Saint Francis de Sales
Truly it is a blessed thing to love on earth as we hope to love in Heaven, and to begin that friendship here which is to endure for ever there.Collection: Blessed
We shall steer safely through every storm, so long as our heart is right, our intention fervent, our courage steadfast, and our trust fixed on God. If at times we are somewhat stunned by the tempest, never fear. Let us take breath, and go on afresh.Collection: Trust
For every great temptation there will be many small ones. Wolves and bears are more dangerous than flies, but we are bothered most by flies.Collection: Temptation
The Prayer of the sick person is his patience and his acceptance of his sickness for the love of Jesus Christ. Make sickness itself a prayer, for there is none more powerful, save martyrdom!Collection: Jesus
The enemy often tries to make us attempt and start many projects so that we will be overwhelmed with too many tasks, and therefore achieve nothing and leave everything unfinished. Sometimes he even suggests the wish to undertake some excellent work that he foresees we will never accomplish. This is to distract us from the prosecution of some less excellent work that we would have easily completed. He does not care how many plans and beginnings we make, provided nothing is finished.Collection: Excellent Work
Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. I mean do not be disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage. How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbour's faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own? He who is fretted by his own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm and peaceful mind.Collection: Courage
Have patience to walk with short steps until you have wings to fly.Collection: Wings
God is present everywhere, and every person is His work.Collection: Workmen
We may be excused for not always being bright, but we are not excused for not being gracious, yielding and considerate.Collection: Saint
It is to those who have the most need of us that we ought to show our love more especially.Collection: Saint
We have freedom to do good or evil; yet to make choice of evil, is not to use, but to abuse our freedom.Collection: Evil
We do not very often come across opportunities for exercising strength, magnanimity, or magnificence; but gentleness, temperance, modesty, and humility, are graces which ought to colour everything we do. There may be virtues of a more exalted mould, but... these are the most continually called for in daily life.Collection: Humility
One rarely does well what one rarely does.Collection: Doe
Be not miserable about what may happen tomorrow. The same everlasting Father, who cares for you today, will care for you tomorrow.Collection: Father
A heart-memory is better than a mere head-memory. Better to carry away a little of the love of Christ in our souls, than if we were able to repeat every word of every sermon we ever heard.Collection: Memories
You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.Collection: Love
The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes away saying, not "What a lovely sermon!" but "I will do something."Collection: Inspirational
Don't get upset with your imperfections. Surrender to the Power of God's Love, which is greater than our weakness.Collection: Imperfection
The Lord delights in every little step you take.Collection: Delight
To lose ourselves in God is simply to give up our own will to Him. When a soul can truly say Lord I have no other will than Thine it is truly lost in God and united to Him.Collection: Giving Up
When you have received Him, stir up your heart to do Him homage; speak to Him about your spiritual life, gazing upon Him in your soul where He is present for your happiness; welcome Him as warmly as possible, and behave outwardly in such a way that your actions may give proof to all of His Presence.Collection: Spiritual
Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.Collection: Inspiration
Humor is the foundation of reconciliation.Collection: Foundation
You can attract more bees with a spoonful of sugar than a cupful of vinegar.Collection: Kindness
The greatest method of praying is to pray the Rosary.Collection: Catholic
Fear is a greater evil than evil itself.Collection: Fear
The merit of the cross does not consist in its heaviness, but in the manner in which we carry it. I would even say that it is sometimes more virtuous to carry a cross of straw than a heavy cross because we have to be more attentive for fear of losing it.Collection: Doe
Make yourself familiar with the angels and behold them frequently in spirit; for without being seen, they are present with you.Collection: Losing A Loved One
It matters little how one begins, provided that he be resolved to go on well, and to end well.Collection: Goes On
Cook the truth in charity until it tastes sweet.Collection: Sweet
Oh what remorse we shall feel at the end of our lives, when we look back upon the great number of instructions and examples afforded by God and the Saints for our perfection, and so carelessly received by us! If this end were to come to you today, how would you be pleased with the life you have led this year?Collection: Years
The state of marriage is one that requires more virtue and constancy than any other; it is a perpetual exercise in mortification.Collection: Exercise
If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently... And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.Collection: Heart
He who complains, sins.Collection: Complaining
Consider the pains which martyrs have endured, and think how even now many people are bearing afflictions beyond all measure greater than yours, and say, "Of a truth my trouble is comfort, my torments are but roses as compared to those whose life is a continual death, without solace, or aid or consolation, borne down with a weight of grief tenfold greater than mine."Collection: Religious
God requires a faithful fulfillment of the merest trifle given us to do, rather than the most ardent aspiration to things to which we are not called.Collection: Time
Faith fills a man with love for the beauty of its truth, with faith in the truth of its beautyCollection: Faith
Lately I was near the beehives and some of the bees flew onto my face. I wanted to raise my hand, and brush them off. 'No,' said a peasant to me, 'do not be afraid, and do not touch them. They will not sting you at all, if you touch them they will bite you.' I trusted him; not one bit me. Trust me; do not fear these temptations. Do not touch them; they will not hurt you.Collection: Hurt
Many great persons have been of opinion that love is no other thing than complacency itself, in which they have had much appearance of reason. For not only does the movement of love take its origin from the complacency which the heart feels at the first approach of good, and find its end in a second complacency which returns to the heart by union with the thing beloved--but further, it depends for its preservation on this complacency, and can only subsist through it as through its mother and nurse; so that as soon as the complacency ceases, love ceases.Collection: Love
Let us be what God likes, so long as we are His, and let us not be what we want to be, if it is against his intention.Collection: Long
Do not be ashamed of being poor, or of asking alms. Receive what is given you with humility, and accept a refusal meekly. Frequently call to mind Our Lady's journey into Egypt with her Holy Child, and of all the poverty, contempt and suffering they endured. If you follow their example you will indeed be rich amid your poverty.Collection: Children
When the bee has gathered the dew of heaven and the earth's sweetest nectar from the flowers, it turns it into honey, then hastens to its hive. In the same way, the priest, having taken from the altar the Son of God (who is as the dew from heaven, and true son of Mary, flower of our humanity), gives him to you as delicious food.Collection: Flower
People can pass thirty nights in dancing and no one complains about it, but if they watch through a single Christmas night they cough and claim their stomach is upset the next morning. Does anyone fail to see that the world is an unjust judge, gracious and well disposed to its own children but harsh and rigorous towards the children of God?Collection: Morning
True virtue has no limits, but goes on and on, and especially holy charity, which is the virtue of virtues, and which having a definite object, would become infinite if it could meet with a heart capable of infinity.Collection: Heart
And when children begin to use their reason, fathers and mothers should take great pains to fill their hearts with the fear of God. This the good Queen Blanche did most earnestly by St. Louis, her son: witness her oft-repeated words, "My son, I would sooner see you die than guilty of a mortal sin;" words which sank so deeply into the saintly monarch's heart, that he himself said there was no day on which they did not recur to his mind, and strengthen him in treading God's ways.Collection: Mother
Those who love to be feared fear to be loved, and they themselves are more afraid than anyone, for whereas other men fear only them, they fear everyone.Collection: Love
The damned are in the abyss of Hell, as within a woeful city, where they suffer unspeakable torments, in all their senses and members, because as they have employed all their senses and their members in sinning, so shall they suffer in each of them the punishment due to sin.Collection: Punishment
I recommend to you holy simplicity.Collection: Simple
Provided that God be glorified, we must not care by whom.Collection: Humility