Quotes from Fulton J. Sheen

The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars;

What is the difference between work and play?" and he answers: "Work has a purpose, play has none, but there must be time in life for purposeless things, even foolishness.

An unsuffering Christ Who did not freely pay the debt of human guilt would be reduced to the level of an ethical guide;

Our hearts will let in God, if we purify them. Blessings come to those who put themselves in an environment of love.

As in Eden there took place the first espousals of man and woman, so, in her, there took place the first espousals of God and man, eternity and time, omnipotence and bonds. In

Men are like so many books issuing from the Divine press, and if nothing else be written on them, at least the name of the Author is indissolubly engraved on the title page. God is like the watermark on paper, which may be written over without ever being obscured.

Totalitarians are fond of saying that Christianity is the enemy of the State—a euphemistic way of saying an enemy of themselves.

So when God pulls down the curtain on the drama of the world's redemption, He will not ask what part we played, but only how well we played the role assigned to us.

Divinity is always where one least expects to find it.

Real love uses freedom to attach itself unchangeably to another.

The soul that hated truth (to speak in inadequate human terms) would suffer more in heaven than in hell; analogically speaking, the want of the Spirit of Christ makes us shrink from His companionship.

The priest must not postpone this union with the Holy Spirit to a more convenient season (Acts 24:25). If he neglects growth, decay sets in. There comes a time when it is too late to repent, even to ask for a drop of water to 'cool my tongue' (Lk 16:24).

Judas took the money back to the temple priests. So is it always. When we give up our Lord for any earthly thing sooner or later it disgusts us; we no longer wanted it.

Always touched with sympathy for human infirmities, we bear the burden of nations in our hearts.

Those who call black black and white white are sentenced for intolerance. Only the grays live.

The world blesses not the meek, but the vindictive; it praises not the one who turns the other cheek, but the one who renders evil for evil; it exalts not the humble, but the aggressive. Ideological forces have carried that spirit of violence, class-struggle, and the clenched fist to an extreme the like of which the world before has never seen.

As Our Lord obtained the first elements of His own human Body from a woman, so for the Eucharist He takes bread and wine from the earth. The bread and wine are thus representative of mankind. Two of the substances which have most widely nourished man are bread and wine. Bread has been called the marrow of the earth; wine, its very blood. In giving what has traditionally made our flesh and blood, we are equivalently offering all mankind on the paten.

The more rich a soul is on the inside, the less need it has of luxuries on the outside.

If we start (as we must) at the bottom of the ladder, having compassion on all men, nothing that happens to others is foreign to us. Their grief is our grief, their poverty our poverty.

Neglect of watching, prayer and mortifications produces an inner weariness about being too close to the Lord.

What happened on that Good Friday morning was that through propagandists the people became the masses. A democracy with a conscience became a mobocracy with power. When a democracy loses its moral sense, it can vote itself right out of democracy.

Celibacy is not the absence of a passion; it is rather the intensity of a passion.

Be as generous as possible" is idle talk, if the generosity of the pastor has not preceded the generosity of his flock.

He who does not advance in perfection falls into imperfection. An unattended garden becomes full of weeds. Things do not remain the same by being left alone. White fences do not stay white; they gradually become gray and then black. There are no planes in the spiritual life. We go uphill or we go downhill. The moment we cease to row against the stream, the current carries us down river.