The history of the world suggests that without love of God there is little likelihood of a love for man that does not become corrupt.
Francois FenelonDo not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.
Francois FenelonMankind, by the perverse depravity of their nature, esteem that which they have most desired as of no value the moment it is possessed, and torment themselves with fruitless wishes for that which is beyond their reach.
Francois FenelonYou 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.
Francois FenelonBefore putting yourself in peril, it is necessary to foresee and fear it; but when one is there, nothing remains but to despise it.
Francois FenelonTo be faithful in prayer it is indispensable that we arrange all the activities of the day with a regularity that nothing can disturb
Francois FenelonCommit 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?
Francois FenelonTrouble and perplexity drive me to prayer, and prayer drives away perplexity and trouble.
Francois FenelonAbove all, live in the present moment and God will give you all the grace you need.
Francois FenelonOn this earth all is temptation. Crosses tempt us by irritating our pride, and prosperity by flattering it. Our life is a continual combat, but one in which Jesus Christ fights for us. We must pass on unmoved, while temptations rage around us, as the traveler, overtaken by a storm, simply wraps his cloak more closely about him, and pushes on more vigorously toward his destined home.
Francois FenelonExactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.
Francois FenelonIt is this unquiet self-love that renders us so sensitive. The sick man, who sleeps ill, thinks the night long. We exaggerate, from cowardice, all the evils which we encounter; they are great, but our sensibility increases them. The true way to bear them is to yield ourselves up with confidence to God.
Francois FenelonCrosses are of no use to us but inasmuch as we yield ourselves up to them and forget ourselves.
Francois FenelonTo just read the Bible, attend church, and avoid “big” sins-is this passionate, wholehearted love for God?
Francois FenelonWe must avoid fastidiousness; neatness, when it is moderate, is a virtue; but when it is carried to an extreme, it narrows the mind.
Francois FenelonThere are some people who think that they should be always mourning, that they should put a continual constraint upon themselves, and feel a disgust for those amusements to which they are obliged to submit. For my own part, I confess that I know not how to conform myself to these rigid notions. I prefer something more simple, which I also think would be more pleasing to God.
Francois FenelonNothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.
Francois FenelonWhen you come to be sensibly touched, the scales will fall from your eyes; and by the penetrating eyes of love you will discern that which your other eyes will never see.
Francois FenelonThat love of self, which the world advocates, is a thousand times more dangerous than any poison.
Francois FenelonI had often heard Mentor say, that the voluptuous were never brave, and I now found by experience that it was true; for the Cyprians whose jollity had been so extravagant and tumultuous, now sunk under a sense of their danger and wept like women. I heard nothing but the screams of terror and the wailings of hopeless distress. Some lamented the loss of pleasures that were never to return; but none had presence of mind either to undertake or direct the navigation of the menaced vessel.
Francois FenelonGod 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.
Francois FenelonSimplicity brings back the joys of Paradise. Not that we have pure pleasure without a moment's suffering, but when we are surrendered to God, we are not grasping for pleasure, and even our troubles are received with thanksgiving. This inner harmony, and this deliverance from fear and the tormenting desires of self, create a satisfaction in the soul which is above all the intoxicating joys of this world put together.
Francois FenelonBe content with doing calmly the little which depends upon yourself, and let all else be to you as if it were not.
Francois FenelonHow dangerous it is for our salvation, how unworthy of God and of ourselves, how pernicious even for the peace of our hearts, to want always to stay where we are! Our whole life was only given us to advance us by great strides toward our heavenly country.
Francois FenelonOf all the duties enjoined by Christianity none is more essential and yet more neglected than prayer.
Francois FenelonTrue piety hath in it nothing weak, nothing sad, nothing constrained. It enlarges the heart; it is simple, free, and attractive.
Francois FenelonNever 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.
Francois FenelonThe past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.
Francois FenelonIt is only by fidelity in little things that the grace of true love to God can be sustained, and distinguished from a passing fervor of spirit. . . . No one can well believe that our piety is sincere, when our behavior is lax and irregular in its little details. What probability is there that we should not hesitate to make the greatest sacrifices, when we shrink from the smallest?
Francois FenelonThere 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.
Francois FenelonThe 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.
Francois FenelonHow does our will become sanctified? By conforming itself unreservedly to that of God.
Francois Fenelon