Quotes from Francois Fenelon

A good historian is timeless; although he is a patriot, he will never flatter his country in any respect.

Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self-love.

God, who is liberal in all his other gifts, shows us, by the wise economy of His providence, how circumspect we ought to be in the management of our time, for He never gives us two moments together.

Let us pray God that He would root out of our hearts every thing of our own planting, and set out there, with His own hands, the tree of life, bearing all manner of fruits.

Let gratitude for the past inspire us with trust for the future.

If we had strength and faith enough to trust ourselves entirely to God; and follow Him simply wherever He should lead us, we should have no need of any great effort of mind to reach perfection.

We may be sure that it is the love of God only that can make us come out of self. If His powerful hand did not sustain us, we should not know how to take the first step in that direction.

When you come to be sensibly touched, the scales will fall from your eyes; and by the penetrating eyes of love you will discern that which your other eyes will never see.

All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.

Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

Had we not faults of our own, we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.

How rare it is to find a soul quiet enough to hear God speak.

Little opportunities should be improved.

Most people I ask little from. I try to give them much, and expect nothing in return and I do very well in the bargain.

The past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.

Speak, move, act in peace, as if you were in prayer. In truth, this is prayer.

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading I would spurn them all.

It is often our own imperfection which makes us reprove the imperfection of others; a sharp-sighted self-love of others

A good historian is timeless although he is a patriot, he will never flatter his country in any respect.

Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Children are very nice observers, and will often perceive your sligthest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

The art of cookery is the art of poisoning mankind, by rendering the appetite still importunate, when the wants of nature are supplied.