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

Categorized in : Giving Want Relatives And Friends

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

reflection prayer god

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

restless arms desire

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

helping-others waiting people

Let gratitude for the past inspire us with trust for the future.

Francois Fenelon

gratitude godly past

Commit yourself then to God! He will be your guide. He Himself will travel with you, as we are told He did with the Israelites, to bring them step by step across the desert to the promised land. Ah! what will be your blessedness, if you will but surrender yourself into the hands of God, permitting Him to do whatever He will, not according to your desires, but according to His own good pleasure?

Francois Fenelon

trust land hands

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.

Francois Fenelon

brother hippie war

Time spent in prayer is never wasted.

Francois Fenelon

wasted-time prayer time

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

holy use spirit

People who have no secrets from each other never want for a subject of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back, neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of their heart, without consideration they say just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God.

Francois Fenelon

blessed heart thinking

Let us pray God that He would root out of our hearts every thing of our own planting, and set out there, with His own hands, the tree of life, bearing all manner of fruits.

Francois Fenelon

roots heart hands

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

dangerous salvation should

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

lasts dying self

How rare it is to find a soul quiet enough to hear God speak.

Francois Fenelon

humility soul quiet

All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.

Francois Fenelon

fruition spiritual expectations

Pure love is in the will alone; it is no sentimental love, for the imagination has no part in it; it loves, if we may so express it, without feeling, as faith believes without seeing.

Francois Fenelon

imagination love-is believe

True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then is to desire -- but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays.

Francois Fenelon

prayer heart father

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

perfect people knowledge

The more you say, the less people remember.

Francois Fenelon

self-improvement inspirational people

Of all the duties enjoined by Christianity none is more essential and yet more neglected than prayer.

Francois Fenelon

essentials christianity prayer

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

pain spring peace