Quotes
~ from one of my talks about 10 years ago
"They delight in turning the pages of a book, but never finish the story; they pick up brushes, but never finish a picture; they travel the Seas, but know no ports. Their zest is not in the achievement of a destiny but rather in gyration and action for the mere sake of movement... There is nothing that makes life unhappier than its meaninglessness, and life is devoid of meaning only when it is without purpose... he who has not found out directly how to make everything converge to the sanctification of his own soul has missed the meaning of life... Dissatisfaction sometimes can be the motive of true progress. Dissatisfied with the pen, man invented the printing press; dissatisfied with a chariot and the locomotive, he invented the airplane. There is implanted in everyone an impulse which drives the spirit to beat its wings like an imprisoned Eagle in the cages of this Earth until there is blood on its plumes."
~Fulton J. Sheen, Way to Happiness, 147-148
"Most of us live out our lives with a false picture of ourselves which we will not surrender; we dread the pain of finding ourselves less noble than we like to believe. We strain reality through a sieve of self-love, keeping out whatever truth would hurt us."
~ Fulton J. Sheen, Way to Happiness, p. 160
"It is a mistake to consider that possession of a textbook, however conscientiously read, is equivalent to possession of the knowledge it contains. To profit by either lecture or text, the material must be made your own. To be made your own, it must be translated into your own terms and put to use."
~Albert Walton, The Fundamentals of Industrial Psychology, xi
"The psychological approach offers us no difficulty; for Christian theology is, in a certain sense, a psychology, since its primary interest is the soul, the most precious of things. Our Lord balanced a universe against a soul and found the soul worth more than gaining the world."
~ Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, Ch. 1
"Unless souls are saved, nothing is saved; there can be no world peace unless there is soul peace. World wars are only projections of the conflicts waged inside the souls of modern men, for nothing happens in the external world that has not first happened within a soul."
~Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, p.1
"On the contrary, the real spiritual battle, rather than the pursuit of invincibility or some other absolute infallibility beyond our capacity, consists principally in learning, without becoming too discouraged, to accept falling occasionally and not to lose our peace of heart if we so happen to do so lamentably, not to become excessively sad regarding our defeats and to know how to rebound from our falls to an even higher level. This is always possible, but on the condition that we not panic and that we continue to maintain our peace."
~Father Jacques Philippe, Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart, p. 12
"Sometimes it happens that we forsake the good in order to seek the better, and while we leave the one, we do not find the other. Possession of a little treasure actually found is worth more than expectation of a greater one we must still go out to seek."
~St. Francis de Sales, Finding God's Will For You, pp. 54-55
Prayer for Abandonment in Vocation
“Lord, I have thought about it and prayed to know Your will. I do not see it clearly, but I am not going to trouble myself any further. I am not going to spend hours racking my brain. I am deciding such and such a thing because, all things carefully considered, it seems to me the best thing to do. And I leave everything in Your hands. I know well that, even if I am mistaken, You will not be displeased with me, for I have acted with good intentions. And if I have made a mistake, I know that You are able to draw good from this error. It will be for me a source of humility and I will learn something from it!”
"As a being of Power, Intelligence, and Love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which he may make himself what he wills."
~ James Allen, As a Man Thinketh, p. 19
"Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself. "
~ James Allen, As a Man Thinketh, p. 27
"We need a modification of the wage system, so that the worker may share in the profits, ownership or management of his industry. When labor leaders and capitalists thus agree together to give labor some capital to defend, there will no longer be two rival groups in industry; labor and management will become two cooperating members working together, as the two legs of a man cooperate to help him walk."
~Fulton J. Sheen, Way to Happiness, 38-39
"The modern world, which denies personal guilt and admits only social crimes, which has no place for personal repentance but only public reforms, has divorced Christ from His Cross; the Bridegroom and Bride have been pulled apart. What God hath joined together, men have torn asunder. As a result, to the left is the Cross; to the right is Christ. Each has awaited new partners who will pick them up in a kind of second and adulterous union. Communism comes along and picks up the meaningless Cross; Western post-Christian civilization chooses the unscarred Christ. Communism has chosen the Cross in the sense that it has brought back to an egotistic world a sense of discipline, self-abnegation, surrender, hard work, study, and dedication to supra-individual goals. But the Cross without Christ is sacrifice without love. Hence, Communism has produced a society that is authoritarian, cruel, oppressive of human freedom, filled with concentration camps, firing squads, and brain-washings. The Western post-Christian civilization has picked up the Christ without His Cross. But a Christ without a sacrifice that reconciles the world to God is a cheap, feminized, colourless, itinerant preacher who deserves to be popular for His great Sermon on the Mount, but also merits unpopularity for what He said about His Divinity on the one hand, and divorce, judgment, and hell on the other. This sentimental Christ is patched together with a thousand commonplaces, sustained sometimes by academic etymologists who cannot see the Word for the letters, or distorted beyond personal recognition by a dogmatic principle that anything which is Divine must necessarily be a myth. Without His Cross, He becomes nothing more than a sultry precursor of democracy or a humanitarian who taught brotherhood without tears.
~Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ
"It is a mistake to consider that possession of a textbook, however conscientiously read, is equivalent to possession of the knowledge it contains. To profit by either lecture or text, the material must be made your own. To be made your own, it must be translated into your own terms and put to use."
~Albert Walton, The Fundamentals of Industrial Psychology, xi
"The psychological approach offers us no difficulty; for Christian theology is, in a certain sense, a psychology, since its primary interest is the soul, the most precious of things. Our Lord balanced a universe against a soul and found the soul worth more than gaining the world."
~ Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, Ch. 1
"Unless souls are saved, nothing is saved; there can be no world peace unless there is soul peace. World wars are only projections of the conflicts waged inside the souls of modern men, for nothing happens in the external world that has not first happened within a soul."
~Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, p.1
"On the contrary, the real spiritual battle, rather than the pursuit of invincibility or some other absolute infallibility beyond our capacity, consists principally in learning, without becoming too discouraged, to accept falling occasionally and not to lose our peace of heart if we so happen to do so lamentably, not to become excessively sad regarding our defeats and to know how to rebound from our falls to an even higher level. This is always possible, but on the condition that we not panic and that we continue to maintain our peace."
~Father Jacques Philippe, Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart, p. 12
"Sometimes it happens that we forsake the good in order to seek the better, and while we leave the one, we do not find the other. Possession of a little treasure actually found is worth more than expectation of a greater one we must still go out to seek."
~St. Francis de Sales, Finding God's Will For You, pp. 54-55
Prayer for Abandonment in Vocation
“Lord, I have thought about it and prayed to know Your will. I do not see it clearly, but I am not going to trouble myself any further. I am not going to spend hours racking my brain. I am deciding such and such a thing because, all things carefully considered, it seems to me the best thing to do. And I leave everything in Your hands. I know well that, even if I am mistaken, You will not be displeased with me, for I have acted with good intentions. And if I have made a mistake, I know that You are able to draw good from this error. It will be for me a source of humility and I will learn something from it!”
"As a being of Power, Intelligence, and Love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which he may make himself what he wills."
~ James Allen, As a Man Thinketh, p. 19
"Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself. "
~ James Allen, As a Man Thinketh, p. 27
"We need a modification of the wage system, so that the worker may share in the profits, ownership or management of his industry. When labor leaders and capitalists thus agree together to give labor some capital to defend, there will no longer be two rival groups in industry; labor and management will become two cooperating members working together, as the two legs of a man cooperate to help him walk."
~Fulton J. Sheen, Way to Happiness, 38-39
"The modern world, which denies personal guilt and admits only social crimes, which has no place for personal repentance but only public reforms, has divorced Christ from His Cross; the Bridegroom and Bride have been pulled apart. What God hath joined together, men have torn asunder. As a result, to the left is the Cross; to the right is Christ. Each has awaited new partners who will pick them up in a kind of second and adulterous union. Communism comes along and picks up the meaningless Cross; Western post-Christian civilization chooses the unscarred Christ. Communism has chosen the Cross in the sense that it has brought back to an egotistic world a sense of discipline, self-abnegation, surrender, hard work, study, and dedication to supra-individual goals. But the Cross without Christ is sacrifice without love. Hence, Communism has produced a society that is authoritarian, cruel, oppressive of human freedom, filled with concentration camps, firing squads, and brain-washings. The Western post-Christian civilization has picked up the Christ without His Cross. But a Christ without a sacrifice that reconciles the world to God is a cheap, feminized, colourless, itinerant preacher who deserves to be popular for His great Sermon on the Mount, but also merits unpopularity for what He said about His Divinity on the one hand, and divorce, judgment, and hell on the other. This sentimental Christ is patched together with a thousand commonplaces, sustained sometimes by academic etymologists who cannot see the Word for the letters, or distorted beyond personal recognition by a dogmatic principle that anything which is Divine must necessarily be a myth. Without His Cross, He becomes nothing more than a sultry precursor of democracy or a humanitarian who taught brotherhood without tears.
~Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ
There is in reality nothing more important, and nothing more
urgent than faith. For, if God is real, if he can be known, if our life can be
accompanied and strengthened by him, then everything changes. Reflecting on
faith is a matter of the utmost importance.
~Cardinal Gerhard Muller
