17th-century Religious Leader Quotes

Jean Baptiste Massillon

Robert Leighton

Our acts of kindness we reserve for our friends, our bounties for our dependants, our riches for our children and relations, our praises for those who appear worthy of them, our time we give all to the world; we expose it, I may say, a prey to all mankind.

Jean Baptiste Massillon

The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I will not — I will not desert to his foes;
That soul — though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I'll never — no never — no never forsake.

Nobody, I believe, will deny, that we are to form our judgment of the true nature of the human mind, not from sloth and stupidity of the most degenerate and vilest of men, but from the sentiments and fervent desires of the best and wisest of the species.

Robert Leighton

He who does not improve his temper together with his understanding, is not much the better for it.

Let us meditate on the love of God, who being supremely happy Himself, communicateth perfect happiness to us. Supreme happiness doth not make God forget us; shall the miserable comforts of this life make us forget Him?

At court, far from regarding ambition as a sin, people regard it as a virtue, or if it passes for a vice, then it is regarded as the vice of great souls, and the vices of great souls are preferred to the virtues of the simple and the small.

Louis Bourdaloue