Venerable Fulton J. Sheen — His Wisdom in 25 Quotes

Venerable Fulton Sheen was an American archbishop known for his preaching and his work on television and radio. His cause for canonization was opened in 2002. In June 2012, Pope Benedict XVI officially recognized a decree from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints stating that Sheen lived a life of "heroic virtues" – an important step towards beatification – thus receiving the designation venerable. The following quotes are from Venerable Sheen, a pastor of souls of great breadth and wisdom. (Quotation #2 is far and away our favorite.)

If you don't behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.

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Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.

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Far better it is for you to say: "I am a sinner," than to say: "I have no need of religion." The empty can be filled, but the self-intoxicated have no room for God.

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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.

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Never forget that there are only two philosophies to rule your life: the one of the cross, which starts with the fast and ends with the feast. The other of Satan, which starts with the feast and ends with the headache. 

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Once you have surrendered yourself, you make yourself receptive. In receiving from God, you are perfected and completed.

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It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished. 

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Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked.

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

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Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths.

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Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour" of childbearing are unhappy and frustrated. They never discovered the joys of marriage because they refused to surrender to the obligation of their state. In saving themselves, they lost themselves! 

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

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The egocentric is always frustrated, simply because the condition of self-perfection is self-surrender. There must be a willingness to die to the lower part of self, before there can be a birth to the nobler.

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Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man. 

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Patience is power. Patience is not an absence of action; rather it is "timing" it waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way.

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Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.

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When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.

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Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday.

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There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be. 

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The difference between the love of a man and the love of a woman is that a man will always give reasons for loving, but a woman gives no reasons for loving.

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Books are the most wonderful friends in the world. When you meet them and pick them up, they are always ready to give you a few ideas. When you put them down, they never get mad; when you take them up again, they seem to enrich you all the more.

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You must remember to love people and use things, rather than to love things and use people. 

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In every friendship hearts grow and entwine themselves together, so that the two hearts seem to make only one heart with only a common thought. That is why separation is so painful; it is not so much two hearts separating, but one being torn asunder. 

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A teacher who cannot explain any abstract subject to a child does not himself thoroughly understand his subject; if he does not attempt to break down his knowledge to fit the child's mind, he does not understand teaching. 

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A woman gets angry when a man denies his faults, because she knew them all along. His lying mocks her affection; it is the deceit that angers her more than the faults.