Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Abraham Joshua Heschel

We do not have faith in deeds; we attain faith through deeds.

Deeds | Faith |

William Ralph Inge

Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love… Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.

Bereavement | Challenge | Faith | God | Happy | Life | Life | Love | Trust |

Victor Hugo

We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to adore the incomprehensible and reject the absurd; to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God.

Absurd | Duty | Faith | God | Religion | Soul | Superstition |

William Ralph Inge

All Faith consists essentially in the recognition of a world of spiritual values behind, yet not apart from, the world of natural phenomena.

Faith | Phenomena | World |

Elmer George Homrighausen

We do not get faith by arguing about religion; we get faith on our knees, in and through surrender, and prayer. God gives faith to those who need and want it.

Faith | God | Need | Prayer | Religion | Surrender | God |

Brother Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, born Nicolas Herman, aka Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection or

Do not scrupulously confine yourself to fixed rules, or particular forms of devotion, but act with faith in God, with love or humility.

Devotion | Faith | God | Humility | Love |

Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso NULL

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it if you have love, compassion, and tolerance. The clear proof of a person’s love of God is if that person genuinely shows love to fellow human beings.

Compassion | Faith | God | Good | Love | Religion | God |

Madonna Kolbenschlag, fully Madonna Claire Kolbenschlag

If in the past Christianity, Judaism, or Islam placed itself at the center of the search for truth and unity, there is now a shift away from this kind of tribal centricty to the notion that it is God who is at the center and all the religious traditions of the world must inevitably intersect at this center. One can no longer speak about one’s faith outside the ambience of the plurality of religious traditions.

Faith | God | Past | Search | Truth | Unity | World | God |

Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller

Sick or well, blind or seeing, bond or free, we are here for a purpose and however we are situated, we please God better with useful deeds than with many prayers or pious resignation. The temple or church is empty unless the good life fill it. The altar is holy if only it represents the altar of our heart upon which we offer the only sacrifices ever commanded – the love that is stronger than hate and the faith that overcometh doubt.

Better | Church | Deeds | Doubt | Faith | God | Good | Hate | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Pious | Purpose | Purpose | Resignation | Deeds | God |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

So long as religion is only faith and outward form, and the religious function is not experienced in our own souls, nothing of any importance has happened.

Faith | Nothing | Religion |

Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

Of the best rulers the people (only) know that they exist; the next best they love and praise; the next they fear; the next they revile. When they do not command the people’s faith, some will lose faith in them, and then they resort to oaths! But (of the best) when their task is accomplished, their work done, the people all remark, “We have done it ourselves.”

Faith | Fear | Love | People | Praise | Will | Work |

Harold Laski, fully Harold Joseph Laski

The faith we have to build is a faith in the values of this world, not in the values of another.

Faith | World |

Edwin Lewis

Faith is trust, and it is therefore primarily volitional and emotional. Belief, on the other hand, is primarily intellectual: it is the assent of the mind. but while belief is not itself faith, faith where there is no belief in something quite impossible.

Belief | Faith | Mind | Trust |

Abraham Lincoln

Take all of this book upon reason that you can, and the balance, upon faith and you will live and die a better man.

Balance | Better | Faith | Man | Reason | Will |

John Macmurray

The fundamental error commonly made lies in considering faith as a kind of knowledge... Faith, however, is not a kind of knowledge, but rather a practical attitude of will.

Error | Faith | Knowledge | Will |

Samuel H. Miller

A sound belief is always accompanied by a sane skepticism. It is only by disbelieving in some things that we can ever believe in others things. Faith does not mean credulity.

Belief | Faith | Skepticism | Sound |

Douglas MacArthur

A better world shall emerge based on faith and understanding.

Better | Faith | Understanding | World |

Abraham Lincoln

Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Duty | Faith | Right | Understand |