Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand in our stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that should be.

Thou knowest all; I seek in vain What lands to till or sow with seed - The land is black with briar and weed, Nor cares for falling tears or rain. Thou knowest all; I sit and wait With blinded eyes and hands that fail, Till the last lifting of the veil And the first opening of the gate. Thou knowest all; I cannot see. I trust I shall not live in vain, I know that we shall meet again In some divine eternity.

I do not think that people have religion because they relax their usually strict criteria for evidence and accept extraordinary claims; I think they are led to relax these criteria because some extraordinary claims have become quite plausible to them.

Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.

five words from a church hymn: One step enough for me. Lead, kindly Light … Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough

We are required to "bet our life" that the visible world, while real, is not reality itself.

No, you don't have to certain about anything you're not certain about. In fact, certainty is not something you can choose, anyway. Certainty and uncertainty are not things that are under the will.

Let's remember that Jesus didn't leave Thomas to suffer without the blessing of faith and confidence; he gave him the evidence he required. That is typical of Jesus's approach to doubt; he responded to honest doubters in the way he knew best, the way that would help them to move from doubt to knowledge.

Faith is reliance (trust/confidence) revealed in attitude and action.

Faith has two main parts: one is vision and one is desire, or will. Vision is seeing reality as it is, or in the case of the future, as it could be for us. Desire is wanting reality to be as it is, or as we hope it could be.

The biblical stories know absolutely nothing of blind "leaps of faith," as that phrase is now understood. Such "leaps" are a pure fantasy imposed upon those stories and upon the religious life by the prejudices and tortured turns of modern thought.

Had to believe or do because otherwise something bad—something with no essential connection with real life—would happen to them. The people initially impacted by that message generally concluded that they would be fools to disregard it. That was the basis of their conversion.