Quotes from Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

The greatest poverty of all—the spiritual poverty of seeming abandonment by God.

Pain is sacrifice without love. Sacrifice is pain with love. When we understand this, then we shall have an answer for those who feel that God should have let us sin without pain:

There would be a course on the philosophy of history; another year the philosophy of Marxism, another the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, etc. All of these were presented in the light of the thought of St. Thomas.

The porter who took my bag said to me: "Everybody knows you; it must be wonderful to be a bishop." And I said to him: "Suppose you had four hundred children and ten were very sick and five were dying. Would you not worry and stay awake at night? Well, that is my family. It is not as wonderful as you think.

Virginity among pagans meant a bodily condition, a physical intactness, a preserved isolation, to which there was nothing corresponding in the man. Hence pagans never glorified the virgin man, but only the virgin maid. But with Christianity, virginity ceased to mean physical intactness but unity. It meant not separation but relationship, not the will of another person alone, but also the will of God.

Peace also implies order, the subordination of the body to the soul, of the senses to reason, and of the creature to the Creator.

The more you are led by God's love, the more you become yourself and it is all done without ever losing your freedom.

Yet to be daily committed to the greatest of all wars—the one waged within.

New Paganism may be defined as an outlook on life that holds to the sufficiency of human science without faith, and the sufficiency of human power without grace. In other words, its two tenets are Scientism which is a deification of the experimental method, and Humanism, which is a glorification of a man who makes God to his own image and likeness.

We hate others, and call it "zeal"; we flatter others because of what they can do for us, and call it "love"; we lie to them, and call it "tact.

Here is the answer to the riddle of love. Love implies relation. If lived in isolation, it becomes selfishness; if absorbed in collectivity, it loses its personality and, therefore, the right to love.

Do not postpone relationship with this law simply because you cannot fathom its mystery intellectually.