Category: Fulton Sheen

Many people make the great mistake of aiming directly at pleasure; they forget that pleasure comes only from the fulfillment of a duty or obedience to a law–for man is made to obey the laws of his nature as inescapably as he must obey the laws of gravity. A boy enjoys eating ice cream because he fulfills one of the “oughts” of human nature: eating. If he eats more ice cream than the laws of his body sanction, he will no longer get the pleasure he seeks but the pain of a stomachache. To seek pleasure, regardless of the law, is to miss it.

Every earthly ideal is lost by being possessed. The more material you’re ideal, the greater the disappointment; the more spiritual it is, the less the disillusionment.

Change your entire point of view! Life is not a mockery. Disappointments are merely markers on the road of life, saying: “Perfect happiness is not here.” Though your passions may have been satisfied, you were never satisfied, because while your passions can find satisfaction in this world, you cannot.

I wonder if your Lord does not suffer more from our indifference than He did from the crucifixion.

It is not particularly difficult to find thousands who will spend two or three hours a day in exercising, but if you ask them to bend their knees to God in Five minutes of prayer, they protest that it is too long.

The Rosary is the best therapy for these distraught, unhappy, fearful, and frustrated souls precisely because it involves the simultaneous use of three powers: the physical, the vocal, and the spiritual, and in that order.

Evil may have its hour, but God will have His day.

But in a conflict between truth and darkness, the truth cannot lose.

It is characteristic of any decaying civilization that the great masses of the people are unconscious of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives. Men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because it involves too much self-accusation and principally because they have no standards outside of themselves y which to measure their times.

Deep sorrow does not come because one has violated a law, but only if one knows he has broken off the relationship with Divine Love.