Fulton J. Sheen Quotes

The modern man is no longer a unity, but a confused bundle of complexes and nerves. He is so dissociated, so alienated from himself that he sees himself less as a personality than as a battlefield where a civil war rages between a thousand and one conflicting loyalties. There is no single overall purpose in his life. His soul is comparable to a menagerie in which a number of beasts, each seeking its own prey, turn one upon the other. Or he may be likened to a radio, that is tuned in to several stations; instead of getting any one clearly, it receives only an annoying static.<p>If the frustrated soul is educated, it has a smattering of uncorrected bits of information with no unifying philosophy. Then the frustrated soul may say to itself: "I sometimes think there are two of me a living soul and a Ph. D." Such a man projects his own mental confusion to the outside world and concludes that, since he knows no truth, nobody can know it. His own skepticism (which he universalizes into a philosophy of life) throws him back more and more upon those powers lurking in the dark, dank caverns of his unconsciousness. He changes his philosophy as he changes his clothes. On Monday, he lays down the tracks of materialism; on Tuesday, he reads a best seller, pulls up the old tracks, and lays the new tracks of an idealist; on Wednesday, his new roadway is Communistic; on Thursday, the new rails of Liberalism are laid; on Friday, he-hears a broadcast and decides to travel on Freudian tracks: on Saturday, he takes a long drink to forget his railroading and, on Sunday, ponders why people are so foolish as to go to Church. Each day he has a new idol, each week a new mood. His authority is public opinion: when that shifts, his frustrated soul shifts with it.

[P]eace of soul implies tranquillity of order, with material things ordered to the body, the body to the soul, the personality to neighbor and to God. Peace of mind is subjective tranquillity — a narrower thing. It requires great moral effort to attain peace of soul, but even those who are indifferent to right and wrong sometimes achieve peace of mind (which the Scriptures call "false peace").

There is not a single striving or pursuit or yearning of the human heart, even in the midst of the most sensual pleasures, that is not a dim grasping after the Infinite.

The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society.

All our anxieties relate to time. … The major problems of psychiatry revolve around an analysis of the despair, pessimism, melancholy, and complexes that are the inheritances of what has been or with the fears, anxieties, worries, that are the imaginings of what will be.

Before you deny God, ask yourself why you deny Him. Is it because of the way you live? A poem of Arthur Hugh Clough satirized those who wish there was no God because He interferes with their dishonesty, their lawlessness, or their license.

Atheism is not a doctrine; it is a cry of wrath.

When the record of any human life is set down, there are three pairs of eyes who see it in a different light. There is the life as I see it. as others see it, and as God sees it.

Hitler had no need of God: in his own conceit, he was a god.

Some will not look on suffering because it creates responsibility.

Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything.

Another instance of how our Lord associated Peter with himself was in the payment of the temple tax. It is the only time in scripture where God ever associates a human being with himself under the personal pronoun we.... Now at the time of the payment of the temple tax our blessed Lord told Peter to pay it, and he said to pay it “for me and thee.” Then he adds, "that we may not scandalize." Here he makes himself one with Peter. Peter is associated with the Master in a way that no one else can ever be associated. We — Christ and Peter. That is why papal encyclicals begin with the word we.

All my sermons are prepared in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. As recreation is most pleasant and profitable in the sun, so homiletic creativity is best nourished before the Eucharist. The most brilliant ideas come from meeting God face to face. The Holy Spirit that presided at the Incarnation is the best atmosphere for illumination. Pope John Paul II keeps a small desk or writing pad near him whenever he is in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament; and I have done this all my life — I am sure for the same reason he does, because a lover always works better when the beloved is with him.

The revolt of the modern child against his parents is a miniature of the revolt of the modern world against the memory of 1900 years of Christian culture and the great Hebrew, Grecian and Roman cultures which preceded them. Any respect for that tradition is called "reactionary," with the result that the modern soul has developed a commentator mentality which judges yesterday by today, and today by tomorrow. Nothing is more tragic in an individual who once was wise than to lose his memory, and nothing is more tragic to a civilization than the loss of its tradition.

If all things in this universe exist, it is because they participate in the Being of God, if there are some things with life, it is because they are reflections of the life of God; if there are beings endowed with intellect and will — like men and angels — it's because they are a participation of the Sovereign Intellect which is God.