François Fénelon Quotes

63 Sourced Quotes

On this earth all is temptation. Crosses tempt us by irritating our pride, and prosperity by flattering it. Our life is a continual combat, but one in which Jesus Christ fights for us. We must pass on unmoved, while temptations rage around us, as the traveler, overtaken by a storm, simply wraps his cloak more closely about him, and pushes on more vigorously toward his destined home.

François Fénelon
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.

François Fénelon
If we love Him infinitely more than we do ourselves, we make an unconditional sacrifice of ourselves to His good pleasure, desiring only to love Him and to forget ourselves. He who thus loses his soul shall find it again with eternal life.

François Fénelon
I protest that no one admires Cicero more than I do. He enriches all that he touches.

François Fénelon
To be faithful in prayer it is indispensable that we arrange all the activities of the day with a regularity that nothing can disturb

François Fénelon
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.

François Fénelon
We must bear our crosses; self is the greatest of them all. If we die in part every day of our lives, we shall have but little to do on the last. O how utterly will these little daily deaths destroy the power of the final dying!

François Fénelon
Whoever is capable of lying, is unworthy of being reckoned in the number of men; and whoever knows not to be silent, is unworthy of ruling.

François Fénelon
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.

François Fénelon
Some of the most dreadful mischiefs that afflict mankind proceed from wine; it is the cause of disease, quarrels, sedition, idleness, aversion to labor, and every species of domestic disorder.

François Fénelon
Jesus Christ was born in a stable; He was obliged to fly into Egypt; thirty years of His life were spent in a workshop; He suffered hunger, thirst, and weariness; He was poor, despised, and miserable; He taught the doctrines of heaven, and no one would listen. The great and the wise persecuted and took Him, subjected Him to frightful torments, treated Him as a slave, and put Him to death between two malefactors, having preferred to give liberty to a robber, rather than to suffer Him to escape. Such was the life which our Lord chose; while we are horrified at any kind of humiliation, and cannot bear the slightest appearance of contempt.

François Fénelon
Mankind, by the perverse depravity of their nature, esteem that which they have most desired as of no value the moment it is possessed, and torment themselves with fruitless wishes for that which is beyond their reach.

François Fénelon
To be always ready for war, said Mentor, is the surest way to avoid it.

François Fénelon
Thou lovest like an infinite God when Thou lovest; Thou movest heaven and earth to save Thy loved ones. Thou becomest man, a babe, the vilest of men, covered with reproaches, dying with infamy and under the pangs of the cross; all this is not too much for an infinite love.

François Fénelon
The science of women, as that of men, must be limited according to their powers: the difference of their characters ought to limit that of their studies.

François Fénelon
God works in a mysterious way in grace as well as in nature, concealing His operations under an imperceptible succession of events, and thus keeps us always in the darkness of faith.

François Fénelon
The good historian is not for any time or any country: while he loves his fatherland, he never flatters it in anything.

François Fénelon
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.

François Fénelon
"My Father, it is dark!" "Child, take my hand,
Cling close to me; I'll lead thee through the land,
Trust my all-seeing care, so shalt thou stand
'Midst glory bright above."
Can we be unsafe where God has placed us, and where He
watches over us as a parent a child that he loves?

François Fénelon
True love goes ever straight forward, not in its own strength, but esteeming itself as nothing. Then indeed we are truly happy. The cross is no longer a cross when there is no self to suffer under it.

François Fénelon
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.

François Fénelon
Here it is that the Spirit teaches us all truth; for all truth is eminently contained in this sacrifice of love, where the soul strips itself of every thing to present it to God.

François Fénelon
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.

François Fénelon
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.

François Fénelon
If we had strength and faith enough to trust ourselves entirely to God, and follow Him simply wherever He should lead us, we should have no need of any great effort of mind to reach perfection.

François Fénelon
In general, those who govern children forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

François Fénelon
Nothing will make us so tender and indulgent to the faults of others as a view of our own.

François Fénelon
All wars are civil ones; for it is still man spilling his own blood, tearing out his own bowels.

François Fénelon
We sleep in peace in the arms of God when we yield ourselves up to His providence, in a delightful consciousness of His tender mercies; no more restless uncertainties, no more anxious desires, no more impatience at the place we are in, for it is God who has put us there, and who holds us in His arms. Can we be unsafe where He has placed us, and where He watches over us as a parent watches a child? This confiding repose, in which earthly care sleeps, is the true vigilance of the heart; yielding itself up to God, with no other support than Him, it thus watches while we sleep. This is the love of Him that will not sleep even in death.

François Fénelon
Do not allow yourself to be bewitched by the diabolical attractions of geometry.

François Fénelon