Faith

Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.

(Tagore)

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“Faith is something easy to speak of, but difficult to practice. We often place our faith in everything but God. We have faith in our lawyers when there is legal trouble and place even greater faith in our doctors when we are sick. We have faith that our money will protect us, faith that our own intelligence will save us from difficulties. That is, we seem to have faith in creation, but not in our Creator. One of the Ninety-nine Attributes of God is ya Salaam, or Peace. Salaam also means safety, security, and health, wholeness. If you lean against a rotten tree trunk, it will not support you. You can rely only on that which is truly healthy and whole, and that is God. Nothing else provides completely trustworthy support and security. And so, the only real peace comes from faith in God.” (Essential Sufism, 171)

Rumi

Refresh your faith, but not with talking. You have secretly refreshed your desires. As long as desires are fresh, faith is not;

for it is these desires that lock that gate.

The rewards of a life of faith and devotion to God are love and inner rapture, and the capacity to receive the Light of God.

If you wish your misery to end, seek also to lose your wisdom – the wisdom born of human illusion, that which lacks the light of God’s overflowing grace. The wisdom of this world increases doubt;

the wisdom of Faith releases you into the sky.

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What is Faith?

The ultimate ground of faith and knowledge is confidence in God. (Charles Hodge)

Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.

(D. Elton Trueblood)

Faith is nothing more or less than the operation of the thought forces in the form of earnest desire, coupled with expectation

as to its fulfillment. (Ralph W. Trine)

Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.

(Oswald Chambers)

Faith is not simply a patience that passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit that bears things - with resignations, yes, but

above all, with blazing, serene hope. (Corazon Aquino)

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Faith is a passionate intuition. (William Wordsworth)

Faith is an oasis in the heart which can never be reached

by the caravan of thinking. (Kahlil Gibran)

Faith means expanding your intuitive awareness of God’s presence within, and not relying on reason

as your chief means of understanding. (Paramhansa Yogananda)

Faith is love taking the form of aspiration. (William Ellery Channing)

Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see.

(William Newton Clarke)

Faith is the pierless bridge supporting what we see unto the scene that we do not.

(Emily Dickinson)

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Faith is the resolve to live as if certain things were true, in the confident assurance that they are true, and that we shall one day

find out for ourselves that they are true. (W.R. Inge)

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is

theoretically possible. (William James)

Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.

(C.S. Lewis)

Faith is an excitement and an enthusiasm: it is a condition of intellectual magnificence to which we must cling as to treasure, and

not squander in the small coin of empty words. (George Sand)

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Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

(Old Testament)

The principle part of faith is patience. (George MacDonald)

Patience is crowned with faith: where one has no patience, one has no faith. The prophet said, “God hasn’t given faith to anyone in whose

nature there is no patience.” (Rumi)

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Faith is believing where we cannot prove. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Faith declares what the senses do not see.

(Blaise Pascal)

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof. (Kahlil Gibran)

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe

and enough shadows to blind those who don’t. (Blaise Pascal)

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To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.

(Saint Thomas Aquinas)

That’s the thing about faith. If you don’t have it you can’t understand it. And if you do, no explanation is necessary.

(Kira Nerys)

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

(Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.

(Erich Fromm)

Faith is the unshaken stance of the soul and is unmoved by any adversity. The believing man is not one who thinks God can do all things, but one who trusts that he will obtain everything…The mother of faith is hard work and an upright heart; the one builds up belief,

the other makes it endure. (John Climacus)

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Faith and Deeds

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is

without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his

physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

(New Testament: James 2:14-17)

Faith expressed in action is a sure means of realization. Faith is not blind. It is the willingness to try.

(Nisargadatta)

Faith begins as an experiment and ends as an experience. (W.R. Inge)

The value of authority or belief to a believer lies in making an

experiment on the lines recommended by authorities and testing this belief. If the result comes out to be as expected, the belief becomes a fact to the experimenter. (Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, Letter 116)

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Faith without works is like a bird without wings; though she may hop about on earth, she will never fly to heaven.

(J. Beaumont)

We must take care lest, by exalting the merit of faith, without adding any distinction or explanation, we furnish people with a pretext for

relaxing in the practice of good works. (Saint Ignatius of Loyola)

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

(New Testament: James 2:26)

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The Benefits of Faith

Everything is possible to one who has faith. (Jesus Christ)

Faith is to believe what we do not see;

the reward of this faith is to see what we believe. (Saint Augustine)

Faith is the a-b-c of the realization of God. (Hazrat Inayat Khan)

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Faith is the door through which we enter the supernatural order. It opens to heaven. (Abbot Chapman)

Much knowledge of divine things is lost to us through want of faith.

(Heraclitus)

Faith is building on what you know is here so you can reach what you know is there.

(Cullen Hightower)

Through faith the imagination is invigorated and completed, for it really happens that every doubt mars its perfection.

Faith must strengthen the imagination, for faith establishes the will.

(Paracelsus)

Act as if you had faith and in time faith will take hold of you. (Sufi saying)

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Faith is an invisible and invincible magnet, and attracts to itself whatever it fervently desires and calmly and persistently expects.

(Ralph W. Trine)

On a long journey of human life, faith is the best of companions; it is the best refreshment on the journey;

and it is the greatest property. (Buddha)

It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the

need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them,

to your great delight and benefit. (Emmanuel Teney)

Deep faith eliminates fear.

(Lech Walesa)

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Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our

happiness depends cannot be found in any other way. (Thomas Merton)

Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality

transfigured and elevated in the light itself. (Thomas Merton)

It is cynicism and fear that freezes life; it is faith that thaws it out, releases it, sets it free.

(Harry E. Fosdick)

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God never fails His devotees in the hour of trial. The condition is that there must be a living faith and the utter-most reliance on Him. The test of faith is that having done our duty we

must be prepared to welcome whatever He may send – joy as well as sorrow, good luck as well as bad.

(Mohandas Gandhi)

Worry is spiritual short sight. Its cure is intelligent faith. (Paul Brunton)

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed

to worry about anything whatsoever. (Mahatma Gandhi)

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Faith is the belief in the unknown. Faith heals, faith creates, faith works wonders, faith moves mountains. Faith is the searchlight for God-finding.

(Swami Sivananda)

When we are away from the Master and the Satsang, the world imperceptibly impresses itself on us so much that, in spite of our regularly giving time to Simran and Nam, we often begin to feel discouraged, dry and desolate. In such a state faith and love are our

support, and if faith is firm, the Master responds. (Sawan Singh, Spiritual Gems, 117)

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True Faith is Based on Experience Not Blind Belief

Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.

(Archibald A. Hodge)

Faith must be enforced by reason. When faith becomes blind it dies.

(Mahatma Gandhi)

If your faith is opposed to experience, to human learning and investigation, it is not worth the breath used in giving it expression.

(Edgar Watson Howe)

The idea of faith is often misunderstood by people, because they associate it with those who are ignorant, uneducated, and who have no power to investigate for themselves. But faith is not blind belief. It is

never well-founded until it is based on experience. (Paramananda)

Belief, trust and faith are all illusory phenomena if not based on

conviction through personal experience. (Meher Baba)

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Hope lives in ignorance, open-eyed. Faith is built upon our knowledge of our life.

(Robert Louis Stevenson)

People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have

believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it. (George MacDonald)

The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers, is that which is woven of conviction and set with the

sharp mordant of experience. (Abraham Lincoln)

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To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly. (Benjamin Franklin)

A man’s most valuable trait is a judicious sense

of what not to believe. (Euripides)

Why crawl with belief when with a little more effort you can soar by knowing?

(Shantidasa)

He who has not experienced the true inner connection with his Guru will not have such strong faith, for faith is built on knowledge.

(Sant Kirpal Singh)

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Faith is different from belief. Faith is rooted in experience. Belief is provisional faith. Belief is necessary in the beginning. Without it, people wouldn’t trouble to seek God. Mere belief, however, is not enough. When people remain satisfied with their beliefs, their religion

becomes dogmatic, and therefore closed to further growth. (Paramhansa Yogananda)

“Faith,” Saint Paul said, “is the proof of things unseen.” It isn’t that belief itself proves the existence of higher realities, any more than people’s belief that the world was flat made it so.

The actual experience of higher realities, however, gives one faith in them. That is what Saint Paul meant.

With inner verification alone comes faith. (Paramhansa Yogananda)

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Have you ever felt God’s peace in meditation? Have you felt His love touching your heart? Aren’t these already something real and meaningful to you? Cling to them. Make experience

the basis of your faith. (Paramhansa Yogananda)

It (Sant Mat) is a liberal system and does not stifle opinion or insist on blind belief. To start with, it asks you to accept some fundamental concepts, only by way of a working hypothesis…We do not force conviction upon anybody. We like the conviction to grow from within as a result of one’s own personal experience.

(Baba Sawan Singh)

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The Path of the Masters is not a path of blind faith, but one of seeing things for oneself.

(Sant Kirpal Singh)

Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active. (Edith Hamilton)

Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.

(Richard Buckminster Fuller)

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

(Michel de Montaigne)

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How is Faith Developed?

Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into. (Mahatma Gandhi)

Faith is like love: it cannot be forced. As trying to force love begets

hatred, so trying to compel belief leads to unbelief. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a gift from God.

(Blaise Pascal)

Faith must be cultivated. It cannot be achieved by mere wishful thinking. If you throw yourself off a mountaintop with the affirmation, “God will protect me,” just see if He does! He expects you to use the common sense He has given you. He will take care of you, surely, if you do your best always, act sensibly, and leave the results in His hands. Faith, however, must be watered by inner experience, like a plant. The more you actually experience the care He takes of you, the more you will come to rely on Him – not fanatically, but naturally, in

the divine way. (Paramhansa Yogananda)

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Doubt/Loss of Faith

Doubt, the ruthless hunter, lurks within your body; his arrow has pierced the flawless diamond of your soul.

(Kabir)

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. (Kahlil Gibran)

Doubts arise because of the absence of surrender. (Ramana Maharshi)

Faith brings relief to the heart from pain and suffering, weakness of faith leads to despair and torment.

(Rumi)

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Let go of the things of which you are in doubt for the things in which there is no doubt.

(Mohammed)

Doubting is truly a component of man’s worst nature. It clips the wings of joy; it dampens enthusiasm, it tarnished hope. Such men cannot attain the goal even at the end of a thousand births.

(Sathya Sai Baba)

One of the ego’s favorite paths of resistance is to fill you with doubt.

(Ram Das)

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. (William Shakespeare)

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To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt. (William James)

When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead. (John Greenleaf Whittier)

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Those who believe in nothing are very, very jealous and angry at those who believe in something.

(Dennis Prager)

Fear is faith that it won't work out.

With faith a man is never alone, never forsaken… Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse.

(William James)

In spiritual matters, faith is the very essence. Doubt shakes the foundations of spiritual practices and is therefore to

be avoided. Have faith in the wisdom of the ancients; do not pitch your tiny little brain against the intuitions

of the saints and their discoveries. (Sathya Sai Baba)

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.

(J.R.R. Tolkien)

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You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger that your faith. (Mary Manin Morrissey)

Follow your Master with full faith embedded in your heart. If the faith in the Guru dims, the disciple falters and falls. Faith carries him forward in the regions which are

otherwise impossible of traversing. (Sant Kirpal Singh, Spiritual Elixir, 363)

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is

conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

(Buddha)

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Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it.

(Georges Bernanos)

To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our

information within. With our own eyes we see, and with our own skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself.

(Sophy Burnham)

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Sant Kirpal Singh Disciple: How does faith in the Master-Power develop?

Master Kirpal Singh: By regular practice. Faith is, I would say, the root cause of religion. For faith you must have something to stand on. Some people are in the make already, they have that grown already. Others have to form faith in due course, not all at once. So it's better when you see you are helped by Master in all your affairs; when you see some improvement in your inner way. First, when you see quite impossible things are made very softened down, naturally faith arises. Faith is the root cause of all religion. If there is no ground, where will the building stand? First, you have to take it as an hypothesis, then you must benefit regularly by seeing or by experiencing your faith. The Masters say: “Don't believe unless you see for your own self what is what.” The more you come in contact with Master, and the more you become receptive, the more faith you will have in Him. (http://www.ruhanisatsangusa.org/lok/hunger.htm)

As a matter of fact, no one can know or find a true Master unless and until the Master is pleased to reveal his own identity himself to the innermost satisfaction of one desiring to confirm his faith in the Master. This is done according to the extent of one’s receptivity, and to the degree that his capacity to understand and his love entitle him. It depends wholly on the kindness and sweet mercy of God through a Master. Some are given clues according to their desires. The faith of some in their Master is confirmed when a disciple is saved miraculously from some danger. A favorable response to the prayers made to the Master confirms faith in others. There are others who have book knowledge and are satisfied by the examples of others, so they get confirmation that way. Masters have the knowledge of measuring the capacity and range of everyone’s intellect and bestow faith accordingly. (The Teachings of Kirpal Singh, Book Two: The New Life in God, 122)

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When the Pakistan-India war broke out, I remember very spiritual religious people who were praying to God night and day, like that. Thousands were killed. They said, “Where oh God, oh where are you?” Because they did not see, their faith breaks away. Faith remains only so long as you have everything to meet your own desires…So blind faith does not help you, only to a certain extent, not beyond. When everything goes according to your wish and pleasure, then, “Oh God is all right.” But if you are put to adversity and nobody helps you, “Oh where is God?” (http://www.ruhanisatsangusa.org/lok/firstsee.htm)

Rest assured He who will direct your soul will never leave you. He is always with you. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

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Hazur Baba Sawan Singh

Your “Elder Brother” is within you, occupying the right bright half of the eight-petalled lotus in Anda. He is there to receive you and awaits your arrival there to lead you onward. So long as the devotee has not reached that far and has not seen Him, his faith in the Elder Brother, Friend, Guide, Master, or Guru — no matter by which name He is called — is shaky. The faith matures only after seeing this Form of the Master. By the time the devotee reaches this stage, he too has shaken off the growth of material bonds and sensual, low desires from his mind. (Spiritual Gems, letter 25)

The nature of the mind is fundamentally negative. Although this negation decreases as we rise up, so subtle is its working that great Rishis, Sufis and Prophets willingly and joyfully gave themselves up into its arms and played to its tunes. All the creation in the physical, astral and causal planes is held bound — hands and feet — by it. At times it cannot only lose faith and find fault with the Master, but will easily go to the extent of even denying Him. This is due to the effect of bad karma. When the period is over, there is an awakening again. Such happenings are not unusual with the devotees. All the travelers in this journey experience such shakes, which are helpful, in a way, in putting them back on the road, the repentance giving a push and becoming instrumental in making them go ahead. (Gems, letter 114) Do not lose heart but fight courageously. The battle has just begun. Mind is not stronger than the sound current. The Master is with you. He is watching your every movement. He is prepared to fight your battles with you. Take him as your helper. Have faith in him. Fight the mind and you will succeed. (Gems, 210) The determination and faith should be so strong that even if nothing comes out of it until the last moment of life, there is no wavering of faith. (The Dawn of Light, letter 66)

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Meher Baba

There are No Two Kinds of Faith

One of the greatest things to possess is faith, which ultimately leads to conviction; and from conviction one day arises realization. There are no two kinds of faith. Faith is the last thing to be labeled. The only question is whether one has strong faith or weak faith. Some manifest faith only to the point of acknowledging forms and ceremonies, while some go beyond this to seek the kernel and eschew the hull, believing either in the impersonal infinite existence or in the personal existence of one's own master. Thus it is only a question of degree of faith. In whole-hearted faith, relief will be found from the many sufferings which afflict man. We are already in possession of infinite power and happiness, but it is our way of life which prevents us from enjoying these eternal treasures of God. Faith can provide a key to attain them. Eventually, faith must give way to conviction, for after all, faith is only faith. There are two kinds of experience — external and internal. External experiences can result through the gross media. What we actually see of the gross world through our gross eyes gives us conviction of a sort, but there are occasions when even this conviction is based on incorrect analysis. Thus, if we see a man drinking milk from a bottle under a toddy tree [a cheap, intoxicating drink is commonly made in India from the sap of the toddy tree], we assume unconsciously that he is drinking toddy, which is incorrect. What is seen with the inner eye gives absolute conviction and can never be false. Such is the case, for example, when one sees with the inner eye that God is the Infinite Existence.

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Therefore what is really needed to give eternal conviction is not mere theorizing and reasoning, or even faith, but actual (inner) experience. Once God has been realized, there is no question of faith or even of conviction, just as there is no question of a man's needing faith to believe that he is a man. Having transcended the boundaries of faith, one finds oneself identified with the infinite and the one Self manifested everywhere. (http://www.avatarmeherbaba.org/erics/faith.html)

True Faith is a Form of Sight

Faith in a Perfect Master becomes all-important because it nourishes and sustains faith in oneself and faith in life — in the very teeth of setbacks and failures, handicaps and difficulties, limitations and failings. Life, as a person knows it in himself, or in most of his fellow beings, may be narrow, twisted, and perverse; but life as he sees it in the Master is unlimited, pure, and untainted. In the Master, the aspirant sees his own ideal realized; the Master is what his own deeper self would rather be. He sees in the Master the reflection of the best in himself, which is yet to be but which he will surely one day attain. Faith in the Master therefore becomes the chief motive power for realizing the divinity that is latent in man. (http://www.avatarmeherbaba.org/erics/faithpm.html)

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Sri Ramakrishna It is Satchidananda (God) that comes to us in the form of the guru. If a man is initiated by a human guru, he will not achieve anything if he regards his guru as a mere man. The guru should be regarded as the direct manifestation of God. Only then can the disciple have faith in the mantra given by the guru. Once a man has faith he achieves all. Faith in the guru's words: You should depend on his instruction. Do your duties in the world, holding fast to his words, like a person whirling round and holding fast to a pillar. One must not look on one’s guru as a mere human being: it is Satchidananda Himself who appears as the guru. When the disciple has the vision of the Ishta, through the guru's grace, he finds the guru merging in Him. What can one not achieve through simple faith! http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Masters/need_of_guru_and_faith_in_guru.htm To believe that fire is in the wood is faith. This is one thing, but it is another thing to bring that fire out of the wood, to cook something with it, to eat this and to attain peace and happiness afterwards. So to believe that God is in the world and to catch a distant glimpse of Him is one thing; but to come into direct communion with Him, to enjoy His company and taste Divine Bliss is another. No one can set a limit to the various aspects of God which a Bhakta can realize. They rise ever higher and higher. A devotee: Bhagavan, why can some attain to realization more quickly than others? Ramakrishna: It depends upon the Samskaras or impressions of previous lives. Nothing happens suddenly or by accident. A certain man drank an ounce of wine in the morning and began to act like a drunkard. People, seeing him, wondered why he should be drunk after taking one small glass of wine. Hearing them, however, another man replied: “Because he has been drinking all night.” (The Gospel of Ramakrishna, 324)

We are twice armed if we fight with faith. (Plato)

May your soul be happy; journey joyfully.

(Rumi)

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