Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

Don’t say I hate institutionalised religion – rather than saying I hate those things, which I do not, what I’m saying is that perhaps there is a way of opening more doors, rather than closing so many.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

One of the things I love most about being at home is that I’m comfortable there. And since we are the home of Christ, we need to make sure He’s comfortable in us.

In the Church, and in the journey of faith, women have had and still have a special role in opening doors to the Lord.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

The good is the beautiful.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

I can’t prove it scientifically, that there’s a God, but I believe.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

I’m grateful for the evangelical resurgence we’ve seen across the world in the last half-century or so. It truly has been God’s doing.

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

For ninety per cent of those who view him from outside, the Christian God looks like a great landowner administering his estates, the world. Now this conventional picture, which is too well justified by appearances, corresponds in no way to the dogmatic basis or point of view of the Gospels.

Some people keep God in a Sunday morning box and say, ‚Hey, I did my religious duty.‘ That’s fine, but the scripture says to pray without ceasing. And I think that means all through the day you’re talking to God. Even if it’s in your thoughts.

We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.

That I am not a member of any Christian church is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures, and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‚darkness‘ on the walls of his cell.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

Our inquiring friends and neighbors not of our faith can also catch the wave. We encourage them to keep all that is good and true in their lives. And we invite them to receive more, especially the glorious truth that through God’s eternal plan, families can be together forever.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

All our actions, as well as our thoughts and words, should praise Him who always blesses us.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

God has his plans and his reasons. Sometimes we are supposed to go through things so that we learn lessons.

Heaven gives us hope and makes our present burdens easier to bear.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don’t have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

Prayer is a strong wall and fortress of the church; it is a goodly Christian weapon.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

What air is to the body, to feel understood is to the heart.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Faith is easy; I think people complicate it.