Francois Fenelon
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.Collection: Men
Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.Collection: Sad
Genuine good taste consists in saying much in few words, in choosing among our thoughts, in having order and arrangement in what we say, and in speaking with composure.Collection: Communication
Had we not faults of our own, we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.
All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.
There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.
Little opportunities should be improved.
Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.
If we were faultless we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate.
A good historian is timeless; although he is a patriot, he will never flatter his country in any respect.
Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies.
Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.
No more restless uncertainties, no more anxious desires, no more impatience at the place we are in; for it is God who has placed us there, and who holds us in his arms. Can we be unsafe where he has placed us?Collection: Desire
It is not the multitude of hard duties, it is not the constraint and contention that advance us in our Christian course. On the contrary, it is the yielding of our wills without restriction and without choice to tread cheerfully every day in the path in which Providence leads us. It is to seek nothing, to be discouraged by nothing, to see our duty in the present moment, and to trust all else without reserve to the will and power of God.Collection: Christian
The wind of God is always blowing... but you must hoist your sail.Collection: Wind
How can you expect God to speak in that gentle and inward voice which melts the soul, when you are making so much noise with your rapid reflections? Be silent and God will speak again.Collection: God
You can often help others more by correcting your own faults than theirs. Remember, and you should, because of your own experience, that allowing God to correct your faults is not easy. Be patient with people, wait for God to work with them as He wills.Collection: Helping Others
Make this simple rule the guide of your life: to have no will but God's.Collection: Simple
People who have no secrets from each other never want for a subject of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back, neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of their heart, without consideration they say just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God.Collection: Blessed
Let gratitude for the past inspire us with trust for the future.Collection: Gratitude
The more you say, the less people remember.Collection: Inspirational
There is nothing that is more dangerous to your own salvation, more unworthy of God and more harmful to your own happiness, than that you should be content to remain as you are.Collection: Salvation
Commit yourself then to God! He will be your guide. He Himself will travel with you, as we are told He did with the Israelites, to bring them step by step across the desert to the promised land. Ah! what will be your blessedness, if you will but surrender yourself into the hands of God, permitting Him to do whatever He will, not according to your desires, but according to His own good pleasure?Collection: Trust
The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of other people.Collection: People
God never ceases to speak to us, but the noise of the world without and the tumult of our passions within bewilder us and prevent us from listening to himCollection: Prayer
A general rule for the good use of time is to accustom oneself to live in a continual dependence on the Spirit of God.Collection: Use
God bears with imperfect beings even when they resist His goodness. We ought to imitate this merciful patience and endurance. It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of other people.Collection: Knowledge
Carefully purify your conscience from daily faults; suffer no sin to dwell in your heart; small as it may seem, it obscures the light of grace, weighs down the soul, and hinders that constant communion with Jesus Christ which it should be your pleasure to cultivate.Collection: Jesus
Most people I ask little from. I try to give them much, and expect nothing in return and I do very well in the bargain.Collection: Funny
The most essential point is lowliness.Collection: Humility
Pure love is in the will alone; it is no sentimental love, for the imagination has no part in it; it loves, if we may so express it, without feeling, as faith believes without seeing.Collection: Believe
So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others.Collection: Thinking
We may be sure that it is the love of God only that can make us come out of self. If His powerful hand did not sustain us, we should not know how to take the first step in that direction.Collection: Powerful
The greatest of all crosses is self. If we die in part every day, we shall have but little to do on the last. These little daily deaths will destroy the power of the final dying.Collection: Self
Faith is letting down our nets into the transparent deeps at the Divine command, not knowing what we shall draw.Collection: Command Not
Above all, live in the present moment and God will give you all the grace you need.Collection: Giving
True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then is to desire -- but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays.Collection: Prayer
Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.Collection: Self
Let us pray God that He would root out of our hearts every thing of our own planting, and set out there, with His own hands, the tree of life, bearing all manner of fruits.Collection: Heart
Time spent in prayer is never wasted.Collection: Time
God is so good that He only awaits our desire to overwhelm us with the gift of himself.Collection: Desire
How different the peace of God from that of the world! It calms the passions, preserves the purity of the conscience, is inseparable from righteousness, unites us to God and strengthens us against temptations. The peace of the soul consists in an absolute resignation to the will of God.Collection: Peace
God is our true Friend, who always gives us the counsel and comfort we need. Our danger lies in resisting Him; so it is essential that we acquire the habit of hearkening to His voice, or keeping silence within, and listening so as to lose nothing of what He says to us.Collection: True Friend
That love of self, which the world advocates, is a thousand times more dangerous than any poison.Collection: Self
How rare it is to find a soul quiet enough to hear God speak.Collection: Humility
Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self-love.Collection: Love
Simplicity is that grace which frees the soul from all unnecessary reflections upon itself.Collection: Reflection
Be content with doing calmly the little which depends upon yourself, and let all else be to you as if it were not.Collection: Littles
Never let us be discouraged with ourselves. It is not when we are conscious of our faults that we are the most wicked; on the contrary, we are less so. We see by a brighter light; and let us remember for our consolation, that we never perceive our sins till we begin to cure them.Collection: Christian
It is when God appears to have abandoned us that we must abandon ourselves most wholly to God.Collection: Abandoned