Faith

Faith is a continuation of reason.
~ William Adams

My Love in me and I in him,
Conjoined by love, will till abide
Among the faithful lilies
Till day do break, and truth do dim
All shadows dark and cause them slide,
According as his will is.
~ William Baldwin, Oxford University Press "Oxford Book of Short Poems" Christ, My Beloved

If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.
~ William Barclay

When a man undergoes treatment from a doctor, he does not need to know the way in which the drug works on his body in order to be cured. There is a sense in which Christianity is like that. At the heart of Christianity there is a mystery, but it is not the mystery of intellectual appreciation; it, the mystery of redemption.
~ William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol. 1 (1975).

A faith that shines more bright and clear
When tempests rage without,
That, when in danger, knows no fear,
In darkness feels no doubt.
~ William H. Bathurst, Oh for a Faith that Will Not Shrink (1831 hymn).

Tho thou art Worshipd by the Names Divine
Of Jesus & Jehovah thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Nights decline
The lost Travellers Dream under the Hill.
~ William Blake, For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise Epilogue

You can't exercise by sight because your sight will make you quit. You need to exercise by faith.
~ Billy Blanks, Trinity Broadcasting Network (Interview; 22 March 2001). Praise The Lord

I am neither a zealot nor an extremist. Only a soldier who has an abiding faith.
~ Lieutenant General William G. "Jerry" Boykin, Statement from the Pentagon Public Affairs Office (17 October 2003).

As I go along the street I lift up one foot, and it seems to say Glory! and I lift up the other, and it seems to say, Amen; and so they keep on like that all the time I am walking.
~ William Trewartha "Billy" Bray/p>

It is the sense of boundless possibilities in man which justifies faith in personal immortality.
~ William Adam Brown, The Life of Prayer in a World of Science (1927).

Exchange, and be awhile our guests:
For stars, gaze on our eyes.
~ William Browne, The Inner Temple Masque (1615). Siren's Song

I oft have thought how sad the sight,
Of forms of faith o'er which we fight
How much of strength and life we lose,
Because of diverse forms we choose;
And how the world would grow in light,
If each could see the other right!
~ William Brunton, Daisies (1878). One Faith Through Many Forms

You are just one touch away from your miracle.
~ Pastor Billy Burke, "Expect A Miracle" television program (2002).

Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see.
~ William Newton Clarke, The Christian Doctrine of God (1909).

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
~ William Kingdon (W.K.) Clifford, in Contemporary Review (1877). The Ethics of Belief, I. The Duty Of Inquiry

The goal of the Christian life is not to save your soul but to transcend yourself, to vindicate the human struggle of which all of us are a part, to keep hope advancing.
~ Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Living the Truth in a World of Illusions (1985).

I realized that Eastern thought had somewhat more compassion for all living things. Man was a form of life that in another reincarnation might possibly be a horsefly or a bird of paradise or a deer. So a man of such faith, looking at animals, might be looking at old friends or ancestors.
~ William Orville Douglas, Go East, Young Man (1974).

I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume VI (1957). The Reformation, Preface

Is not one's fidelity to objects really a fidelity to others and oneself about objects?
~ William A. Earle, The Autobiographical Consciousness (1972).

The whole function is expressed in a word, it is simply this -- the child at his father's knee, his words stumbling over each other from very earnestness, and his wistful face pleading better than his hardly intelligible prayer.
~ Frederick William Faber (of prayer), The Spirit of Father Faber (1914).

The leaders of the Catholic Church endorsed The Exorcist; virtually promoted it as much as they could. The Cardinals of New York and Los Angeles and Chicago and the other big cities, all over the world, they endorsed it because it represents a literal depiction of the Roman ritual of exorcism which still exists in the Catholic faith. It's still there. The power of faith to drive out demons. And this film showed that and they embraced it.
~ William Friedkin, The Harold Lloyd Master Seminar Series at the American Film Institute (16 March 1994).

I have been asked on hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering.
~ Billy Graham, Speech (14 September 2001). National Day of Prayer and Remembrance

If I didn't have spiritual faith, I would be a pessimist. But I'm an optimist. I've read the last page in the Bible. It's all going to turn out all right.
~ Billy Graham

The storm was raging. The sea was beating against the rocks in huge, dashing waves. The lightning was flashing, the thunder was roaring, the wind was blowing; but the little bird was sound asleep in the crevice of the rock, its head tucked serenely under its wing. That is peace -- to be able to sleep in the storm! In Christ, we are relaxed and at peace in the midst of the confusions, bewilderments, and perplexities of this life. The storm rages, but our hearts are at rest. We have found peace -- at last!
~ Billy Graham, from Unto the Hills (1996). Worry

His subject thou art whom thou crownest in thy heart, and not whom thou flatterest with thy lips.
~ William Gurnall, The Christian In Complete Armour (1665).

Never was a faithful prayer lost. Some prayers have a longer voyage than others, but then they return with their richer lading at last, so that the praying soul is a gainer by waiting for an answer.
~ William Gurnall

Faith, -- Belief, -- is the organ by which we apprehend what is beyond our knowledge.
~ Sir William Hamilton, from Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1858-60).

If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
~ William Hazlitt, Table Talk, Essays on Men and Manners (1821-1822). On Great and Little Things

We affect to laugh at the folly of those who put faith in nostrums, but are willing to try ourselves whether there is any truth in them.
~ William Hazlitt

For all the saints who from their labors rest,
Who, to the world their steadfast faith confessed,
your name, O Jesus, be forever blessed
Alleluia!
~ William Walsham How (written in 1864), in The New Century Hymnal (1995). For all the saints

All faith consists essentially in the recognition of a world of spiritual values behind, yet not apart from, the world of natural phenomena.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, Faith and Its Psychology (1910).

Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, from Outspoken Essays, First Series (1919). Survival and Immortality

Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, Faith and Its Psychology (1910).

[F]aith is a way of walking, not of talking.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, Christian Ethics and Modern Problems (1930).

Faith is an act of rational choice, which determines us to act as if certain things were true, and in the confident expectation that they will prove to be true.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge

Faith is an act of self-consecration, in which the will, the intellect, and the affections all have their place.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, Personal Religion and the Life of Devotion (1924).

True faith is belief in the reality of absolute values.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, from Outspoken Essays, Second Series (1922). Confessio Fidei

Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Conclusions

Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.
~ William James, in Princeton Review (1882). The Sentiment of Rationality

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible; and as the test of belief is willingness to act, one may say that faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.
~ William James, in Princeton Review (July 1882).

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
~ William James, from The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897). Is Life Worth Living?

Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.
~ William James, An Address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown Universities (published in the New World; June 1896). The Will to Believe

Religion is nothing if it be not the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws its life. This act is prayer, by which term I understand no vain exercise of words, no mere repetition of certain sacred formula, but the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence -- it may be even before it has a name by which to call it.
~ William James (of prayer), The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Other Characteristics

The faith circle is so congruous with human nature that the only explanation of the veto that intellectualists pass upon it must be sought in the offensive character to them of the faiths of certain concrete persons.
~ William James, Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (1911).

I'm sure you have some cosmic rationale, but here you are with your faith and your Peter Pan advice.
~ Billy Joel

This morning, at the Basilica, we prayed for the Catholic people of Boston, for all our people of faith across the country, for victims of abuse, and for Cardinal Law as we learned the news of his resignation. . . . Many people have suffered. Trust has been betrayed. Yet, now is not the time to turn away. It is time for us to come together to answer scandal with witness and service, rededicating ourselves to lifting up Christ's call to holiness and hope.
~ Cardinal William Keeler, Archbishop of Baltimore, Statement on the resignation of Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law (13 December 2002)

To pray means to relieve one's heart, to bid care begone, to breathe out misery and distress, to breathe in the pure mountain air and the energy of another world.
~ Paul Wilhelm von Keppler, More Joy (1911).

[I] am ready to adopt, as an article of scientific faith, true through all space and through all time, that life proceeds from life, and from nothing but life.
~ Lord Kelvin (William Thomson), Address at the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1871). On The Origin Of Life.

There is no wild beast so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning their faith.
~ William Edward Hartpole (E.H.) Lecky, Quoted in What Great Men Think of Religion.

There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him.
~ William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728).

The way of Christ is not possible without Christ.
~ William Russell Maltby, Obiter Scripta (1952).

I want to be remembered as the person who helped us restore faith in ourselves.
~ Wilma Mankiller, Quoted in Words of Women Quotations for Success (1997).

In this beautiful world, of which humanity is the crown and glory, let the new gospel of optimism march to victory!
~ William E. Mclaren, Practice of the Interior Life (1897)

The gods despise enforcèd offerings.
When the heart brings its dearest and its last
Then only will they hear -- if then, if then!
~ William Vaughn Moody, The Fire-Bringer

First, I prepare. Then I have faith.
~ Joe "Willie" Namath

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Antichrist (1888).

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains . . . But it can put mountains where there are none.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (1878).

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

If a man have a strong faith he can indulge in the luxury of scepticism.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols (1888). Skirmishes in a War with the Age

If one considers what need people have of an external regulation to constrain and steady them, how compulsion, slavery in a higher sense, is the sole and final condition under which the person of weaker will can prosper; then one understands the nature of conviction, "faith."
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all price, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time, subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation . . .
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith -- the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible.
~ William Osler, in the British Medical Journal (18 June 1910). The Faith That Heals

On the question of immortality the only enduring enlightenment is through faith.
~ William Osler, Science and Immortality (1904).

In what way can a revelation be made but by miracles? In none which we are able to conceive.
~ William Paley, Evidences of Christianity (1794).

For though our Saviour's Passion is over, his Compassion is not.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693).

Patience and Diligence, like faith, remove mountains.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Industry

It is the fidelity in the daily drill which turns the raw recruit into the accomplished soldier.
~ William Morley (W.M.) Punshon

Pray till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it in God's will.
~ Frederick William (F.W.) Robertson, Sermon on Prayer.

We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell

The only known cure for fear is faith.
~ William S. Sadler, The Mind at Mischief (1929)

As the essence of courage is to stake one's life on a possibility, so the essence of faith is to believe that the possibility exists.
~ William (W.M.) Salter, (24 August 1882)

In actual life, every great enterprise begins with and takes its first forward step in faith.
~ August Wilhelm von Schlegel

Faith, I ran when I saw others run.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II

Faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy head.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

Unthread the bold eye of rebellion,
And welcome home again discarded faith.
~ William Shakespeare, King John

When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony.
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

And all but their faith overthrown.
~ William Wetmore Story, A Poet's Portfolio. Io Victis

Prayer enables us to disregard self, and it allows us to become disentangled from the trammels of egotism. In prayer, as in nothing else, we can find refuge from the degradation of self-love.
~ William Laurence Sullivan, Worry! Fear! Loneliness! (1950).

Ecstatic worship which is devoid of charity is for all practical purposes heathen.
~ William Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury), Quoted in Christian Faith and the Common Life (1938).

Faith is not the holding of correct doctrine, but personal fellowship with the living God.
~ William Temple (Archbishop of York), from Nature, Man and God: Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Glasgow in the Academic Years 1932-1933 and 1933-1934 (1934).

'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, as I know to my cost.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond (1852). Book I. Chapter VI: The Issue Of The Plots. -- The Death Of Thomas, Third Viscount Of Castlewood; And The Imprisonment Of His Viscountess

The man that believes will obey; failure to obey is convincing proof that there is no true faith present.
~ Aiden Wilson (A.W.) Tozer, Man: The Dwelling Place of God (1966). Faith: The Misunderstood Doctrine

Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man's doxy.
~ William Warburton

Faith is knowing there is an ocean because you have seen a brook.
~ William Arthur Ward

Faith sees a beautiful blossom in a bulb, a lovely garden in a seed, and a giant oak in an acorn.
~ William Arthur Ward

The West has become a hostile place for families and people of faith.
~ William D. Watkins, The New Absolutes (1996).

Those who practice (their faith in the public sphere) are generally caricatured as extremists, fundamentalists, religious zealots, bigots, right-wing fanatics, enemies of genuine liberty, censors of free speech, ignorant antagonists of liberal education.
~ William D. Watkins, The New Absolutes (1996).

Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say.
~ William W. Watt

The world has a thousand creeds, and never a one have I;
Not a church of my own, though a million spires are pointing the way on high.
But I float on the bosom of faith, that bears me along like a river;
And the lamp of my soul is alight with love for life, and the world, and the Giver.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Heresy

I saw the light, I saw the light
No more darkness, no more night
Now I'm so happy, no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light.
~ Hank Williams, I Saw The Light (1948 song).

I was just making a statement about how far people will go to their faith . . . like sleeping on a bed of nails or snake handling. Those kinds of things show how deeply people believe in God. So to me, this record is like religious folk art. It's kind of my statement.
~ Lucinda Williams, in GRAMMY Magazine Backstage In The 44th Annual GRAMMYs Press Room: The Church Of Lucinda (27 February 2002)

If you have faith, you can move mountains. If you have faith in something bigger than yourself -- in God, community, family, whatever -- then anything is possible. Faith alone will give you the strength to clear any obstacle in your way.
~ Montel Williams, Mountain, Get Out Of My Way (February 1997).

Necklaces used to be worn with a mustard seed in the bulb, which magnified it so that it could be seen with normal eyesight. Now if we have faith, though it be that small, nothing with be impossible.
~ Philip W. Williams, in When A Loved One Dies (1976). Father on Our Lips

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

We receive His peace when we ask Him for it. We keep His peace by extending it to others. Those are the keys and there are no others.
~ Marianne Williamson

Faith has to work twenty-four hours a day, in and through us, or we perish.
~ Bill Wilson, The Big Book (1939). Chapter 1: Bill's Story

And 'tis my faith, that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Lines Written in Early Spring

Authentic tidings of invisible things, of ebb and flow, and ever'during power, and central peace. Subsisting at the heart of endless agitation.
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805).

One in whom persuasion and belief
Had ripened into faith, and faith become
A passionate intuition.
~ William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814). Book IV: Despondency Corrected

Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey

See how the sacred old flamingoes come,
Painting with shadow all the marble steps:
Aged and wise, they seek their wonted perches
Within the temple, devious walking, made
To wander by their melancholy minds.
~ William Butler Yeats, Anashuya and Vijaya