When you doubt, abstain. [ Zoroaster ]
A guide to those in doubt.
To philosophize is to doubt. [ Montaigne ]
Doubt is the shadow of truth. [ Bailey ]
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt, I love. [ William Shakespeare ]
Reason for questioning or doubt.
Doubt is the vestibule of faith. [ Colton ]
Doubt is hell in the human soul. [ Mme. de Gasparin ]
Misgive that you may not mistake. [ Whately ]
Doubt is the accomplice of tyranny. [ Amiel ]
To doubt is to dip love in the mire. [ J. M. Barrie ]
Happiest they of human race,
To whom God has granted grace
To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch and force the way;
And better had they ne'er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn. [ Scott ]
And better had they never been born.
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn. [ Scott ]
God on our side, doubt not of victory. [ William Shakespeare ]
Human knowledge is the parent of doubt. [ Greville ]
For when disputes are wearied out,
'Tis interest still resolves the doubt. [ Butler ]
Man is not made to question, but adore. [ Young ]
Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt,
And every grin, so merry, draws one out. [ Dr. John Wolcott ]
When in doubt, lean to the side of mercy. [ Cervantes ]
Who shall decide when doctors disagree,
And sound casuists doubt like you and me? [ Pope ]
Uncertain ways unsafest are.
And doubt a greater mischief than despair. [ Sir John Denham ]
Doubting charms me not less than knowledge. [ Dante ]
Doubt indulged soon becomes doubt realized. [ F. R. Havergal ]
Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win.
By fearing to attempt. [ William Shakespeare ]
To be once in doubt is once to be resolved. [ William Shakespeare ]
Many with trust, with doubt few, are undone. [ Greville ]
I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt,
If one be better with them or without -
Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed,
Knows the high art of what and how to read. [ J. G. Saxe ]
Attempt the end and never stand to doubt;
Nothing so hard but search will find it out. [ Herrick ]
Our distrust justifies the deceit of others. [ Rochefoucauld ]
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so. [ Pope ]
To seek to know is to seek occasion to doubt. [ French ]
Dreadful is their doom, whom doubt has driven
To censure fate, and pious hope forego. [ Beattie ]
Who never doubted never half believed,
Where doubt, there truth is - 'tis her shadow. [ Bailey ]
I love sometimes to doubt, as well as to know. [ Dante ]
I run the gauntlet of a file of doubts,
Each one of which down hurls me to the ground. [ Bailey ]
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. [ William Shakespeare ]
How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise! [ Homer ]
Who swerves from innocence, who makes divorce
Of that serene companion - a good name.
Recovers not his loss; but walks with shame,
With doubt, with fear, and haply with remorse. [ Wordsworth ]
To believe with certainty we must begin to doubt. [ Stanislaus ]
Doubt follows white-winged Hope with a limping gait. [ Balzac ]
Doubt follows white-winged hope with trembling steps. [ Balzac ]
Every body drags its shadow, and every mind its doubt. [ Victor Hugo ]
Never do an act of which you doubt the justice or propriety. [ Latin ]
No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you. [ Job, in Bible ]
Oh, let us fill our hearts up with the glory of the day
And banish every doubt and care and sorrow far away!
For the world is full of roses and the roses full of dew,
And the dew is full of heavenly love that drips for me and you.
[ James Whitcomb Riley ]
The desire of happiness, beyond all doubt, is a natural desire. [ Henry van Dyke, Joy and Power ]
Doubt springs from the mind; faith is the daughter of the soul. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
Doubt comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the door. [ Prof. Jowett ]
Who knows most, doubts most; entertaining hope means recognizing fear. [ Browning ]
Only Zweifel (doubt) rhymes to Teufel (devil); here am I quite at home. [ The Sceptic in Faust. ]
Galileo called doubt the father of invention; it is certainly the pioneer. [ Bovee ]
We know accurately only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases. [ Goethe ]
There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
A bitter and perplexed What shall I do?
is worse to man than worse necessity. [ Coleridge ]
Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe. [ Thoreau ]
There is no weariness like that which rises from doubting. It is unfixed reason. [ South ]
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. [ Carlyle ]
The possession of great powers no doubt carries with it a contempt for mere external show. [ James A. Garfield ]
Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps doubt in reserve. [ Froude ]
He that makes a question where there is no doubt, must take an answer where there is no reason. [ Proverb ]
Philosophy, when superficially studied, excites doubt: when thoroughly explored, it dispels it. [ Bacon ]
Servile doubt argues an impotence of mind, that says we fear because we dare not meet misfortunes. [ Aaron Hill ]
There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it. [ Simms ]
The dark grave, which knows all secrets, can alone reclaim the fatal doubt once cast on a woman's name. [ George Herbert ]
To do good needs no consideration; it is doubt that makes good evil. Don't reflect; do good as you feel. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Those only who know little, can be said to know anything. The greater the knowledge the greater the doubt. [ Goethe ]
To doubt is worse than to have lost; and to despair is but to antedate those miseries that must fall on us. [ Massinger ]
Doubt insinuates itself into a soul that is dreaming; faith comes down into one that struggles and suffers.
We tolerate everybody, because we doubt everything; or else we tolerate nobody, because we believe something. [ Mrs. E. B. Browning ]
Jealousy lives upon doubt, and comes to an end or becomes a fury as soon as it passes from doubt to certainty. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself. [ Izaak Walton ]
I have seen young ladies of twenty-five affecting a childish ingenuousness which has made me doubt their virtue.
Weary the path that does not challenge reason. Doubt is an incentive to truth, and patient inquiry leadeth the way. [ Hosea Ballou ]
I doubt whether the ferocity of the battlefield is as merciless as is the remorseless onslaught of unscrupulous passion. [ Julia Ward Howe ]
The statements of atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material. [ Pascal ]
Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt, be in religion, what we priests term it, the greatest of sins? [ Bovee ]
To nil married men be this caution, which they should duly tender as their life: Neither to doat too much, nor doubt a wife. [ Massinger ]
When a woman pronounces the name of a man but twice a day, there may be some doubt as to the nature of her sentiments; but three times! [ Balzac ]
That the women of the Old Testament were dressed with oriental richness there is no doubt, nor are they censured for so arraying themselves. [ Charlotte M. Yonge ]
Of what is man certain? What lasts? What passes? What is chimerical? What is real? . . . Every body drags its shadow, and every mind its doubt. [ Victor Hugo ]
To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair. [ Pascal ]
In contemplation, if a man begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. [ Bacon ]
To doubt is an injury; to suspect a friend is breach of friendship; jealousy is a seed sown but in vicious minds: prone to distrust, because apt to deceive. [ Lord Lansdowne ]
When I see the elaborate study and ingenuity displayed by woman in the pursuit of trifles, I feel no doubt of their capacity for the most herculean undertakings. [ Julia Ward Howe ]
Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt (called by Galileo the father of invention), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins? [ Bovee ]
In the minds of most men, the kingdom of opinion is divided into three territories - the territory of yes, the territory of no, and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt. [ James A. Garfield ]
When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge, love simple ones as you would native roses on your cheek. [ J. C. Hare ]
They fix attention, heedless of your pain, With oaths like rivets forced into the brain; And e'en when sober truth prevails throughout, They swear it, till affirmance breeds a doubt. [ Cowper ]
Whenever I am in doubt about a sentence I read it aloud to see how it sounds, and indeed, always read the whole book through aloud, sometimes more than once, before it goes to the press. [ Ada Ellen Bayly, a.k.a. Edna Lyall, English novelist and early feminist, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
Doubt is not itself a crime. All manner of doubt, inquiry about all manner of objects, dwells in every reasonable mind. It is the mystic working of the mind on the object it is getting to know about. [ Carlyle ]
Nearly all our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and misery; the plurality in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands. [ John Ruskin ]
Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant, accommodates itself to the meanest capacities, silences the loud and clamorous, and brings over the most obstinate and inflexible. [ Addison ]
No doubt every person is entitled to make and to think as much of himself as possible, only he ought not to worry others about this, for they have enough to do with and in themselves, if they too are to be of some account, both now and hereafter. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
In Athens the ladies were not gaudily but simply arrayed, and we doubt whether any ladies ever excited more admiration. So also the noble old Roman matrons, whose superb forms were gazed on delightedly by men worthy of them, were always very plainly dressed. [ George D. Prentice ]