Carefully purify your conscience from daily faults; suffer no sin to dwell in your heart; small as it may seem, it obscures the light of grace, weighs down the soul, and hinders that constant communion with Jesus Christ which it should be your pleasure to cultivate.
Francois Fenelon (Priest, 1651 – 1715)
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 (Priest, 1651 – 1715)
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 (Priest, 1651 – 1715)
God is our true Friend, who always gives us the counsel and comfort we need. Our danger lies in resisting Him; so it is essential that we acquire the habit of hearkening to His voice, or keeping silence within, and listening so as to lose nothing of what He says to us.
Francois Fenelon (Priest, 1651 – 1715)
How different the peace of God from that of the world! It calms the passions, preserves the purity of the conscience, is inseparable from righteousness, unites us to God and strengthens us against temptations. The peace of the soul consists in an absolute resignation to the will of God.
Francois Fenelon (Priest, 1651 – 1715)
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 (Priest, 1651 – 1715)
God never ceases to speak to us, but the noise of the world without and the tumult of our passions within bewilder us and prevent us from listening to him.
Francois Fenelon (Priest, 1651 – 1715)
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 (Priest, 1651 – 1715)
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 (Priest, 1651 – 1715)
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 (Priest, 1651 – 1715)