), quoted in Afinado desconcerto (2002), p. 262
Context: Sometimes I start looking at the mirror and examining myself, feature by feature: eyes, mouth, shape of the forehead, eyelids curve, the face line... And this vulgar and hideous-looking, grotesque and miserable amalgam, would it know how to do verses? Oh, no! There is something else … but what? After all, why think? To live is to not know that one is living... Why don't I forget that I am living... to live?
“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
Variant: The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
“I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed.”
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”
Source: Clippings from My Notebook
“A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.”
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.”
2005-09, Address at Stanford University (2005)
Context: Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.
“A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.”
“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”
Source: Letters to a Young Poet
Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
Martin Luther
Misattributed
“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
E quando você quer alguma coisa, todo o Universo conspira para que você realize seu desejo.
Variant: And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 22; a variant of this has become attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen" — but no occurrence of this a statement has been located prior to in The Gift of Depression : Twenty-one Inspirational Stories Sharing Experience, Strength, and Hope (2001) by John F. Brown, p. 56
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”
Variant: Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.
Source: The Power of Myth
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
Source: Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex
“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”
“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
Earliest record is in a circular letter from Hessian Church minister Karl Lotz on 5 October 1944 and modified from a quote by Johanan ben Zakai according to [Landes, Richard Allen, Heaven on Earth: The varieties of the millennial experience, USA, Oxford University Press, 2011, 978-0-19-975359-8, https://books.google.com/books?id=seS-0JTykgoC&pg=PA48, 48]
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Martin Luther / Disputed
Misattributed
“Faith gives you an inner strength and a sense of balance and perspective in life.”
As quoted in Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book (1923) by Elbert Hubbard, p. 62
“We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.”
“You were made by God and for God and until you understand that, life will never make sense.”
“You have to believe in it to get it…”
Source: Heart of the Sea
“Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them.”
Source: A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael
Source: Pensées
“It's a lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believe in myself.”
As quoted in 101 Best Ways to Get Ahead (2004) edited by Michael E. Angier, with Sarah Pond, p. 59
“Forgiveness is the final form of love.”
“The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!”
Pearls of Wisdom
“Belief means not wanting to know what is true.”
Sec. 52
The Antichrist (1888)
Variant: Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is.
“I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it.”
Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)
Muller is often attributed with a version of this saying, and the quote (with attribution to Muller) appears as early as 1897 in The Churchman https://books.google.com/books?id=cpdOAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA25-PA45&lpg=RA25-PA45&dq=The+beginning+of+anxiety+is+the+end+of+faith,+and+the+beginning+of+true+faith+is+the+end+of+anxiety+%2B+the+churchman&source=bl&ots=3x_wtX82mF&sig=gGHZUKxXWa5BfvRfzeY_F8zA9dM&hl=; however, no source written by Muller can be found to confirm him as having said this.
“Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into light.”
“To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all.”
“It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.”
“Your life is what your thoughts make it.”
“Faith is realizing that you always get what you need.”
Source: Celebrating Silence: Excerpts from Five Years of Weekly Knowledge 1995-2000
Variant: For those with faith, no evidence is necessary; for those without it, no evidence will suffice.
“Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.”
Source: The God I Love
“Faith ― acceptance of which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.”
Source: The Da Vinci Code
“Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love.”
Variant: Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was so hard to love.
Source: Life of Pi
The New York Times October 15, 1986, MAN IN THE NEWS; WITNESS TO EVIL: ELIEZER WEISEL, By JOSEPH BERGER http://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/15/world/man-in-the-news-witness-to-evil-eliezer-weisel.html
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”
Optimism (1903)
Variant: Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement
Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
“Heaven on Earth is a choice you
must make, not a place you must find.”
“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.”
Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947
“As long as you do things for God, you are a Hall of Famer in heaven's list.”
Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.”
This I Believe (1951)
Context: I believe in human beings, but my faith is without sentimentality. I know that in environments of uncertainty, fear, and hunger, the human being is dwarfed and shaped without his being aware of it, just as the plant struggling under a stone does not know its own condition. Only when the stone is removed can it spring up freely into the light. But the power to spring up is inherent, and only death puts an end to it. I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.
“Faith has to do with things that are not seen, and hope with things that are not in hand.”
“Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.”
Source: Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.”
“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.”
Source: How to Argue and Win Every Time (1995), Ch. 6 : The Power of Prejudice : Examining the Garment, Bleaching the Stain, p. 98
Source: How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Everyday
“Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.”
“Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.”
“For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.”
“Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection”
“I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first.”
Words on the scaffold, attributed in The Essentials of Freedom : The Idea and Practice of Ordered Liberty in the Twentieth Century as explored at Kenyon College (1960) by Paul Gray Hoffman, p. 43
First reported in indirect speech in the Paris Newsletter (1535): « Apres les exhorta, et supplia tres instamment qu'ils priassent Dieu pour le Roy, affin qu'il luy voulsist donner bon conseil, protestant qu'il mouroit son bon serviteur et de Dieu premierement. » ("Afterward he exhorted them, and besought them very earnestly to pray to God for the King, that He should give him good counsel, protesting that he died his good servant, and God's first.")
“The future was not what it used to be.”
Source: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait (2008), Chapter 13 (p. 156)
"Is Theology Poetry?" (1945)
“If you believe that you will believe anything.”
In reply to a man who greeted him in the street with the words "Mr. Jones, I believe?", as quoted in Wellington — The Years of the Sword (1969) by Elizabeth Longford.
“All our dreams can come true — if we have the courage to pursue them.”
Source: How to Be Like Walt : Capturing the Magic Every Day of Your Life (2004), Ch. 3 : Imagination Unlimited, p. 63; Unsourced variant: All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them.
“If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.”
"On Great and Little Things"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)
Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World (1954), by Louis Fischer, p. 177
Mahatma Gandhi to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, August 29, 1947 https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/ghp_booksection_detail/Ny0yMzUtMg==#page/258/mode/2up. In Letters to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. 1st edition (April, 1961), p. 246
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)
“God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work.”
Source: The Knowledge of the Holy (1978), p. 53.
“If one has faith one has everything.”
Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 849
“What happened what happened, let's go!”
As Don Ramón
Original: (sp) ¡Qué pasó qué pasó vamos ay!
Don Ramón - Qué pasó, que pasó, vamos ay !! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u35jIrN_tyg
“Our character is our will; for what we will we are.”
Source: Towards Evening (1889), p. 136.
“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
Though Buffet is reported to have expressed such ideas with such remarks many times in his lectures, he never claimed to originate the idea, and in the article "The Chains of Habit Are Too Light To Be Felt Until They Are Too Heavy To Be Broken" at the Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/tag/warren-buffett/ it is shown that this sort of expression about chains goes back at least to similar ideas presented by Samuel Johnson in "The Vision of Theodore, The Hermit of Teneriffe, Found in His Cell" in The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 18 (April 1748), p.160:
It was the peculiar artifice of Habit not to suffer her power to be felt at first. Those whom she led, she had the address of appearing only to attend, but was continually doubling her chains upon her companions; which were so slender in themselves, and so silently fastened, that while the attention was engaged by other objects, they were not easily perceived. Each link grew tighter as it had been longer worn, and when, by continual additions, they became so heavy as to be felt, they were very frequently too strong to be broken.
Such sentiments were later succinctly summarized by Maria Edgeworth in Moral Tales For Young People by Miss Edgeworth (1806), Vol 1, Second Edition, p. 86:
… the diminutive chains of habit, as somebody says, are scarcely ever heavy enough to be felt, till they are too strong to be broken.
Disputed
“Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward.”
1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
Context: I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.
“I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”
1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
Context: I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.
The Prescriptions Against the Heretics as translated by Stanley Lawrence Greenslade, in Early Latin Theology: Selections from Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Jerome (1956), p. 63
Context: Notorious, too, are the dealings of heretics with swarms of magicians and charlatans and astrologers and philosophers — all, of course, devotees of speculation. You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine.
“Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.”
Source: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), p. 483
Context: Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to man and his future, ie, concernedly and "responsibly." one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man.
“And you do not think that this is possible?”
“I’ll believe in anything when I see evidence for it.”
Chapter 12 (p. 188)
Terminal World (2010)
“If it's not one thing, it's your mother.”
Mum Wants A Bungalow Tour [2003]
