Fulton J. Sheen was an American clergyman and television personality known for his engaging sermons and religious broadcasts. As a Catholic bishop and host of the popular television program "Life is Worth Living," Sheen became a prominent figure in American religious life. His ability to communicate complex theological concepts in an accessible manner made him a beloved and influential figure in American spirituality.
"Charity is to be measured, not by what one has given away, but by what one has left."
"Love is the key to the mystery. Love by its very nature is not selfish, but generous. It seeks not its own, but the good of others. The measure of love is not the pleasure it gives-that is the way the world judges it-but the joy and peace it can purchase for others."
"If you don't behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave."
"Close to the Cross was the only Apostle present, John, whose face was like a cast moulded out of love; Magdalen was there too, like a broken flower, a wounded thing. But foremost among all-God pity her!-was His own mother. Mary, Magdalen, John; innocence, penitence, and priesthood; the three types of souls forever to be found beneath the Cross of Christ."
"The evil in the world must not make me doubt the existence of God. There could be no evil if there were no God. Before there can be a hole in a uniform, there must be a uniform; before there is death, there must be life; before there is error, there must be truth; before there is a crime, there must be liberty and law; before there is a war, there must be peace; before there is a devil, there must be a God, rebellion against whom made the devil."
"No soul ever fell away from God without giving up prayer. Prayer is that which establishes contact with Divine Power and opens the invisible resources of heaven. However dark the way, when we pray, temptation can never master us. The first step downward in the average soul is the giving up of the practice of prayer, the breaking of the circuit with divinity, and the proclamation of one's owns self sufficiency."
"Once you have surrendered yourself, you make yourself receptive. In receiving from God, you are perfected and completed."
"Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book."
"Pride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals."
"Humanity cannot lift itself by its own bootstraps; there is no such thing as spontaneous generation; life does not come from crystals; poetry does not come from donkeys; international peace does not come from wars; social justice does not come from selfishness. With all our knowledge of chemistry we cannot make a human life in our laboratories because we lack the unifying, vivifying principal of a soul which comes only from God. Life is not a push from below; it is a gift from above. It is not the result of the necessary ascent of man but the loving descent of God."
"The science of a religious man must be scientific the religion of a scientific man must be religious."
"It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished."
"The difference between the love of a man and the love of a woman is that a man will always give reasons for loving, but a woman gives no reasons for loving."
"There are two ways of knowing how good God is: one is never to lose Him, and the other is to lose Him and then to find Him."
"Wars come from egotism and selfishness. Every macrocosmic or world war has its origin in microcosmic wars going on inside millions and millions of individuals."
"In the eleven months preceding the outbreak of World War II, 211 treaties of peace were signed. Were these treaties of peace written on paper, or were they written on the hearts of men? And we must ask ourselves as we hear of treaties being written today, whether the treaties of the UN are written with the full cognizance of the fact that those who sign them are responsible before God?"
"It is not the sanctuary that is in danger; it is civilization. It is not infallibility that may go down; it is personal rights. It is not the Eucharist that may pass away; it is freedom of conscience. It is not divine justice that may evaporate; it is the courts of human justice. It is not that God may be driven from His throne; it is that men may lose the meaning of home; For peace on earth will come only to those who give glory to God! It is not the Church that is in danger, it is the world!"
"Goodness by its nature is lovable and love finds it impossible not to pursue goodness."
"The deaf who deny they are deaf will never hear; the sinners who deny there is sin deny thereby the remedy of sin, and thus cut themselves off forever from Him Who came to redeem."
"Grace does not work like a penny in a slot machine. Grace will move you only when you want it to move you, and only when you let it move you. The supernatural order supposes the freedom of the natural order, but it does not destroy it."
"Judas became the spokesman of all those who through the centuries would protest the ornamentation of the Christian cult and would feel that, when the best of gold and jewels were given to the God Who made them, there was some slight made to the poor - not because they were interested in the poor, but because they were envious of that wealth."
"The egocentric is always frustrated, simply because the condition of self-perfection is self-surrender. There must be a willingness to die to the lower part of self, before there can be a birth to the nobler."
"Our Blessed Lord left the world without leaving any written message. His doctrine was Himself. Ideal and History were identified in Him. The truth that all other ethical teachers proclaimed, and the light that they gave to the world, was not IN them, but OUTSIDE them. Our Divine Lord, however, identified Divine Wisdom with Himself. It was the first time in history that it was ever done, and it has never been done since."
"The loves of all hearts are so many mirrors revealing their characters."
"What is discovered may be abused, but that does not mean the discovery was evil."
"Some religions draw by force of arms; He would draw by force of love. The attraction would not be His words, but Himself. It was His Person around which His teaching centered; not His teaching around which He would be remembered. 'Greater love than this no man hath' - that was the secret of His magnetism."
"In a like manner, as soon as we know the meaning of being and the meaning of nonbeing, we know that a thing cannot be and not be at one and the same time, and under the same formal consideration."
"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."
"Not only were the Jews expecting the birth of a Great King, a Wise Man and a Saviour, but Plato and Socrates also spoke of the Logos and of the Universal Wise Man 'yet to come'. Confucius spoke of 'the Saint'; the Sibyls, of a 'Universal King'; the Greek dramatist, of a saviour and redeemer to unloose man from the 'primal eldest curse'. All these were on the Gentile side of the expectation. What separates Christ from all men is that first He was expected; even the Gentiles had a longing for a deliverer, or redeemer. This fact alone distinguishes Him from all other religious leaders."
"When you think of the condition the world is in now you sometimes wish that Noah had missed the boat."
"Remember that every science is based upon an abstraction. An abstraction is taking a point of view or looking at things under a certain aspect or from a particular angle. All sciences are differentiated by their abstraction."
"The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The Tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction."
"Never forget that there are only two philosophies to rule your life: the one of the cross, which starts with the fast and ends with the feast. The other of Satan, which starts with the feast and ends with the headache."
"God's side is determined not by geography, but by those who do His will. If Germans, English, Japanese, and Americans prayed right, they would all be praying for the same intention: Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. And what is that Will? The reign of Justice and Charity in the hearts of men. Through a prayerful contemplation of war we will see not soldiers of different nations in combat, but one great family, quarreling, fighting, wounding, and all in need of the peace and charity of Christ which we hope to obtain by our supplications."