Top 100 Fenelon Quotes
#1. We can often do more for other men by trying to correct our own faults than by trying to correct theirs ~ Francois Fenelon
Francois Fenelon
#2. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#3. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#4. We are never less alone than when we are in the society of a single, faithful friend; never less deserted than when we are carried in tne arms of the All-Powerful.
Francois Fenelon
#5. Be content with doing calmly the little which depends upon yourself, and let all else be to you as if it were not.
Francois Fenelon
#6. There are two principal points of attention necessary for the preservation of this constant spirit of prayer which unites us with God; we must continually seek to cherish it, and we must avoid everything that tends to make us lose it.
Francois Fenelon
#7. Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others as by self-examination thoroughly to know our own.
Francois Fenelon
#8. We are not to choose the manner in which our blessings shall be bestowed.
Francois Fenelon
#9. It is when God appears to have abandoned us that we must abandon ourselves most wholly to God.
Francois Fenelon
#11. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#12. If God bores you, tell Him that He bores you, that you prefer the vilest amusements to His presence, that you only feel at your ease when you are far from Him.
Francois Fenelon
#13. All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.
Francois Fenelon
#14. The history of the world suggests that without love of God there is little likelihood of a love for man that does not become corrupt.
Francois Fenelon
#15. Had we not faults of our own, we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.
Francois Fenelon
#16. O Lord! take my heart, for I cannot give it; and when Thou hast it, O! keep it, for I cannot keep it for Thee; and save me in spite of myself, for Jesus Christ's sake.
Francois Fenelon
#17. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#18. We may as well tolerate all religions, since God Himself tolerates all.
Francois Fenelon
#19. I love my country better than my family; but I love humanity better than my country.
Francois Fenelon
#20. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#21. Temptations are a file which rub off much of the rust of our self-confidence.
Francois Fenelon
#22. A good historian is timeless; although he is a patriot, he will never flatter his country in any respect.
Francois Fenelon
#23. The presence of God calms the soul, and gives it quiet and repose.
Francois Fenelon
#24. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#25. God is so good that He only awaits our desire to overwhelm us with the gift of himself.
Francois Fenelon
#26. Real friends are our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow. It were almost to be wished that all true and faithful friends should expire on the same day.
Francois Fenelon
#27. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#28. In short, what ought to help most to open their eyes serves only to close them faster;
Francois Fenelon
#29. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#30. God is our true Friend, who always gives us the counsel and comfort we need. Our danger lies in resisting Him; so it is essential that we acquire the habit of hearkening to His voice, or keeping silence within, and listening so as to lose nothing of what He says to us.
Francois Fenelon
#31. O God, the creature knows not to what end Thou hast made Him; teach him, and write in the depths of his soul that the clay must suffer itself to be shaped at the will of the potter.
Francois Fenelon
#32. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#33. So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others.
Francois Fenelon
#34. Fear is like the strong medicine used to fight serious diseases; it purges, but it also alters your temperament and wears out the body organs. A person who is driven by fear will always be the weaker for it
Francois Fenelon
#35. How different the peace of God from that of the world! It calms the passions, preserves the purity of the conscience, is inseparable from righteousness, unites us to God and strengthens us against temptations. The peace of the soul consists in an absolute resignation to the will of God.
Francois Fenelon
#36. There is no more dangerous illusion than the fancies by which people try to avoid illusion.
Francois Fenelon
#37. How desirable is this simplicity! Who will give it to me? I will quit all else; it is the pearl of great price.
Francois Fenelon
#38. Alas! how many souls there are full of self, and yet desirous of doing good and serving God, but in such a way as to suit themselves; who desire to impose rules upon God as to His manner of drawing them to Himself. They want to serve and possess Him, but they are not willing to be possessed by Him.
Francois Fenelon
#39. True piety hath in it nothing weak, nothing sad, nothing constrained. It enlarges the heart; it is simple, free, and attractive.
Francois Fenelon
#40. Simplicity is that grace which frees the soul from all unnecessary reflections upon itself.
Francois Fenelon
#41. God never makes us sensible of our weakness except to give us of His strength.
Francois Fenelon
#42. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#43. That love of self, which the world advocates, is a thousand times more dangerous than any poison.
Francois Fenelon
#44. God bears with imperfect beings even when they resist His goodness. We ought to imitate this merciful patience and endurance. It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of other people.
Francois Fenelon
#45. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#47. God is merciful, showing us our true hideousness only in proportion to the courage he gives us to bear the sight.
Francis Fenelon
#48. To just read the Bible, attend church, and avoid "big" sins-is this passionate, wholehearted love for God?
Francois Fenelon
#49. Children are very nice observers, and they will often perceive our slightest defects. It general those who govern children forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.
Francois Fenelon
#50. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#52. The greatest of all crosses is self. If we die in part every day, we shall have but little to do on the last. These little daily deaths will destroy the power of the final dying.
Francois Fenelon
#54. All wars are civil ones; for it is still man spilling his own blood, tearing out his own bowels.
Francois Fenelon
#55. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#56. The blood of a nation ought never to be shed except for its own preservation in the utmost extremity.
Francois Fenelon
#57. Of all the duties enjoined by Christianity none is more essential and yet more neglected than prayer.
Francois Fenelon
#58. We may be sure that it is the love of God only that can make us come out of self. If His powerful hand did not sustain us, we should not know how to take the first step in that direction.
Francois Fenelon
#59. It is often our own imperfection which makes us reprove the imperfection of others; a sharp-sighted self-love of others
Francois Fenelon
#60. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#61. You can often help others more by correcting your own faults than theirs. Remember, and you should, because of your own experience, that allowing God to correct your faults is not easy. Be patient with people, wait for God to work with them as He wills.
Francois Fenelon
#62. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#64. There is but one way in which God should be loved, and that is to take no step except with Him and for Him, and to follow with a generous self-abandonment every thing which He requires.
Francois Fenelon
#65. Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self-love.
Francois Fenelon
#66. Even if no command to pray had existed, our very weakness would have suggested it.
Francois Fenelon
#67. Crosses are of no use to us but inasmuch as we yield ourselves up to them and forget ourselves.
Francois Fenelon
#68. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#70. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#71. We must avoid fastidiousness; neatness, when it is moderate, is a virtue; but when it is carried to an extreme, it narrows the mind.
Francois Fenelon
#73. God would behold in you a simplicity which will contain so much the more of His wisdom as it contains less of your own.
Francois Fenelon
#74. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#75. Listen less to your own thoughts and more to God's thoughts.
Francois Fenelon
#76. I would have no desire other than to accomplish thy will. Teach me to pray; pray thyself in me.
Francois Fenelon
#77. Make this simple rule the guide of your life: to have no will but God's.
Francois Fenelon
#78. There is nothing that is more dangerous to your own salvation, more unworthy of God and more harmful to your own happiness, than that you should be content to remain as you are.
Francois Fenelon
#79. The realization of God's presence is the one sovereign remedy against temptation.
Francois Fenelon
#80. To will everything that God wills, and to will it always, in all circumstances and without reservations: that is the kingdom of God which is entirely within.
Francois Fenelon
#81. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#82. Nothing is so costly as the pursuit of a cure for imaginary ills.
Francois Fenelon
#83. A general rule for the good use of time is to accustom oneself to live in a continual dependence on the Spirit of God.
Francois Fenelon
#84. Carefully purify your conscience from daily faults; suffer no sin to dwell in your heart; small as it may seem, it obscures the light of grace, weighs down the soul, and hinders that constant communion with Jesus Christ which it should be your pleasure to cultivate.
Francois Fenelon
#86. No more restless uncertainties, no more anxious desires, no more impatience at the place we are in; for it is God who has placed us there, and who holds us in his arms. Can we be unsafe where he has placed us?
Francois Fenelon
#87. Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies.
Francois Fenelon
#88. When you come to be sensibly touched, the scales will fall from your eyes; and by the penetrating eyes of love you will discern that which your other eyes will never see.
Francois Fenelon
#89. We must truly serve those whom we appear to command; we must bear with their imperfections, correct them with gentleness and patience, and lead them in the way to heaven.
Francois Fenelon
#90. Do we accustom ourselves to see all things in the light of faith? Do we correct all our judgments by it? Alas! The greater part of Christians think and act like mere heathens; if we judge (as we justly may) of their faith by their practice, we must conclude they have no faith at all.
Francois Fenelon
#91. Little faults become great, and even monstrous in our eyes, in proportion as the pure light of God increases in us; just as the sun in rising, reveals the true dimensions of objects which were dimly and confusedly discovered during the night.
Francois Fenelon
#92. Accustom yourself to unreasonableness and injustice. Abide in peace in the presence of God Who sees all these evils more clearly than you do, and Who permits them. Be content with doing with calmness the little which depends upon yourself, and let all else be to you as if it were naught.
Francois Fenelon
#93. How can you expect God to speak in that gentle and inward voice which melts the soul, when you are making so much noise with your rapid reflections? Be silent and God will speak again.
Francois Fenelon
#94. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#95. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#96. 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.
Francois Fenelon
#97. Courage is a virtue only so far as it is directed by prudence.
Francois Fenelon
#98. Peace does not dwell in outward things but within the soul; we may preserve it in the midst of the bitterest pain, if our will remains firm and submissive. Peace in this life springs from acquiescence to, not an exemption from, suffering.
Francois Fenelon
#99. 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.
Francois Fenelon
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