Freedom does not mean that right to do whatever we please, but rather to do as we ought. The right to do whatever we please reduces freedom to a physical power and forgets that freedom is a moral power.
Fulton J. SheenAll badness is spoiled goodness. A bad apple is a good apple that became rotten. Because evil has no capital of its own, it is a parasite that feeds on goodness.
Fulton J. SheenThere are ultimately only two possible adjustments to life; one is to suit our lives to principles; the other is to suit principles to our lives. If we do not live as we think, we soon begin to think as we live. The method of adjusting moral principles to the way men live is just a perversion of the order of things.
Fulton J. SheenOne becomes more interested in a job of work after the first impulse to drop it has been overcome.
Fulton J. SheenThe workmen in a factory may have a shadowy, unknown absentee "employer" - the thousands of individual owners of stock - whom "management" represents and tries to please by extra dividends. The workman's livelihood is at the disposition of strangers who make a single demand of their representatives: higher profits.
Fulton J. SheenScepticism is never certain of itself, being less a firm intellectual position than a pose to justify bad behavior.
Fulton J. SheenAtheism, nine times out of ten, is born from the womb of a bad conscience. Disbelief is born of sin, not of reason.
Fulton J. SheenEver since the days of Adam, man has been hiding from God and saying, 'God is hard to find.
Fulton J. SheenEducation lays hold of what is best in a person, but character lays hold of what is worse. It takes hold of a failing and by very skillful manipulation and training turns it into a perfection.
Fulton J. SheenPride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals.
Fulton J. SheenThe Christmas gift of peace was the uncoiling of the links of a triple chain that first unites a person with God, then with himself, then with his neighbor.
Fulton J. SheenIt takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished.
Fulton J. SheenIn vocal prayer we go to God on foot. In meditation we go to God on horseback. In contemplation we go to God in a jet.
Fulton J. SheenIf you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself. You have a duty to worship God, not because He will be imperfect and unhappy if you do not, but because you will be imperfect and unhappy.
Fulton J. SheenIf a man surrenders all power of self-determination in regard to the profits, management or ownership of the place where he works, he not only loses that special prerogative which marks him off from a cow in a pasture, but what is worse, he loses all capacity for determining any work. This is the beginning of a slavery which sometimes goes by the name of security.
Fulton J. SheenWhen a child is given to his parents, a crown is made for that child in Heaven, and woe to the parents who raise a child without consciousness of that eternal crown!
Fulton J. SheenThe simple shepherds heard the voice of an angel and found their Lamb; the wise men saw the light of a star and found their Wisdom.
Fulton J. SheenThe wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their consciences. The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.
Fulton J. SheenA Catholic may sin and sin as badly as anyone else, but no genuine Catholic ever denies he is a sinner. A Catholic wants his sins forgiven - not excused or sublimated.
Fulton J. SheenThe old liberal rebelled against taxation without responsibility, the new liberal wants the taxation as a handout without responsibility.
Fulton J. SheenBuddha wrote a code which he said would be useful to guide men in darkness, but he never claimed to be the Light of the world. Buddhism was born with a disgust for the world, when a prince's son deserted his wife and child, turning from the pleasures of existence to the problems of existence. Burnt by the fires of the world, and already weary with it, Buddha turned to ethics.
Fulton J. SheenLife is like a cash register, in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded.
Fulton J. SheenSkeptics always want miracles such as stepping down from the Cross, but never the greater miracle of forgiveness.
Fulton J. SheenThe world would hate His followers, not because of evil in their lives, but precisely because of the absence of evil or rather their goodness. Goodness does not cause hatred, but it gives occasion for hatred to manifest itself. The holier and purer a life, the more it would attract malignity and hate. Mediocrity alone survives.
Fulton J. SheenWhen we die to something, something comes alive within us. If we die to self, charity comes alive; if we die to pride, service comes alive; if we die to lust, reverence for personality comes alive; if we die to anger, love comes alive.
Fulton J. SheenOne function of the angels is illumination, and the other function is that of being a guardian.
Fulton J. SheenRemember that every science is based upon an abstraction. An abstraction is taking a point of view or looking at things under a certain aspect or from a particular angle.
Fulton J. SheenThe industrial and social injustice of our era is the tragic aftermath of democracy's overemphasis on freedom as the "right to do whatever you please." No, freedom means the right to do what you ought, and ought implies law, and law implies justice, and justice implies God. So too in war, a nation that fights for freedom divorced from justice has no right to war, because it does not know why it wants to be free, or why it wants anyone else to be free.
Fulton J. SheenUnless souls are saved, nothing is saved; there can be no world peace without soul peace.
Fulton J. SheenEach and every one of us, at the end of the journey of life, will come face to face with either one or the other of two faces... And one of them, either the merciful face of Christ or the miserable face of Satan, will say, "Mine, mine." May we be Christ's!
Fulton J. SheenNever will we be able to understand our times if we naively 'think' of this system of self Government as the work of a few gangsters or the creation of a pack of criminals we call a political party. The appeal of Socialism, Fascism and communism was principally negative; they were protests against a live and let live anything goes liberalism, a spineless indifference to causes, a failure to recognize that nothing was evil enough to hate, and nothing was good enough to die for.
Fulton J. Sheen