A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Americans have many virtues, but they have not Faith and Hope. I know no two words whose meaning is more lost sight of.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote Topics

Faith Hope Know Lost Many Meaning More Sight Two Virtues Whose Words

Quote Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American - Philosopher
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882

The world is full of people who have lost faith: politicians who have lost faith in politics, social workers who have lost faith in social work, schoolteachers who have lost faith in teaching and, for all I know, policemen who have lost faith in policing and poets who have lost faith in poetry. It's a condition of faith that it gets lost from time to time, or at least mislaid.

P. D. James

We're told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable. We see ourselves as a nation of extroverts - which means that we've lost sight of who we really are. Depending on which study you consult, one third to one half of Americans are introverts - in other words, one out of every two or three people you know.

Susan Cain

Right now in my life I spend much time dreaming over my visions of faith. I know this works. I would be a fool to ignore it. Remember, one of the mightiest keys in the Kingdom of Heaven is faith. Vision is a major part of faith, for we walk by faith and not by sight. Faith is directly contrasted to natural eye sight.

Phil Pringle

The word soul has lost its meaning and even its plausibility.... Faith, hope and love can no longer be seen simply as virtues or graces; they are processes in flesh and blood... (the clergyman) will find that whether he wants it or not, he is also a front-line mental health worker or he will be so regarded by the specialists in mental health. It is on the pastoral role and the tasks of shepherding that the psychological disciples have the greatest impact in theological work.

Paul Pruyser

Hope and faith are two intimate brothers; they always go together. Hope nourishes faith and faith treasures hope.

Sri Chinmoy

The English language has about 450,000 commonly used words, but more may be needed. What to you call someone who has lost a sibling or had a miscarriage? Or a gay person whose partner has died? Or an elderly person who has lost every friend and relative? So many heartaches can't be found in the dictionary.

Jeffrey Zaslow

We are full of words whose true meaning we haven't been taught, and one of those words is suffering. Another is the word death. We don't know what they mean, but we use them, and this is a mystery.

Alessandro Baricco

I believe that fallen creatures perish, perish for ever, for only good can live, and good has not been theirs; but how durst men forge our Saviour's words "eternal death " into so horrible a meaning? And even if he did use other words, and seem to countenance such a meaning for them (and what witness have we that He did, except that of men whose ignorance or prejudice might well have interpreted these words wrongly as they did so many others?

James Anthony Froude

Faith brings into our lives such freedom, such love, such peace, and such joy that there are no words in any language that can explain it. You have to have it in order to know it. You have to experience it in order to understand it. Faith liberates. It liberates love and hope. If I am free to love and free to hope, what more do I want of life?

Catherine Doherty

In the garden of the soul, the virtues of faith, hope, and love form the centerpiece. Traditionally called theological virtues, they come as free gifts from God and draw us to God. We cannot earn these virtues; God has already freely planted them in our soul.

Robert Morneau

Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues.

Brother Lawrence

Too many Americans have lost faith in our approach to the war on drugs.

Gary Johnson

Life knows us not and we do not know life—-we don’t know even our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow

Joseph Conrad

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues - faith and hope.

Charles Dickens

A definition is nothing else but an explication of the meaning of a word, by words whose meaning is already known. Hence it is evident that every word cannot be defined; for the definition must consist of words; and there could be no definition, if there were not words previously understood without definition.