Home › B › Belief
Belief: Quotations from Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations
His house was known to all the vagrant train, He chid their wanderings but reliev'd their pain; The long remembered beggar was his guest, Whose beard descending swept his aged breast.— GOLDSMITH — Deserted Village. L. 149.
To get thine ends, lay bashfulnesse aside; Who feares to aske, doth teach to be deny'd.— HERRICK — No Bashfulnesse in Begging.
A beggar through the world am I, From place to place I wander by. Fill up my pilgrim's scrip for me, For Christ's sweet sake and charity.— LOWELL — The Beggar.
A beggar that is dumb, you know, May challenge double pity.— SIR WALTER RALEIGH — The Silent Lover. St. 9.
Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks.— Shakespeare — Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 281.
I see, Sir, you are liberal in offers: You taught me first to beg; and now, methinks, You teach me how a beggar should be answer'd.— Shakespeare — Merchant of Venice. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 437.
Speak with me, pity me, open the door: A beggar begs that never begg'd before.— Shakespeare — Richard II. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 77.
Unless the old adage must be verified, That beggars mounted, run their horse to death.— Shakespeare — S. Henry VI. Pt. III. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 126.
Well, whiles I am a beggar I will rail And say, there is no sin but to be rich; And being rich, my virtue then shall be To say, there is no vice but beggary.— Shakespeare — King John. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 593.
They that deny a God destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.— BACON — Essays. Of Atheism.
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.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.— EMERSON — Montaigne.
The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.— FROUDE — Short Studies on Great
Subjects. Calvinism. When in God thou believest, near God thou wilt certainly be!— LELAND — The Return of the Gods. L. 150.
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. C.— 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 — A 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.
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.
Till their own dreams at length deceive 'em, And oft repeating, they believe 'em.— PRIOR — Alma. Canto III. L. 13.
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.
My circumstances Being so near the truth as I will make them, Must first induce you to believe.— Shakespeare — Cymbeline. Act II. Sc. 4. L. 62.
Stands not within the prospect of belief. Macbeth. Act. I. Sc. 3. L.
Fere libenter homines id, quod volunt, credunt. Men willingly believe what they wish.— CÆSAR — Bellum Gallicum. III. 18.
Tarde quæ credita lædunt credimus. We are slow to believe what if believed would hurt our feelings.— OVID — Heroides. II. 9.