Frederick William Faber Quotes

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.

There is a great deal of self-will in the world, but very little genuine independence of character.

To children is there any happiness which is not also noise?

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.

We must have passed through life very unobservantly, if we have never perceived that a man is very much himself what he thinks of others.

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.

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.

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.

Kindness has converted more sinners than either zeal, eloquence, or learning.

If our thoughts break their bounds, and run out beyond the Church … to those without, I have no profession of faith to make about them, except that God is infinitely merciful to every soul, that no one ever has been, or ever can be, lost by surprise or trapped in his ignorance; and, as to those who may be lost, I confidently believe that our Heavenly Father threw His arms round each created spirit, and looked it full in the face with bright eyes of love, in the darkness of its mortal life, and that of its own deliberate will it would not have Him.

Holiness is an unselfing of ourselves.

This world is … only the porch of another and more magnificent temple of the Creator's majesty.

Words cannot tell the abhorrence nature has of the piecemeal captivity of little constraints. And as to little temptations, I can readily conceive a man having the grace to be roasted over a slow fire for our dearest Mother's Immaculate Conception or the Pope's Supremacy, who would not have the grace to keep his temper in a theological conversation on either of these points of the Catholic faith.

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.

Exactness in little duties is a wonderful source of cheerfulness.