FRANCOIS FENELON

Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.

Genuine good taste consists in saying much in few words, in choosing among our thoughts, in having order and arrangement in what we say, and in speaking with composure.

If we were faultless we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate.

All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Little opportunities should be improved.

Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

Had we not faults of our own, we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.

A good historian is timeless; although he is a patriot, he will never flatter his country in any respect.

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.

Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.

Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses remedies.

Men are very much to be pitied in that they are to be governed by a king who is but a man like them; for it would require Gods to reform men. But kings are not less to be pitied, since being but men, that are weak and imperfect, they are to govern this innumerable multitude of corrupt and deceitful men.

All the human kind is but one family, dispersed over the face of the whole earth; all men are brothers, and ought to love each other as such.

The good historian is not for any time or any country: while he loves his fatherland, he never flatters it in anything.

Peace treaties signed by the vanquished are not freely signed. Men sign with a knife at their throat, they sign in spite of themselves, in order to avoid still greater losses

There is never any peace for those who resist God.

Mankind, by the perverse depravity of their nature, esteem that which they have most desired as of no value the moment it is possessed, and torment themselves with fruitless wishes for that which is beyond their reach.

God felt, God tasted and enjoyed is indeed God, but God with those gifts which flatter the soul, God in darkness, in privation, in forsakenness, in sensibility, is so much God, that he is so to speak God bare and alone. Shall we fear this death, which is to produce in us the true divine life of grace?

Good taste rejects excessive nicety.

To be faithful in prayer it is indispensable that we arrange all the activities of the day with a regularity that nothing can disturb

This poor world, the object of so much insane attachment, we are about to leave; it is but misery, vanity, and folly; a phantom--the very fashion of which "passeth away.

Never let us be discouraged with ourselves. It is not when we are conscious of our faults that we are the most wicked; on the contrary, we are less so. We see by a brighter light; and let us remember for our consolation, that we never perceive our sins till we begin to cure them.

If we had strength and faith enough to trust ourselves entirely to God; and follow Him simply wherever He should lead us, we should have no need of any great effort of mind to reach perfection.

Oh! how seldom the soul is silent, in order that God may speak.