Saint Francis de
Sales
Bishop of Geneva, doctor of the Church, Cofounder of the
Congregation of the Visitation
by SCTJM
Feast Day:
Jan. 24
Quotes from Saint Francis de Sales
“A heart full of love loves the commandments and the more
difficult it seems, the more sweet and pleasing they become
because it pleases the Beloved and gives Him more honor.”
“The most perfect degree of humility is to take pleasure in
contempt and humiliations. It is worth more before God contempt
suffered patiently for love of Him than a thousand fastings and
disciplines.”
“The true and solid devotion consists in the constant will,
resolve, promptness and activeness to execute what is pleasing
to God.”
“Let us not lower our eyes without humiliating at the same time
the heart; let not others think we want the last place without
truly desiring it.”
“Humility perfects us in what concerns God, and meekness in what
concerns our neighbor.”
“Know that the virtue of patience is what assures us the most
perfection.”
“Prayer, united with the Divine Sacrifice of the Holy Mass, has
an indescribable force; therefore by this means celestial favors
united to the Beloved abound in the soul.”
“If your eye is simple all of your body will be too.”
“The saints feel that Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is
diffuse and communicated totally in their souls and bodies. He
repairs all, modifies and vivifies; loves in the heart, hears in
the mind, sees in the eyes, speaks in the tongue; does all in
all, and then it is not we who live, but Jesus Christ who lives
in us.”
“Within the practices of religion, the Blessed Sacrament is what
the Sun is to the stars; it is truly the soul of the Christian
religion. It is the ineffable mystery that comprehends divine
charity, by which God, truly uniting to us, communicates to us
his magnificence, graces and favors.”
“We have to do everything for love, not out of force.”
“We have to allow our minds to be pierced by the thorns of
difficulties, and allow our hearts to be pierced by the lance of
contradiction; to drink of the bitterness and swallow the
vinegar, if this is God’s will.”
“To go to God there are many ways perhaps more excellent than
the one we follow; let us recognize its excellence, but let us
put forth all our efforts to progress in the way God has given
us, because it is there where He wants us to be.”
“Holiness is found in a path opened to us in our daily lives,
the duties of our daily lives are offered to us with unequal
attractiveness.”
“It is love that gives value to all our works; it is not by the
greatness or multiplicity of our works that we please God, but
by the love with which we do them.”
“All the good we do, we do for love of God, and the evil we
avoid, we avoid for love of God.”
“From the heart kiss frequently the crosses that our Lord Jesus
himself puts on your shoulders; don’t look to see if it is of
precious wood or perfumed; they are more of a cross when they
are made of the most despicable wood, the most rejected and
dirty.”
“What makes us holy and pleasing to God is what our vocation
demand of us, and not what our own will chooses.”
“We should perform all our actions by the obligation we owe them
or by the simple acceptance of God’s will, and this is to be in
calm or in storm.”
“Not only do we have to accept that God wounds us, but we have
to accept to be wounded where He desires; we have to let God
choose, because it is His right.”
“Nothing else purifies the intellect of ignorance and the will
of depraved affections better than prayer.”
“Love is the perfection of the spirit and charity is the
perfection of love.”
“The perfection of life is the perfection of love. Love is the
life of the soul.”
“Some are tormented searching for the way to love God. These
poor souls do not know there is no method to love Him apart from
doing what pleases Him.”
“Love is a movement, an effusion and a step from the heart
towards goodness.”
“We don’t have the love needed to love God as He deserves.”
“The soul cannot live without love. All depends on providing a
worthy object to love.”
“How is it possible to have a heart and not love with infinite
goodness?”
“Oh, eternal love! My soul requires you and chooses you
eternally.”
“Oh, to love or to die; or to die or to love.”
“Holy love establishes its dwelling in the highest and most
eminent region of the spirit.”
“The pleasure and the movement of the will towards kind things
is properly speaking, Love.”
“I wanted to love not knowing what to love. I have found he who
my soul searched for!”
“Complacency is an awareness of the heart; love is the action.”
“A sign that we love truly love God is that we love Him the same
in all occasions.”
