Herman Melville Quotes

I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer.

Faith is Doubt.

I was a terrible believer in things,but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn't know where to put my faith,or if there was such a place,or even what the word faith meant, in all of it's complexity. Everything seemed to be possibly potent and possibly fake.

Skepticism is like a microscope whose magnification is constantly increased: the sharp image that one begins with finally dissolves, because it is not possible to see ultimate things: their existence is only to be inferred.

I have a confession: I have no faith.

Not believing has a sickness which is believing a little.

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.

Why dispute what we shall be, when we know not even what we are.

Doubting pleases me no less than knowing

It's so hard to believe in anything anymore, you know what I mean? It's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, 'cause it seems so mythological, and seems so arbitrary; and then on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

Throughout the long period of religious doubt, I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradual loss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my surprise that I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject.

He has done things that caused me to doubt His wisdom, but never His existence.

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.

I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it.

What is truth? I don't know and I'm sorry I brought it up.

To philosophize is to doubt.

Another error is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients; the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation; if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

I'm probably 20 percent atheist and 80 percent agnostic. I don't think anyone really knows. You'll either find out or not when you get there, until then there's no point thinking about it.

how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any lifted from the no of all nothing human merely being doubt unimaginable You?

Question boldly even the existence of God.

Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom.

With knowledge comes more doubt.

Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions.

To know much is often the cause of doubting more.

Perhaps . . . our lot on the earth is to seek and to search. Now and again we find just enough to enable us to carry on. I now doubt that any of us will completely find and be found in this life.