Fulton J. Sheen
92 quotes
Biography
Fulton John Sheen was an American Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Rochester from 1966 to 1969. He was known for his preaching, especially on television and radio.
"Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery."
"It 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."
"Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked."
"If you don't behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave."
"Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?"
"Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn."
"Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday."
"The difference between the love of a man and the love of a woman is that a man will always give reasons for loving, but a woman gives no reasons for loving."
"Books are the most wonderful friends in the world. When you meet them and pick them up, they are always ready to give you a few ideas. When you put them down, they never get mad; when you take them up again, they seem to enrich you all the more."
"Far better it is for you to say: "I am a sinner,"than to say: "I have no need of religion."The empty can be filled, but the self-intoxicated have no room for God."
"Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything."
"Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book."
"A teacher who cannot explain any abstract subject to a child does not himself thoroughly understand his subject; if he does not attempt to break down his knowledge to fit the child's mind, he does not understand teaching."
"Never forget that there are only two philosophies to rule your life: the one of the cross, which starts with the fast and ends with the feast. The other of Satan, which starts with the feast and ends with the headache."
"Once you have surrendered yourself, you make yourself receptive. In receiving from God, you are perfected and completed."
"When 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!"
"Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths."
"Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour"of childbearing are unhappy and frustrated. They never discovered the joys of marriage because they refused to surrender to the obligation of their state. In saving themselves, they lost themselves!"
"The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law."
"The egocentric is always frustrated, simply because the condition of self-perfection is self-surrender. There must be a willingness to die to the lower part of self, before there can be a birth to the nobler."
"The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society."
"Man wants three things; life, knowledge, and love."
"Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man."
"If there is continuity in the universe, it is fitting that there should be intelligent beings without bodies which are called angels."
"If all things in this universe exist, it is because they participate in the Being of God, if there are some things with life, it is because they are reflections of the life of God; if there are beings endowed with intellect and will — like men and angels — it's because they are a participation of the Sovereign Intellect which is God."