Quotes by "Fulton J. Sheen"

Our blessed Lord was hopeful about humanity. He always saw men the way He originally designed them. He saw through the surface, grime, and dirt to the real man underneath. He never identified a person with sin. He saw sin as something alien and foreign which did not belong to man. Sin had mastered man but he could be freed from it to be his real self. Just as every mother sees her own image and likeness on her child’s face, so God always saw the divine image and likeness beneath us.

Knowing belongs to man's intellect or reason; loving belongs to his will. The object of the intellect is truth; the object of the will is goodness or love.

Head knowledge is worthless, unless accompanied by submission of the will and right action.

These people who are always talking, reading, and thinking about sex are like singers who think more about their larynx than about singing. They make that which is subordinate to a higher purpose so all important that the harmony of life is upset.

Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths.

Christ said, not a single iota of the truth He gave was to be changed, then by what right do we sit in judgment on Divinity and say: This much of Your truth we will accept, because it pleases us, and this much we will reject? We are not the creators of divine truth; we are only the trustees and the guardians. God’s truths are not optional any more than the right to happiness is optional; they are not debatable any more than the multiplication table is debatable. Any sect which starts with the assumption that it has rights over God’s truth proves that it is man-made, and a religion that is man-made can be man-unmade. But a Church which is God-made cannot be man-unmade.

It is easier to write a book with footnotes than the same book written so that children can understand it.

The wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their consciences. The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.

A teacher who cannot explain any abstract subject to a child does not himself thoroughly understand his subject; if he does not attempt to break down his knowledge to fit the child's mind, he does not understand teaching.

Man wants three things; life, knowledge, and love.

Remember that every science is based upon an abstraction. An abstraction is taking a point of view or looking at things under a certain aspect or from a particular angle. All sciences are differentiated by their abstraction.

The science of a religious man must be scientific; the religion of a scientific man must be religious.

Books are the most wonderful friends in the world. When you meet them and pick them up, they are always ready to give you a few ideas. When you put them down, they never get mad; when you take them up again, they seem to enrich you all the more.

Life is like a cash register, in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded.

Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?

Pride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals.

The big print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.

I feel it is time that I also pay tribute to my four writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The proud man counts his newspaper clippings, the humble man his blessings.