“Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.”

“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child's faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do. What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you fell you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God. ”

“I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true.”May 19, 1962”

“She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.”

“What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.”

“There are some of us who have to pay for our faith every step of the way and who have to work out dramatically what it would be like without it and if being without it would be ultimately possible or not.”

“Faith comes and goes. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will.”