A Quote by Frederick Buechner

if you don't have doubts you're either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants-in-the-pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.

Frederick Buechner

Quote Topics

Alive Ants Asleep Doubts Either Faith Keep Kidding Kidding Yourself Moving Pants Yourself

Quote Author

Frederick Buechner
American - Novelist
Born: July 11, 1926

Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.

Frederick Buechner

If thy faith have no doubts, thou has just cause to doubt thy faith; and if thy doubts have no hope, thou hast just reason to fear despair; when therefore thy doubts shall exercise thy faith, keep thy hopes firm to qualify thy doubts; so shall thy faith be secured from doubts; so shall thy doubts be preserved from despair.

Francis Quarles

It need not discourage us if we are full of doubts. Healthy questions keep faith dynamic. In fact, unless we start with doubts we cannot have a deep-rooted faith. One who believes lightly and unthinkingly has not much of a belief. One who has a faith which is not to be shaken has won it through blood and tears-has worked his or her way from doubt to truth as one who reaches a clearing through a thicket of brambles and thorns.

Helen Keller

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

Timothy Keller

The registering of doubts hath two excellent uses: the one, that it saveth philosophy from errors and falsehoods; when that which is not fully appearing is not collected into assertion, whereby error might draw error, but reserved in doubt: the other, that the entry of doubts are as so many suckers or sponges to draw use of knowledge; insomuch as that which, if doubts had not preceded, a man should never have advised, but passed it over without note, by the suggestion and solicitation of doubts, is made to be attended and applied.

Francis Bacon

And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.

Herman Melville

Everybody doubts themselves. Every writer doubts themselves, every artist doubts himself, and every football player does.

Edwin van der Sar

A true champion knows how to overcome doubts and manage those doubts and turn them into motivation.

Misty Hyman

I fell like a lot of times, when I write a song, it is coming from an introspective perspective that my faith always kind of factors. Faith is either part of what factors in to my decision making, or it is part of what factors into my fears and my doubts. It is either the positive or the negative part of it that is afflicting me during times of conflict, which is normally when you write songs about yourself when you find some sort of conflict or you are seeking some sort of resolution.

Matt Thiessen

When you get back on the field and do things, any doubts you've developed leave. The more consistent you become, the fewer doubts you have.

Eric Davis

It is infinitely safer to know that the man at the top has his doubts, as you and I have ours, yet has the courage to move ahead in spite of these doubts.