Frederick William Faber Quotes

The habit of judging is so nearly incurable, and its cure is such an almost interminable process, that we must concentrate ourselves for a long while on keeping it in check; and this check is to be found in kind interpretations.… We must grow to something higher and something truer than a quickness in detecting evil.

I have no cares, O blessed Will!
For all my cares are Thine;
I live in triumph, Lord! for Thou
Hast made Thy triumphs mine.

How are we to overcome temptations? Cheerfulness is the first thing, cheerfulness the second, and cheerfulness the third. The devil is chained. He can bark, but he cannot bite, unless we go up to him and let him do so.

Faith is a letting down our nets into the untransparent deeps at the divine command, not knowing what we shall take.

The very attempt to be like our dearest Lord is already a well-spring of sweetness within us, flowing with an easy grace over all who come within our reach.

There is hardly ever a complete silence in our souls. God is whispering to us wellnigh incessantly. Whenever the sounds of the world die out in the soul or sink low, then we hear these whisperings of God. This is so invariable that we come to believe he is always whispering to us, only that we do not always hear, because of the hurry, noise, and distraction which life causes as it rushes on.

No kind action ever stopped with itself. Fecundity belongs to it in its own right. One kind action leads to another. By one we commit ourselves to more than one. Our example is followed. The single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make fresh trees, and the rapidity of the growth is equal to its extent. But this fertility is not confined to ourselves, or to others who may be kind to the same person to whom we have been kind. It is chiefly to be found in the person himself whom we have benefited. This is the greatest work which kindness does to others,—that it makes them kind themselves.

A spiritual life without a very large allowance of disquietude in it is no spiritual life at all. It is but a flattering superstition of self-love.

I find great numbers of moderately good people who think it fine to take scandal. They regard it as a sort of evidence of their own goodness, and of their delicacy of conscience; while in reality it is only a proof either of their inordinate conceit or of their extreme stupidity.

Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or kind deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they imply also a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still.

Labour itself is but a sorrowful song,
The protest of the weak against the strong.

All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that are to be said about Him. Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done; but that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more.

Hark! Hark! my soul, angelic songs are swelling
O’er earth’s green fields and ocean’s wave-beat shore;
How sweet the truth those blessed strains are telling
Of that new life when sin shall be no more!

See! he sinks
Without a word; and his ensanguined bier
Is vacant in the west, while far and near
Behold! each coward shadow eastward shrinks,
Thou dost not strive, O sun, nor dost thou cry
Amid thy cloud-built streets.

Labor is sweet, for Thou hast toiled,
And care is light, for Thou hast cared;
Let not our works with self be soiled,
Nor in unsimple ways ensnared.
Through life's long day and death's dark night,
O gentle Jesus! be our light.