See Also: GOVERNMENT, MORALITY, POLITICS, RELIGION

1. Belief is as necessary to the soul as pleasures are necessary to the body —Elsa Schiaparelli
2. Belief, light as a drum rattle, touches us —A. R. Ammons
3. Communism is like Prohibition, it’s a good idea but it won’t work —Will Rogers
4. Conservatives, like embalmers, would keep intact the forms from which the vital principle has fled —John Lancaster Spalding
5. Convictions … the deeper you went the filmier the convictions got, until they were like an underwater picture, shifting, dreamy, out of focus —Wilfrid Sheed
6. Facism would sprout to life like a flower through a coffin’s cracks, watered by the excreta of the dead —Dylan Thomas
7. Faith is like a lily lifted high and white —Christina Georgina Rossetti
8. Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope —Herman Melville
9. Faith … stronger than a bank vault —Jimmy Breslin
10. His religious ethics fell like drowned fences —Graham Masterson
11. Ideals are like comets, revisit the earth periodically after long cycles of years —always excepting the enormous ideas that so many sublime donkeys envision of themselves —Punch, 1850
12. Ideals are like the stars: we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course by them —Carl Schurz speech, Faneuil Hall, Boston, April 18, 1859
13. (He was fast in the clutches of his theory). It seemed to guide him like some superior being seated at the helm of his intelligence —Edith Wharton
14. (Fanatics is a pain). It’s like talking to a rock trying to talk to a fanatic —Robert Campbell
15. Living up to ideals is like doing everyday work with your Sunday clothes on —Ed Howe
16. Love of country is like love of woman ... he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good —Felix Adler
17. A man’s ideal, like his horizon, is constantly receding from him as he advances toward it —W.G.T. Shedd
18. (Like many another big boss,) nationalism is largely bogus … like a bunch of flowers made out of plastics —J. B. Priestly
19. One by one, like leaves from a tree, all my faiths have forsaken me —Sara Teasdale
20. Our dogmas have been greatly enlarged to make them fit in with all sorts of necessities, so that they are like a patched coat, well-worn, and comfortable to wear. Our religion is as variegated as a Harlequin’s dress —Anatole France
21. Patriotism is a kind of religion: it is the egg from which wars are hatched —Guy de Maupassant
22. Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone and irrational as a headless man —Ambrose Bierce
23. (I think) patriotism is like charity —it begins at home —Henry James
24. Principles are like mountains; they rise very near heaven, but when they stand in our way, we drive a tunnel through them —Cardinal Rampolla
25. Skepticism [in preference to superstition] … it seems to be like a choice between lunacy and idiocy, -death by fire-or by water —Henry James, letter to Thomas Sergeant Perry, November 1, 1863
26. The theory towered up … like some high landmark by which travelers shape their course —Edith Wharton
27. We naturally lose illusions as we get older, like teeth —Sydney Smith
28. A wise conviction is like light —Sir Arthur Helps