Quotes from John Vianney

Christian wife! Follow in the footsteps of the ideal of all womanhood, the Blessed Mother of God; in joy and in sorrow, she will be your advocate at the throne of her Son.

Do not try to please everybody. Try to please God, the angels, and the saints - they are your public.

God commands you to pray, but forbids you to worry.

You either belong wholly to the world or wholly to God.

The first thing about the angels that we ought to imitate, is their consciousness of the Presence of God.

All that we do without offering it to God is wasted.

If people would do for God what they do for the world, what a great number of Christians would go to Heaven.

The saints had no hatred, no bitterness; they forgive everything and think they deserve much more for their offenses against God.

Almighty God sends no trial without consolation.

We ought to ask the Blessed Virgin, the angels, and the saints to pray for us that we may receive the good God as worthily as it is possible for us to receive him.

Prayer is the inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself.

When our hands have touched spices, they give fragrance to all they handle. Let us make our prayers pass through the hands of the Blessed Virgin. She will make them fragrant.

If you are attached to the things of this earth, you should give alms sufficient to enable you to punish your avarice by depriving yourself of all that is not absolutely necessary for life.

We are each of us like a small mirror in which God searches for His reflection

Our soul is like a garden in which the weeds are ever ready to choke the good plants and flowers that have been sown in it. If the gardener who has charge of this garden neglects it, if he is not continually using the spade and the hoe, the flowers and plants will soon disappear.

When the heart is pure and simple it cannot help loving, because it has discovered the source of love which is God.

It is always springtime in the heart that loves God.

When we have been to Holy Communion, the balm of love envelops the soul as the flower envelops the bee.

The man of impure speech is a person whose lips are but an opening and a supply pipe which hell uses to vomit its impurities upon the earth.

The virtue of obedience makes the will supple... It inspires the courage with which to fulfill the most difficult tasks.

When we receive Holy Communion, we experience something extraordinary - a joy, a fragrance, a well-being that thrills the whole body and causes it to exalt.

There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious, He would have given it to us.