Quotes from Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

Judas took the money back to the temple priests. So is it always. When we give up our Lord for any earthly thing sooner or later it disgusts us; we no longer wanted it.

Always touched with sympathy for human infirmities, we bear the burden of nations in our hearts.

The world blesses not the meek, but the vindictive; it praises not the one who turns the other cheek, but the one who renders evil for evil; it exalts not the humble, but the aggressive. Ideological forces have carried that spirit of violence, class-struggle, and the clenched fist to an extreme the like of which the world before has never seen.

As Our Lord obtained the first elements of His own human Body from a woman, so for the Eucharist He takes bread and wine from the earth. The bread and wine are thus representative of mankind. Two of the substances which have most widely nourished man are bread and wine. Bread has been called the marrow of the earth; wine, its very blood. In giving what has traditionally made our flesh and blood, we are equivalently offering all mankind on the paten.

The more rich a soul is on the inside, the less need it has of luxuries on the outside.

If we start (as we must) at the bottom of the ladder, having compassion on all men, nothing that happens to others is foreign to us. Their grief is our grief, their poverty our poverty.

Neglect of watching, prayer and mortifications produces an inner weariness about being too close to the Lord.

What happened on that Good Friday morning was that through propagandists the people became the masses. A democracy with a conscience became a mobocracy with power. When a democracy loses its moral sense, it can vote itself right out of democracy.

Be as generous as possible" is idle talk, if the generosity of the pastor has not preceded the generosity of his flock.

He who does not advance in perfection falls into imperfection. An unattended garden becomes full of weeds. Things do not remain the same by being left alone. White fences do not stay white; they gradually become gray and then black. There are no planes in the spiritual life. We go uphill or we go downhill. The moment we cease to row against the stream, the current carries us down river.

The crosses from the outside are bearable; the double-crosses inside are insoluble

It was only after Adam and Eve had by sin lost the inner effulgence of grace that they became conscious of the fact that they were naked. They felt the need for clothes to cover their newfound shame; previously their bodies had Glowed with a man mantle of charity woven by the fingers of God. It is almost universally true that excessive external display betrays an inner poverty and nakedness of the soul.