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Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.
Topic: Admiration
Source: None
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I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short.
Topic: Brevity
Source: None
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Feast of Oswald, King of Northumbria, Martyr, 642 It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Continuing a series on the person of Jesus: Jesus Christ suffered and died to sanctify death and suffering; he has been all that was great, and all that was abject, in order to sanctify in himself all things except sin, and to be the model of every condition.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Feast of Alban, first Martyr of Britain, c.209 We implore the mercy of God, not that He may leave us at peace in our vices, but that He may deliver us from them.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach, musician, 1750 Experience makes us see an enormous difference between piety and goodness.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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If the mercy of God is so great that He can instruct us, to our salvation, even when He hides Himself, what a brilliance of light we must expect when He reveals Himself!
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Commemoration of Gilbert of Sempringham, Founder of the Gilbertine Order, 1189 I love poverty because He loved it. I love riches because they afford me the means of helping the very poor. I keep faith with everybody; I do not render evil to those who wrong me, but I wish them a situation like mine, in which I receive neither good nor evil from men. I try to be just, true, sincere, and faithful to all men; I have a tender heart for those to whom God has more closely united me; and whether I am alone, or seen by people, I do all my actions in the sight of God, who must judge them, and to whom I have consecrated them all. These are my sentiments; and every day of my life, I bless my Redeemer, who has implanted them in me, and who, out of a man full of weakness, of miseries, of lust, of pride, and of ambition, has made a man free from all these evils by the power of His grace, to which all the glory of it is due, as of myself I have only misery and error.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Palm Sunday Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Commemoration of Anne & Joachim, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary God is none other than the Saviour of our wretchedness. So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities... Those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified him, but have glorified themselves.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Do little things as though they were great, because of the majesty of Jesus Christ who does them in us, and who lives our life: and do the greatest things as though they were little and easy, because of His omnipotence.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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God wanted to redeem men and open the way of salvation to those who seek Him. But men make themselves so unworthy of it that it is only just that God should refuse to some because of the hardness of heart what He gives to others from a compassion that they do not deserve. If He had wanted to overcome the obstinacy of the most hardened, He could have done so by revealing Himself to them so obviously that they could not have doubted the truth of His Being -- just as He will appear at the last day with such a clap of thunder and such an upheaval of nature that the dead will revive and the blindest will see. It is not in this way, however, that He willed to appear at His gentle coming: because so many men had made themselves unworthy of His mercy, He willed to leave them deprived of the good which they did not desire. And so it would not have been fair for Him to have appeared in an obviously divine manner, absolutely capable of convincing all men. But also it would not have been fair for Him to appear in a manner so hidden that even those who were sincerely seeking Him should not be able to recognize Him... So He has tempered His knowledge, by giving marks of Himself which were visible to those who seek Him, and not to those who seek Him not.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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It is in vain, 0 men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good. The philosophers promised them to you, and have not been able to keep their promises... Your principal maladies are pride, which cuts you off from God, and sensuality, which binds you to the earth; and they have done nothing but foster at least one of these maladies. If they have given you God for your object, it has only been to pander to your pride; they have made you think that you were like Him and resembled Him by your nature. And those who have grasped the vanity of such a pretension have cast you down into the other abyss by making you believe that your nature was like that of the beasts of the field, and have led you to seek your good in lust, which is the lot of animals.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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If man is not made for God, why is he not happy except in God? If man is made for God, why is he so opposed to God?
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Jesus Christ came to tell men that they have no enemies but themselves.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Jesus Christ is end of all, and the centre to which all tends. Whoever knows Him knows the reason of everything.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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It is impossible that God should ever be the end, if He is not the beginning. We lift our eyes on high, but lean upon the sand; and the earth will dissolve, and we shall fall while looking at the heavens.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Feast of Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, Teacher, 1910 Commemoration of Martyrs of Uganda, 1886 & 1978 There are only two kinds of men: the righteous, who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners who believe themselves righteous.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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What use is it to us to hear it said of a man that he has thrown off the yoke, that he does not believe there is a God to watch over his actions, that he reckons himself the sole master of his behavior, and that he does not intend to give an account of it to anyone but himself? Does he think that in that way he will have straightway persuaded us to have complete confidence in him, to look to him for consolation, for advice, and for help, in the vicissitudes of life? Do such men think that they have delighted us by telling us that they hold our souls to be nothing but a little wind and smoke -- and by saying it in conceited and complacent tones? Is that a thing to say blithely? Is it not rather a thing to say sadly -- as if it were the saddest thing in the world?
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988 [Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Commemoration of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, 1099 What does this desire and this inability of ours proclaim to us but that there was once in man a genuine happiness, of which nothing now survives but the mark and the empty outline; and this he vainly tries to fill from everything that lies around him, seeking from things that are not there the help that he does not get from those that are present? Yet they are quite incapable of filling the gap, because this infinite gulf can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object -- that is, God, Himself. He alone is man's veritable good, and since man has deserted Him it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature that has not been capable of taking His place for man: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since he has lost the true good, everything can equally appear to him as such -- even his own destruction, though that is so contrary at once to God, to reason, and to nature.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Not only do we not know God except through Jesus Christ; We do not even know ourselves except through Jesus Christ.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of ever telling.
Topic: Curiosity
Source: None
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We like to be deceived.
Topic: Deceit
Source: None
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The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the earth. The Christians know the true God, and do not love the earth.
Topic: Earth
Source: None
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Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
Topic: Eloquence
Source: None
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Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.
Topic: Enthusiasm
Source: None
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In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
Topic: Faith
Source: None
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The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
Topic: Fame
Source: None
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Force rules the world, and not opinion; but opinion is that which makes use of force.
Topic: Force
Source: None
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Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been different.
Topic: History
Source: None
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man is only a reed, the weakest thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
Topic: Humanity
Source: None
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If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, the whole face of the
earth would have been changed.
Topic: Influence
Source: Thoughts (ch. VIII, 29)
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If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.
Topic: Inspirational
Source: None
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Law, without force, is impotent.
Topic: Inspirational
Source: None
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The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.
Topic: Inspirational
Source: None
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All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room
alone.
Topic: Inspirational
Source: None
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A jester, a bad character.
[Fr., Diseur de bon mots, mauvais caractere.]
Topic: Jesting
Source: Pensees (art VI, 22)
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Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect.
Topic: Language
Source: None
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It is not good to have too much liberty. It is not good to have all one wants.
Topic: Liberty
Source: None
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We conceal it from ourselves in vain-- we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.
Topic: Love
Source: None
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The heart has its reasons which the mind cannot comprehend.
Topic: Love
Source: None
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If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
Topic: Miscellaneous
Source: None
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To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.
Topic: Moderation
Source: None
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To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.
Topic: Moderation
Source: None
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Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
Topic: Nature
Source: None
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It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.
Topic: Novelty
Source: None
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Opinion is the queen of the world.
[Lat., Della opinione regina del mondo.]
Topic: Opinion
Source: quoted as the title of an Italian work
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He adopts the opinion of others like a monk in the Sorbonne.
[Fr., Il opine du bonnet comme un moine en Sorbonne.]
Topic: Opinion
Source: Lettres Provinciales (II)
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