Quotes from Fulton J. Sheen

hunger is not just an economic problem. It is a moral and spiritual problem.

Politics has become so all-possessive of life, that by impertinence it thinks the only philosophy a person can hold is the right or the left. This question puts out all the lights of religion so they can call all the cats gray. It assumes that man lives on a purely horizontal plane, and can move only to the right or the left. Had we eyes less material, we would see that there are two other directions where a man with a soul may look: the vertical directions of "up" or "down.

Celibacy is like poetry keeping the idea ever in mind like a dream; but marriage uses chisel and brush, concentrating more on marble and canvas. Celibacy jumps to a conclusion like an intuition; marriage, like reason, labors through ebb and flow, step by step.

Atheism is not a doctrine, it is a cry of wrath.

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.

And any form of philanthropy that forgets the doctrine of the common good for the false principle that society is a new entity for which individuals must be sacrificed, sooner or later will be advocating elimination of the unfit; the murder of defective infants — and then we shall have once more a paganism in which mothers will throw their children from Tarpeian Rocks,4 and in which new Herods will arise to practice birth-control as he did — even with the sword.

The word enough does not exist in Love's vocabulary

We live in days of assassins'—where evil is sought in lives more than good to justify a world with a bad conscience.

The crisis in their souls begins at the moment when they either recognize that they have tremendous potentialities not yet exercised or begin to yearn for a religious life which will make greater demands on them. Up to that moment of crisis, they have lived on the surface of their souls. The tension deepens as they realize that, like a plant, they have roots which need greater spiritual depths and branches meant for communion with the heavens above.

A person is merciful when he feels the sorrow and misery of another as if it were his own.

St. Augustine also states that, in a sense, shame is related to disobedience. Positively, this would mean that when there is perfect obedience to God, there is no shame. This confirms somewhat the spiritual truth that Catholic educators have observed, namely, that as obedience to the law of Christ increases, concupiscence or the passions actually diminish.

To use a man for what he is naturally best fitted is to keep him, if one can, from apostasy and dissatisfaction. At the same time, life's temptations come most often from that for which one has the greatest aptitude.

Pope John Paul II, who has a mystique without a politique. He has no armies, no publicity directors, no propaganda machine and comes from the smallest state in all the world.

Let no one think he can be totally indifferent to God in this life and suddenly develop a capacity for Him at the moment of death.

Declaration of Independence: that all of our rights and liberties come to us from our Creator.

The greatest love story of all time is contained in a tiny white Host.

What some people love is not a person but the experience of being in love. The first is irreplaceable; the second is not.

The mystery of the Incarnation is very simply that of God's asking a woman freely to give Him a human nature.

The loves of all hearts are so many mirrors revealing their characters.

FREUDIANISM interprets man in terms of sex; Christianity interprets sex in terms of man.

Fulton J. Sheen "Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked." ? Fulton J. Sheen, Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary

By teaching the young, she remained young. Virtue does more to preserve youthfulness than all the pomades in Elizabeth Arden's.

Conscience is always enlightened when sin is seen as hurting someone we love. No sin can touch one of God's stars or silence one of His words, but it can cruelly wound His heart. Once the Penitent understands this truth, he can see why he has such emptiness and desolation and his soul: he hurt the one he loves.

A man who makes himself a god must hide; otherwise his false divinity will be unmasked.