Questionings Quotes & Sayings

God does not answer our desperate questionings; he simply gives us himself. — Francois Mauriac

In the realm of human destiny, the depth of man's questionings is more important than his answers. — Andre Malraux

Which Painters hold, and such the heritage This gentle solemn Spirit doth possess, Being a better mirror of his age In all his pity, love, and weariness, Than those who can but copy common things, And leave the Soul unpainted with its mighty questionings. But — Oscar Wilde

In his refusal to believe in anything supernatural or inherently evil, he was as unrealistic as an old voodoo queen who sees spirits everywhere. — Anne Rice

If people understood that doctors weren't divine, perhaps the odor of malpractice might diminish. — Richard Selzer

Remember always that there are two things which are more utterly incompatible even than oil and water, and these two are trust and worry. Can you call it trust, when you have given the saving and keeping of your soul into the hands of God, if day after day you are spending hours of anxious thought and questionings about the matter? When believers really trust anything, they cease to worry about the thing they have trusted. — Hannah Whitall Smith

For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder. — W.E.B. Du Bois

The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Winnowing is more like a trip to the confessional ... transparent & vulnerable without being sentimental. These songs have elements that are more like prayers & pleas for faith. They're questionings and wrangling in the dark about the journey. — Bill Mallonee

All tradition,' said the Professor, 'is a type of spiritual truth. The superstitions of the East, and the mythologies of the North - the beautiful Fables of old Greece, and the bold investigations of modern science - all tend to elucidate the same principles; all take their root in those promptings and questionings which are innate in the brain and heart of man. Plato believed that the soul was immortal, and born frequently; that it knew all things; and that what we call learning is but the effort which it makes to recall the wisdom of the Past. "For to search and to learn," said the poet-philosopher, "is reminiscence all." At the bottom of every religious theory, however wild and savage, lies a perception - dim perhaps, and distorted, but still a perception - of God and immortality. — Amelia B. Edwards

But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can't acquire knowledge. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I think the most attractive thing is a sense of humour. If someone can make you laugh, you've gotten a lot out of the way. — Kiefer Sutherland

As I grew up I realized, though imperfectly, that I was different from other people, and that the way of life in my home was different from that in the homes of others ... This stimulated me to introspection and strange mental questionings. — John George Haigh

What you must realize, what you must even come to praise, is the fact that there is no right way that is going to become apparent to you once and for all. The most blinding illumination that strikes and perhaps radically changes your life will be so attenuated and obscured by doubts and dailiness that you may one day come to suspect the truth of that moment at all. The calling that seemed so clear will be lost in echoes of questionings and indecision; the church that seemed to save you will fester with egos, complacencies, banalities; the deepest love of your life will work itself like a thorn in your heart until all you can think of is plucking it out. Wisdom is accepting the truth of this. Courage is persisting with life in spite of it. And faith is finding yourself, in the deepest part of your soul, in the very heart of who you are, moved to praise it. — Christian Wiman

The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped - it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him. — Eugene H. Peterson

It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read. — Philip Pullman

I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history. — Kenneth Clark

If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it; it doesn't truly end. — Peter Orner

I played a lot of baseball growing up, and I always hit better if I kept moving before the pitch instead of standing still in the batter's box. I think a waggle does the same thing in the golf swing. It keeps you relaxed and gets your body ready to hit the ball. — Jason Dufner

The wonderful poems interpreting with equal magic the romance of strange lands and times, or the modern soul, naked and unashamed, as if clothed in its own complexity; the humorous-tragic questionings of the universe; the delicious travel-pictures and fantasies; the lucid criticisms of art, and politics, and philosophy, informed with malicious wisdom, shimmering with poetry and wit. — Israel Zangwill

Anything which is a huge problem for humanity we'll sign up for, if we can find a way to fix it. — Astro Teller

The perpetrators of genocides are usually men of the herd, men who follow orders without questioning them. Rwanda was no exception. — John Rucyahana

My inspiration's coming from nature, I love nature and all the expressions, I love art, I love expressions of beauty. It's part of my life, being engaged in the moment. — Rickson Gracie

My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear - a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable. — Kahlil Gibran

Certainly you will have doubts. There will be questionings and faith will return again. That is how faith is established. — Sarada Devi

David Cameron has a different style to Gordon Brown. — Louis Susman

A sound American is simply one who has put out of his mind all doubts and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and as incontrovertible gospel, the whole body of official doctrine of his day, whatever it may be and no matter how often it may change. The instant he challenges it, no matter how timorously and academically, he ceases by that much to be a loyal and creditable citizen of the republic. — H.L. Mencken

Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised — William Wordsworth

thinker sees in his own actions attempts and questionings to obtain information about something or other; success and failure are answers to him first and foremost. — Friedrich Nietzsche