Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Belief
Ideo credendum quod incredibile.
It is believable because unbelievable.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Quoting Tertullian.
For fools are stubborn in their way,
As coins are harden’d by th’ allay;
And obstinacy’s ne’er so stiff
As when ’tis in a wrong belief.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. III. Canto II. L. 481.
Fere libenter homines id, quod volunt, credunt.
Men willingly believe what they wish.
Cæsar—Bellum Gallicum. III. 18.
No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone!
Carlyle—Heroes and Hero Worship. Lecture IV.
There is no unbelief;
Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod
And waits to see it push away the clod,
He trusts in God.
Eliz. York Case—Unbelief.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.
Emerson—Montaigne.
Credat Judæus Apella non ego.
The Jew Apella may believe this, not I.
Horace—Satires. I. 5. 100.
Better trust all and be deceived,
And weep that trust, and that deceiving,
Than doubt one heart that, if believed,
Had blessed one’s life with true believing.
Fanny Kemble.
O thou, whose days are yet all spring,
Faith, blighted once, is past retrieving;
Experience is a dumb, dead thing;
The victory’s in believing.
Lowell—To————.
They believed—faith, I’m puzzled—I think I may call
Their belief a believing in nothing at all,
Or something of that sort; I know they all went
For a general union of total dissent.
Lowell—Fable for Critics. L. 851.
A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.
Milton—Areopagitica.
Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
Montaigne—Essays. Of Divine Ordinances. Bk. I. Ch. XXXI.
Tarde quæ credita lædunt credimus.
We are slow to believe what if believed would hurt our feelings.
Ovid—Heroides. II. 9.
Incrédules les plus crédules. Ils croient les miracles de Vespasien, pour ne pas croire ceux de Mo
se.
The incredulous are the most credulous. They believe the miracles of Vespasian that they may not believe those of Moses.
Pascal—Pensèes. II. XVII. 120.
And when religious sects ran mad,
He held, in spite of all his learning,
That if a man’s belief is bad,
It will not be improved by burning.
Praed—Poems of Life and Manners. Pt. II. The Vicar. St. 9.
Do not believe what I tell you here any more than if it were some tale of a tub.
Rabelais—Works. Bk. IV. Ch. XXXVIII. (“Tale of a Tub,” title of a work of Swift’s.)
Stands not within the prospect of belief.
Macbeth. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 74.
A thing that nobody believes cannot be proved too often.
Bernard Shaw—Devil’s Disciple. Act III.
There littleness was not; the least of things
Seemed infinite; and there his spirit shaped
Her prospects, nor did he believe,—He saw.
Wordsworth—Excursion. Bk. I. St. 12.
I have believed the best of every man,
And find that to believe it is enough
To make a bad man show him at his best,
Or even a good man swing his lantern higher.
Yeats—Deirdre.
What ardently we wish, we soon believe.
Young—Night Thoughts. Night VII. Pt. II. L. 1311.