Francois Fenelon Quotations

If we were faultless we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate.

Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies

Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.

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.

All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.

Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.

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.

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.

Had we not faults of our own, we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.

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

A good historian is timeless; although he is a patriot, he will never flatter his country in any respect.

If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe, were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all

In the light of eternity we shall see that what we desired would have been fatal to us, and that what we would have avoided was essential to our well-being.

To just read the Bible, attend church, and avoid “big” sins-is this passionate, wholehearted love for God?

How does our will become sanctified? By conforming itself unreservedly to that of God.

The youth who, like a woman, loves to adorn his person, has renounced all claim to wisdom and to glory; glory is due to those only who dare to associate with pain, and have trampled pleasure under their feet.

Speak, move, act in peace, as if you were in prayer. In truth, this is prayer.

The greater our dread of crosses, the more necessary they are for us.

Crosses are of no use to us but inasmuch as we yield ourselves up to them and forget ourselves.

There is no real elevation of mind in a contempt of little things; it is, on the contrary, from too narrow views that we consider those things of little importance which have in fact such extensive consequences.

God has not chosen to save us without crosses; as He has not seen fit to create men at once in the full vigor of manhood, but has suffered them to grow up by degrees amid all the perils and weaknesses of youth.

Let us often think of our own infirmities, and we shall become indulgent toward those of others.

Time is given us that we may take care for eternity; and eternity will not be too long to regret the loss of our time if we have misspent it.

God, who is liberal in all his other gifts, shows us, by the wise economy of His providence, how circumspect we ought to be in the management of our time, for He never gives us two moments together.

On 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.

Good taste rejects excessive nicety.

I would have no desire other than to accomplish thy will. Teach me to pray; pray thyself in me.

It is better to die than to tell a lie

Before putting yourself in peril, it is necessary to foresee and fear it; but when one is there, nothing remains but to despise it.

Nothing is more false and more indiscreet than always to want to choose what mortifies us in everything. By this rule a person would soon ruin his health, his business, his reputation, his relations with his relatives and friends, in fact every good work which Providence gives him.

The gifts of God are not to be rejected on account of the channel that brings them.

The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of other people.

Make this simple rule the guide of your life: to have no will but God's.

I no longer desire anything but to be Thine.

How 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.

I 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.

Frequently a big advantage can be gained by knowing how to give in at the right moment.

Courage is a virtue only so far as it is directed by prudence.

The art of cookery is the art of poisoning mankind, by rendering the appetite still importunate, when the wants of nature are supplied.

Were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be.

Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul.

Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self-love.

Simplicity 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.

Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.

The blood of a nation ought never to be shed except for its own preservation in the utmost extremity.

When we are truly in this interior simplicity our whole appearance is franker, more natural. This true simplicity. . . makes us conscious of a certain openness, gentleness, innocence, gaiety, and serenity. O, how amiable this simplicity is! Who will give it to me? I leave all for this. It is the pearl of the Gospel.

There is no more dangerous illusion than the fancies by which people try to avoid illusion.

The realization of God's presence is the one sovereign remedy against temptation.

Wine is the source of the greatest evils among communities. It causes diseases, quarrels, seditions, idleness, aversion to labor, and family disorders. . . . It is a species of poison that causes madness. It does not make a man die, but it degrades him into a brute. Men may preserve their health and vigor without wine; with wine they run the risk of ruining their health and losing their morals.

Let me follow in Thy footsteps, O Jesus ! I would imitate Thee, but cannot without the aid of Thy grace! O humble and lowly Saviour, grant me the knowledge of the true Christian, and that I may willingly despise myself; let me learn the lesson so incomprehensible to the mind of man, that I must die to myself by an abandonment that shall produce true humility.

As a general rule, those truths which we highly relish, and which shed a degree of practical light upon the things which we are required to give up for God, are leadings of Divine grace, which we should follow without hesitation.

The kingdom of God which is within us consists in our willing whatever God wills, always, in every thing, and without reservation; and thus His kingdom comes; for His will is then done as it is in heaven, since we will nothing but what is dictated by His sovereign pleasure.

A cross borne in simplicity, without the interference of self-love to augment it, is only half a cross. Suffering in this simplicity of love, we are not only happy in spile of the cross, but because of it; for love is pleased in suffering for the Well Beloved, and the cross which forms us into His image is a consoling bond of love.

This is the love that does all things; that brings to pass even the evils we suffer; so shaping them that they are but instruments of preparing the good which, as yet, has not arrived.

Thou lovest like an infinite God when Thou lovest; Thou movest heaven and earth to save Thy loved ones. Thou becomest man, a babe, the vilest of men, covered with reproaches, dying with infamy and under the pangs of the cross; all this is not too much for an infinite love.

Let us endeavor to commence every enterprise with a pure view to the glory of God, continue it without distraction, and finish it without impatience.

When tempted, the shortest and surest way is to act like a little child at the breast; when we show it a frightful monster, it shrinks back and buries its face in its mother's bosom, that it may no longer behold it.

Blessed are the poor in spirit." Blessed are they who are stripped of every thing, even of their own wills, that they may no longer belong to themselves.

God would behold in you a simplicity which will contain so much the more of His wisdom as it contains less of your own.

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.

Avoid all refined speculations; confine yourself to simple reflections, and recur to them frequently. Those who pass too rapidly from one truth to another feed their curiosity and restlessness; they even distract their intellect with too great a multiplicity of views. Give every truth time to send down deep root into the heart.

To pray is to desire; but it is to desire what God would have us desire.

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.

How desirable is this simplicity! Who will give it to me? I will quit all else; it is the pearl of great price.

As long as anything in this world means anything to you, your freedom is only a word. You are like a bird that is held by a leash; you can only fly so far.

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.

It is often our own imperfection which makes us reprove the imperfection of others; a sharp-sighted self-love of others

All wars are civil ones; for it is still man spilling his own blood, tearing out his own bowels.

The 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.

Accustom yourself gradually to carry Prayer into all your daily occupation - speak, act, work in peace, as if you were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be.

Little opportunities should be improved.

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading I would spurn them all.

Even if no command to pray had existed, our very weakness would have suggested it.

The smallest things become great when God requires them of us; they are small only in themselves; they are always great when they are done for God.

Mankind, 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.

Simplicity is that grace which frees the soul from all unnecessary reflections upon itself.

Should we feel at times disheartened and discouraged, a simple movement of heart toward God will renew our powers. Whatever he may demand of us, he will give us at the moment the strength and courage that we need.

Speak, move, act in peace...

God felt, God tasted and enjoyed is indeed God, but God with those gifts which flatter the soul, God in darkness, in privation, in forsakenness, in sensibility, is so much God, that he is so to speak God bare and alone. Shall we fear this death, which is to produce in us the true divine life of grace?

Listen less to your own thoughts and more to God's thoughts.

It 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?

Trouble and perplexity drive me to prayer, and prayer drives away perplexity and trouble.

You really don't even own the present moment, for even this belongs to God.

I would have every minister of the gospel address his audience with the zeal of a friend, with the generous energy of a father, and with the exuberant affection of a mother.

To be faithful in prayer it is indispensable that we arrange all the activities of the day with a regularity that nothing can disturb

There were some who said that a man at the point of death was more free than all others, because death breaks every bond, and over the dead the united world has no power.

Oh! how seldom the soul is silent, in order that God may speak.

Our piety must be weak and imperfect if it do not conquer our fear of death.

If we were faultless, we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that we have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our neighbor's weaknesses, we should show our own imperfection, and this alarms our vanity.

The passion of acquiring riches in order to support a vain expense corrupts the purest souls.

The greatest defect of common education is, that we are in the habit of putting pleasure all on one side, and weariness on the other; all weariness in study, all pleasure in idleness.

This poor world, the object of so much insane attachment, we are about to leave; it is but misery, vanity, and folly; a phantom--the very fashion of which "passeth away.

The great point is to renounce your own wisdom by simplicity of walk, and to be ready to give up the favor, esteem, and approbation of every one, whenever the path in which God leads you passes that way.

I believe that we are conforming to the divine order and the will of Providence when we are doing even indifferent things that belong to our condition.

Be content with doing calmly the little which depends upon yourself, and let all else be to you as if it were not.

The most essential point is lowliness.

There 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.

Sordid and infamous sensuality, the most dreadful evil that issued from the box of Pandora, corrupts every heart, and eradicates every virtue. Fly! wherefore dost thou linger? Fly, cast not one look behind thee; nor let even thy thought return to the accursed evil for a moment.

I am not in the least surprised that your impression of death becomes more lively, in proportion as age and infirmity bring it nearer. God makes use of this rough trial to undeceive us in respect to our courage, to make us feel our weakness, and to keep us in all humility in His hands.

When kings interfere in matters of religion, they enslave instead of protecting it.