Best 304 quotes of Fulton J. Sheen on MyQuotes

A Catholic may sin and sin as badly as anyone else, but no genuine Catholic ever denies he is a sinner. A Catholic wants his sins forgiven - not excused or sublimated.

A democracy flirts with the danger of becoming a slave in direct ratio to the numbers of its citizens who work, but do not own / or who own, but do not work; or who distribute, as politicians do, but do not produce. The danger of the "slave state" disappears in ratio to the numbers of people who own property and admit its attendant responsibilities under God. They can call their souls their own because they own and administer something other than their souls. Thus they are free.

Advertising tries to stimulate our sensuous desires, converting luxuries into necessities, but it only intensifies man's inner misery. The business world is bent on creating hungers which its wares never satisfy, and thus it adds to the frustrations and broken minds of our times.

All badness is spoiled goodness. A bad apple is a good apple that became rotten. Because evil has no capital of its own, it is a parasite that feeds on goodness.

All love craves unity. As the highest peak of love in the human order is the unity of husband and wife in the flesh, so the highest unity in the Divine order is the unity of the soul and Christ in communion.

All my sermons are prepared in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. As recreation is most pleasant and profitable in the sun, so homiletic creativity is best nourished before the Eucharist. The most brilliant ideas come from meeting God face to face. The Holy Spirit that presided at the Incarnation is the best atmosphere for illumination. Pope John Paul II keeps a small desk or writing pad near him whenever he is in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament; and I have done this all my life - I am sure for the same reason he does, because a lover always works better when the beloved is with him.

All our anxieties relate to time.

All our anxieties relate to time. The major problems of psychiatry revolve around an analysis of the despair, pessimism, melancholy, and complexes that are the inheritances of what has been or with the fears, anxieties, worries, that are the imaginings of what will be.

A man may stand for the justice of God, but a woman stands for His Mercy.

A man without God is not like a cake without raisins; he is like a cake without the flour and milk; he lacks the essential ingredients.

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance - it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.

Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book.

A person is great, not by the ferocity of his hatred of evil, but by the intensity of his love for God.

A reasonable being should ask himself why - if chemicals can enter into plants, and plants be taken up into animals, and animals be taken into man - why man himself, who is the peak of visible creation, should be denied the privilege of being assimilated into a higher power? The rose has no right to say that there is no life above it and neither has man, who has a vast capacity and unconquerable yearning for eternal life and truth and love.

As long as the decent people refuse to believe that morality must manifest itself in every sphere of human activity, including the political, they will not meet the challenge of Marxism.

A smile across the aisle of a bus in the morning could save a suicide later in the day.

At Cana, [Mary] gave Him as a Savior to sinners; on the Cross He gave her as a refuge to sinners.

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.

Atheism, nine times out of ten, is born from the womb of a bad conscience. Disbelief is born of sin, not of reason.

A woman gets angry when a man denies his faults, because she knew them all along. His lying mocks her affection; it is the deceit that angers her more than the faults.

Baloney is flattery laid on so thick it cannot be true, and blarney is flattery so thin we love it.

Because God is full of life, I imagine each morning Almighty God says to the sun, "Do it again"; and every evening to the moon and the stars, "Do it again"; and every springtime to the daisies, "Do it again"; and every time a child is born into the world asking for curtain call, that the heart of the God might once more ring out in the heart of the babe.

Before the sin, Satan assures us that it is of no consequence; after the sin, he persuades us that it is unforgivable.

Being is the soul of every concept, of every judgment and of every reasoning.

Believe the incredible and you can do the impossible.

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.

Broadmindedness, when it means indifference to right and wrong, eventually ends in a hatred of what is right.

Buddha wrote a code which he said would be useful to guide men in darkness, but he never claimed to be the Light of the world. Buddhism was born with a disgust for the world, when a prince's son deserted his wife and child, turning from the pleasures of existence to the problems of existence. Burnt by the fires of the world, and already weary with it, Buddha turned to ethics.

Burning the candle at both ends for God's sake may be foolishness to the world, but it is a profitable Christian exercise-for so much better the light. Only one thing in life matters. Being found worthy of the Light of the World in the hour of His visitation. We need have no undue fear for our health if we work hard for the kingdom of God; God will take care of our health if we take care of His cause. In any case it is better to burn out than to rust out.

But there was no room at the inn"; the inn is the gathering place of public opinion; so often public opinion locks its doors to the King.

By a beautiful paradox of Divine love, God makes His Cross the very means of our salvation and our life. We have slain Him; we have nailed Him there and crucified Him; but the Love in His eternal heart could not be extinguished. He willed to give us the very life we slew; to give us the very Food we destroyed; to nourish us with the very Bread we buried, and the very Blood we poured forth. He made our very crime into a happy fault; He turned a Crucifixion into a Redemption; a Consecration into a Communion; a death into Life Everlasting

Calamity, war, famine, plague, death, adversity, disease, injury do not necessarily produce repentance. We may become better in a calamity but it does not necessarily make us repent. The essence of repentance is that we cannot be repentant until we confront our own self righteousness with God's righteousness.

Christianity, unlike any other religion in the world, begins with catastrophe and defeat. Sunshine religions and psychological inspirations collapse in calamity and wither in adversity. But the Life of the Founder of Christianity, having begun with the Cross, ends with the empty tomb and victory.

Communism is an aggressive religion of the species.

Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man.

Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man. The industrial civilization of the Western world has no intent to destroy man's freedom or to deny his personality. But Communism does. Denying God, it reduces man to a robot.

Confiscation in any form is an unhealthy solution for a real disease. It amounts to telling men that because they are economically crippled, they must abandon all efforts to get well and allow the state to provide them with free wheelchairs.

Counsel involving right and wrong should never be sought from a man who does not say his prayers.

Democracy cannot survive where there is such uniformity that everyone wears exactly the same intellectual uniform or point of view. Democracy implies diversity of outlook, a variety of points of view on politics, economics, and world affairs. Hence the educational ideal is not uniformity but unity, for unity allows diversity of points of view regarding the good means to a good end.

...discussion is also a most excellent means to avoid -decision-

Do mathematics have a relation to reality or are they only a mathematical symbol?

Each and every one of us, at the end of the journey of life, will come face to face with either one or the other of two faces... And one of them, either the merciful face of Christ or the miserable face of Satan, will say, "Mine, mine." May we be Christ's!

Each of us comes into life with fists closed, set for aggressiveness and acquisition. But when we abandon life our hands are open; there is nothing on earth that we need, nothing the soul can take with it.

Each of us makes his own weather, determines the color of the skies in the emotional universe which he inhabits.

Education lays hold of what is best in a person, but character lays hold of what is worse. It takes hold of a failing and by very skillful manipulation and training turns it into a perfection.

Ever since the days of Adam, man has been hiding from God and saying, 'God is hard to find.

Every child should have an occasional pat on the back as long as it is applied low enough and hard enough.

Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner in his joy. He who shares tears with us wipes them away. He divides them in two, and he who laughs with us makes the joy double.

Every moment comes to you pregnant with divine purpose . . . . Once it leaves your hands and your power to do with it as you please, it plunges into eternity, to remain forever what you made it.

Everything that is full of life loves change, for the characteristic of life is movement toward a new goal and urges toward new pleasures