This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Vision looks inward and becomes duty. Vision looks outward and becomes aspiration. Vision looks upward and becomes faith." - Stephen Samuel Wise
"No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself." - Henry Gardiner Adams
"Every civilization rests on a set of promises... If the promises are broken too often, the civilization dies, no matter how rich it may be, or how mechanically clever. Hope and faith depend on promises; if hope and faith go, everything goes." - Herbert Sebastian Agar
"Truth is the disciple of the ascetic, the quest of the mystic, the faith of the simple, the ransom of the weak, the standard of the righteous, the doctrine of the meek, and the challenge of Nature. Together, all these constitute the Law of the Universe." - John Hay Allison
"The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
"Faith is to believe, on the word of God, what we do not see, and its reward is to see and enjoy what we believe." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
"He who is loud in his prayers is short in his faith... He who prays must direct his heart to heaven." - Babylonian Talmud
"The dynamite of doubt is useful in wrecking old structures; but to build new buildings, we must have the dynamics of faith." - Joseph L. Baron
"A brilliant mind without faith is like a beautiful face without eyes." - Joseph L. Baron
"Faith without works is like a bird without wings; though she may hop with her companions on earth, yet she will never fly with them to heaven; but when both are joined together, then doth the soul mount up to her eternal rest." - J. Beaumont
"Man is wise and constantly in quest of more wisdom; but the ultimate wisdom, which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls forth faith rather than reason." - Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland
"We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. In the assurance of strength there is strength; and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers." - John Christian Bovee
"The chief characteristics of the (liberal) attitude are human sympathy, a receptivity to change, and a scientific willingness to follow reason rather than faith." - Chester Bliss Bowles
"Strike from mankind the principle of faith, and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
"Anxiety is a word of unbelief or unreasoning dread. We have no right to allow it. Full faith in God puts it to rest." - Horace Bushnell
"Faith, you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it." - Samuel Butler
"Faith that the thing can be done is essential to any great achievement." - Thomas N. Carruthers
"To keep from gravitating toward genocidal conflict, we must stop demanding perpetual progress. For quiet nonpolitical reasons, governments and politicians cannot achieve the paradise they habitually promise. Political leaders who continue to dangle before their constituents enticing carrots that are becoming unattainable hasten the erosion of faith in political processes. Circumstances have ceased to be what they were when the once-New World’s myth of limitlessness made sense." - William R. Catton, Jr.
"A contemplative life has more the appearance of a life of piety than any other; but it is the divine plan to bring faith into activity and exercise." - Richard Cecil
"How simply I can trust in man, and how little in God! How unreasonable is a pure act of faith in one like ourselves, if we cannot repose the same faith in God." - Richard Cecil
"Faith is love taking the form of aspirations." - William Ellery Channing
"I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, and receives new truth as an angel for Heaven." - William Ellery Channing
"For health and the constant enjoyment of life, give me a keen and ever present sense of humor; it is the next best thing to an abiding faith in providence." - George Barrell Cheever
"Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see." - William Newton Clarke
"Faith makes the discords of the present the harmonies of the future." - Robert Collyer
"There is never enough time to say our last word - the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submission, revolt." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
"The faith that only reaches to the head, will never sanctify the heart." - Samuel Hanson Cox
"There is much in the world to make us afraid. There is much more in our faith to make us unafraid." - Frederick W. Cropp
"It is the easiest thing in the world for us to obey God when He command us to do what we like, and to trust Him when the path is all sunshine. The real victory of faith is to trust God in the dark, and through the dark. Let us be assured of this, that if the lesson and the rod are of His appointing, and that His all-wise love has engineered the deep tunnel of trial on the heavenward road, He will never desert us during the discipline. The vital thing for us is not to deny and desert Him." - Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
"Tears never yet saved a soul. Hell is full of weepers weeping over lost opportunities, perhaps over the rejection of an offered Saviour. Your Bible does not say, “Weep, and be saved.” It says, “Believe, and be saved.” Faith is better than feeling." - Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
"Duty is above all consequences, and often, at a crisis of difficulty, commands us to throw them overboard. It commands us to look neither to the right, nor to the left, but straight onward. Hence every act of duty is an act of faith. It is performed in the assurance that God will take care of the consequences, and will so order the course of the world, that, whatever the immediate results may be, His word shall not return to Him void." -
"The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith." - Russell Victor DeLong, possibly Bertrand Russell V. Delong
""Faith is tendency toward action." According to such a view, faith is the matrix of formulated creeds and the inspiration of endeavor... Faith in its newer sense signifies that experience itself is the sole ultimate authority." - John Dewey
"The future of religion is connected with the possibility of developing a faith in the possibilities of human experience and human relationships that will create a vital sense of the solidarity of human interests and inspire action to make that sense a reality." - John Dewey
"The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke." - Ximénès Doudan
"All progress is made by men of faith who believe in what is right and, what is more important, actually do what is right in their own private affairs. You cannot add to the peace and goodwill of the world if you fail to create an atmosphere of harmony and love right where you live and work." - Thomas Dreier
"Fear builds prison walls around a man and bars him in with dreads, anxieties and timid doubts. Faith is the great liberator from prison walls. Fear paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages, fear sickens, faith heals; fear puts hopelessness at the heart of life, while faith sees beyond the horizon and rejoices in its God." - Lewis L. Dunnington
"Duty performed gives clearness and firmness to faith, and faith becomes the more assured and satisfying to the soul." - Tyron Edwards
"Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its tempter, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self and benevolence to men." - Tyron Edwards
"Science has sometimes been said to be opposed to faith, and inconsistent with it. But all science, in fact, rests on a basis of faith, for it assumes the permanence and uniformity of natural laws - a thing which can never be demonstrated" - Tyron Edwards