“Why should we be sad? Why should we doubt? I shall write about this sadness and doubt at length one day, sternly and fiercely.”

Original: Kwiatków ma pełno w domu, i dzieciątek mu Bóg nasyła — czegóż on się smuci? dla czego wątpi? O tym smutku i zwątpieniu będę długo kiedyś pisał srogo i groźnie. — He treats habitual melancholy and doubt as states to be resisted rather than passively accepted. · Letter to his mother, 1 January 1845 (Polish)

• Courage
• Doubt
• Hope

“One certainty is better than a hundred doubts.”

Original: یک یقین بهتر از صد گمان است. — A compressed preference for arrived knowledge over hopeful speculation. · Fihi Ma Fihi (Persian)

• Certainty
• Doubt
• Faith

“Doubts are always pernicious, Especially when we Doubt our Friends.”

Suspicion, even when kindly meant, wounds the bond it claims to protect · Letter to Thomas Butts, 25 April 1803

• Doubt
• Friendship
• Trust

“The answer we give ourselves is never certainly anything other than the question itself.”

Original: La réponse que nous nous faisons n'est jamais assurément que la question elle-même. — Some answers merely restate the assumptions already contained within the questions that produced them. · Eupalinos ou l'Architecte (French)

• Doubt
• Philosophy
• Questions

“The handwriting on the wall may be a forgery.”

A warning against taking omens and official signs at face value · Flying Scrolls, collected in The Skylark and Other Poems

• Doubt
• Scepticism
• Truth

“There is a poverty of mind in always agreeing with oneself.”

Original: Il y a de la pauvreté d'esprit à être toujours d'accord avec soi-même. — Intellectual growth requires the willingness to question one's own conclusions. · Mauvaises pensées et autres (French)

• Doubt
• Intelligence
• Self Knowledge

“One knows only when one knows little; with knowledge, doubt increases.”

Original: Eigentlich weiß man nur, wenn man wenig weiß; mit dem Wissen wächst der Zweifel. — Greater knowledge brings awareness of complexity and the limits of certainty. · Maxims and Reflections (German)

• Doubt
• Knowledge
• Science

“There is no such thing as an air-tight reservoir of doctrinal finalities.”

Rejecting the idea that religious doctrines can be permanently sealed against questioning · Religious reflections quoted in the memoir

• Doubt
• Ideas
• Religion

“There is no rest for the Protestant until he gives up his legendary anthropology and all its dogmatic dependencies.”

A forceful challenge to inherited theological assumptions · Religious reflections quoted in the memoir

• Change
• Doubt
• Religion

“Faith did not require less exercise than any other living thing, and was not all the better for a shaking up now and then.”

Suggesting that healthy faith can survive and benefit from intellectual examination · Religious reflections quoted in the memoir

• Doubt
• Faith
• Growth

“I may doubt everything to-day if I will only do it civilly.”

Defending intellectual freedom while insisting that doubt need not become hostility · Religious reflections quoted in the memoir

• Doubt
• Religion
• Tolerance

“It is very consoling to me that you consider me a writer because every time I sit down with a pen in my hand I have to persuade myself and others of the fact.”

A revealing glimpse of Joyce’s self-doubt despite his growing reputation. · Letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver, 1920

• Doubt
• Self
• Writing

“Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.”

Confusion as the door rather than the wall · Widely attested saying

• Beginning
• Doubt
• Knowledge

“The little unexplained facts always contain enough to overturn all explanations of the great facts.”

Original: Les petits faits inexpliqués contiennent toujours de quoi renverser toutes les explications des grands faits. — Small anomalies can expose the weakness of grand theories and sweeping explanations. · Cahiers (French)

• Doubt
• Evidence
• Science

“We may discuss the gravest questions over our morning coffee-cups, or over our evening teacups.”

Making serious intellectual inquiry part of ordinary civil conversation · Religious reflections quoted in the memoir

• Conversation
• Doubt
• Religion

“Perhaps I'm not (metrically speaking at any rate) a poet.”

Self-doubt after reviewers said his verse would have been better as prose · Letter to Maurice Browne, after criticism of Cophetua

• Criticism
• Doubt
• Poets

“I lived doubtful, not dissolute; I die unresolved, not unresigned. Ignorance and error are incident to human nature. I trust in an Almighty and All-good God.”

A courtier's last accounting of faith, doubt, and the limits of human knowledge · Self-composed epitaph, directed in his will

• Doubt
• Faith
• Mortality

“I, too, have endeavoured to find some test by which I might determine the exact amount of poetry existing in any given number of words, as a chemist determines the quantity of salt in so many drops of sea-water.”

An admission that the nature of poetry resists any exact measure · Letter to Richard Henry Stoddard, 21 May 1852

• Definition
• Doubt
• Poetry