French Theologian Quotes

John Calvin

Bernard of Clairvaux

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger

Alfred Loisy

Pasquier Quesnel

The search for truth is not a trade by which a man can support himself; for a priest it is a supreme peril.

Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy.

A pretext is never lacking to him who would break with a friend.

Bernard of Clairvaux

Since we are all naturally prone to hypocrisy, any empty semblance of righteousness is quite enough to satisfy us instead of righteousness itself.

Great occasions for serving God come seldom, but little ones surround us daily.

Francis de Sales

Every word [of Tertullian] almost was a sentence; every sentence a victory.

St Vincent of Lerins

In the midst of the disguises and artifices that reign among men, it is only attention and vigilance that can save us from surprises.

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

Men are; more inclined to ask curious questions than to obtain necessary instruction.

Pasquier Quesnel

In the shadow of death he produces life, and though the senses are terrified, faith taking all for the best, is full of courage and assurance.

Jean Pierre de Caussade

Jesus... never laughed. Nothing has ever equaled the seriousness of his life; it is clear that pleasure, recreation, anything that could divert the mind, had no part in it. The life of Jesus was utterly taut, wholly caught up in God and in the woes of men, and he gave to nature only what he could not have refused it without destroying it.

There is a radical difference between the Christian expectation of the resurrection of the dead and the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul.... Although Christianity later established a link between these two beliefs, and today the average Christian confuses them completely, I see no reason to hide what I and the majority of scholars consider to be the truth.... The life and thought of the New Testament are entirely dominated by faith in the resurrection.... The whole man, who is really dead, is brought back to life by a new creative act of God.

But as Geographers use to place Seas upon that place of the Globe which they know not: so chronologers, who are near of kin to them, use to blot out ages past, which they know not. They drown those Countries which they know not: These with cruel pen kill the times they heard not of, and deny which they know not.

Isaac La Peyrère

I was born Jewish and so I remain, even if that's unacceptable for many. For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That's my hope and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it.

Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger

The perfection of learning is to know God in such a way that, though you realize he is knowable, yet you know him as indescribable.

Hilary of Poitiers

Do not hold as gold all that shines as gold.

In the present age doubt has become immune to faith and faith has dissociated itself from doubt.

Gabriel Vahanian