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The work of art is, after all, an act of faith in our ability to communicate symbolically.

— Ralph Ellison The Little Man at Chehaw Station (1978)

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Faith

More quotes by Ralph Ellison

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.

Three Days Before the Shooting (2010)

Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or a moaning dove.

Invisible Man (1952)

Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.

Three Days Before the Shooting (2010)

Words are everything and don't you forget it, ever.

Three Days Before the Shooting (2010)

The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

All Ralph Ellison quotes →

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Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson Letter to Peter Carr (1787)

I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them.

Colin Wilson Postscript to the Outsider (1967)

Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead. "Faith works by love."

Jonathan Edwards Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ralph Ellison (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.