Fulton J. Sheen

Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.

— Fulton J. Sheen

If there is continuity in the universe, it is fitting that there should be intelligent beings without bodies which are called angels.

— Fulton J. Sheen

If all things in this universe exist, it is because they participate in the Being of God, if there are some things with life, it is because they are reflections of the life of God; if there are beings endowed with intellect and will — like men and angels — it's because they are a participation of the Sovereign Intellect which is God.

— Fulton J. Sheen

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance — it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.

— Fulton J. Sheen

Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil … a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons … never to truth.

— Fulton J. Sheen

There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church — which is, of course, quite a different thing.

— Fulton J. Sheen

The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law.

— Fulton J. Sheen

All our anxieties relate to time. … The major problems of psychiatry revolve around an analysis of the despair, pessimism, melancholy, and complexes that are the inheritances of what has been or with the fears, anxieties, worries, that are the imaginings of what will be.

— Fulton J. Sheen

The only argument the world will listen to now is the argument of personal holiness. It has heard all the rest and rejected them.

— Fulton J. Sheen

Some will not look on suffering because it creates responsibility.

— Fulton J. Sheen

Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything.

— Fulton J. Sheen

When the record of any human life is set down, there are three pairs of eyes who see it in a different light. There is the life as I see it. as others see it, and as God sees it.

— Fulton J. Sheen

Unless souls are saved, nothing is saved; there can be no world peace unless there is soul peace. World wars are only projections of the conflicts waged inside the souls of men and women, for nothing happens in the external world that has not first happened within a soul.

— Fulton J. Sheen

Christian theology is, in a certain sense, a psychology, since its primary interest is the soul, the most precious of things. Our Lord balanced a universe against a soul and found the soul worth more than gaining a world.

— Fulton J. Sheen

[N]o man hates God without first hating himself.

— Fulton J. Sheen

Anxiety increases in direct ratio and proportion as man departs from God.

— Fulton J. Sheen

There are no plains in the spiritual life; we are either going uphill or coming down. Furthermore the pose of indifference is only intellectual. The will must choose. And even though an "indifferent" soul does not positively reject the infinite, the infinite rejects it.

— Fulton J. Sheen

All intense interest in luxury is a mark of inner poverty. The less grace there is in the soul, the more ornament must be on the body.

— Fulton J. Sheen

It is assumed by many reformers that the principal and major cause of unhappiness is economic insecurity, but this theory forgets that there are economic problems only because men have not solved the problems of their own souls. Economic disorder is a symptom of spiritual disorder.

— Fulton J. Sheen

There is not a single striving or pursuit or yearning of the human heart, even in the midst of the most sensual pleasures, that is not a dim grasping after the Infinite.

— Fulton J. Sheen

[T]here is a tremendous egotism and conceit in those popular articles and lectures entitled,"My Idea of Religion," or "My Idea of God." An individual religion can be as misleading and uninformed as an individual astronomy or an individual mathematics.

— Fulton J. Sheen

By professing no ideal in morality, these nice people can never be accused of not living up to their creed. This is the great advantage that they have over the Christians — whose creed is so lofty that they can often and truly be accused of failing to meet its demands.

— Fulton J. Sheen

We find only what we seek: nature has many secrets to give us, but she will not surrender them until we sit down patiently before her and obey her laws. Only by such submission do we receive.

— Fulton J. Sheen

In contrast to the pride of those who deny their guilt to escape self-criticism is the humility of God, who made a world which added not to His glory and then made man to criticize Him.

— Fulton J. Sheen

By denying any ultimate standard outside of self, one can escape all self-blame and go through life on a perpetual mission of face saving.

— Fulton J. Sheen

[H]e is of the intelligentsia (which means he has been educated beyond his intelligence).

— Fulton J. Sheen

[P]eace of soul implies tranquillity of order, with material things ordered to the body, the body to the soul, the personality to neighbor and to God. Peace of mind is subjective tranquillity — a narrower thing. It requires great moral effort to attain peace of soul, but even those who are indifferent to right and wrong sometimes achieve peace of mind (which the Scriptures call "false peace").

— Fulton J. Sheen

Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.

— Fulton J. Sheen

We justify want of faith by saying, "I don't go to church, but I am better than those who do," as one might say, "I don't pay taxes or serve the nation, but I am better than those who do."

— Fulton J. Sheen

The very good never believe themselves very good, because they are judging themselves by the Ideal.

— Fulton J. Sheen

Right is right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong.

— Fulton J. Sheen

Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man.

— Fulton J. Sheen

The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society.

— Fulton J. Sheen

One function of the angels is illumination, and the other function is that of being a guardian.

— Fulton J. Sheen

You have a chance to move in far better society than the Joneses. Why worry about keeping up with the Joneses? Keep up with the Angels and you'll be far wiser and happier.

— Fulton J. Sheen

There are angels near you to guide you and protect you, if you would but invoke them. It is not later than we think, it is a bigger world than we think.

— Fulton J. Sheen

Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?

— Fulton J. Sheen

Knowing belongs to man's intellect or reason; loving belongs to his will. The object of the intellect is truth; the object of the will is goodness or love.

— Fulton J. Sheen

Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?

— Fulton J. Sheen