Frank Sheed Quotes

#1. Man is a rational animal. But that does not mean that he is a reasonable animal. It means only that he has reason, and therefore can misuse it. If he had not reason, he could not be unreasonable. But he has, and is.

Frank Sheed

#2. A mental habit has been annihilated, but at least the way towards a sounder mental habit is clear. For although we are made of nothing, we are made into something; and since WHAT WE ARE MADE OF does not account for us, we are forced to a more intense concentration upon THE GOD WE ARE MADE BY.

Frank Sheed

#3. To say that one sees the answer clearly would be to say that the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity is no mystery at all. We know that the Three Persons are not each other: we know that each is infinite and wholly God.

Frank Sheed

#4. Eternity is not time at all. It is God's total possession of Himself.

Frank Sheed

#5. Just as space has parts lying alongside one another, time has parts following one another. The Infinite has no parts, of either (or any other conceivable) sort. Eternity is not time, however much we may try to glorify the concept of time.

Frank Sheed

#6. Now when a man is as right as that in his forecasts, there is some reason to think he may be right in his premises.

Frank Sheed

#7. Here the dialogue form breaks down. From the believer's mouth there emerges what can only be called a soup of words, sentences that begin and do not end, words that change into something else halfway. This goes on for a longer or shorter time.

Frank Sheed

#8. The man who knows of the universe of spirit walks upright, the materialist hugs the earth.

Frank Sheed

#9. The theologian can ask far profounder questions because he knows more about God; by that same knowledge he knows that there are depths that he will never know. But to see why one cannot know more is itself a real seeing; there is a way of seeing the darkness which is a kind of light.

Frank Sheed

#10. Sanity, remember, does not mean living in the same world as everyone else; it means living in the real world.

Frank Sheed

#11. Sin, for instance, is an effort to gain something against the will of God; but the will of God is all that holds us in existence;

Frank Sheed

#12. All theology consists in finding out what is meant by the words "He is." Let us begin.

Frank Sheed

#13. We can never attain a maximum love of God with only a minimum knowledge of God

Frank Sheed

#14. There is no external operation of the divine nature which is the work of one Person as distinct from the Others.

Frank Sheed

#15. But the plain truth about most of us is that we have let our intellects sink into a condition in which they have neither the muscles nor the energy nor the right habits for the job, nor any effective inclination towards it. We must see how they may be made fit.

Frank Sheed

#16. A Mystery in short is an invitation to the mind. For it means that there is an inexhaustible well of Truth from which the mind may drink and drink again in the certainty that the well will never run dry, that there will always be water for the mind's thirst.

Frank Sheed