Top 150 François Fénelon Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “There is never any peace for those who resist God.”

— François Fénelon

102. “There is but one way in which God should be loved, and that is to take no step except with Him and for Him, and to follow with a generous self-abandonment every thing which He requires.”

— François Fénelon

103. “The great point is to renounce your own wisdom by simplicity of walk, and to be ready to give up the favor, esteem, and approbation of every one, whenever the path in which God leads you passes that way.”

— François Fénelon

104. “How does our will become sanctified? By conforming itself unreservedly to that of God.”

— François Fénelon

105. “How dangerous it is for our salvation, how unworthy of God and of ourselves, how pernicious even for the peace of our hearts, to want always to stay where we are! Our whole life was only given us to advance us by great strides toward our heavenly country.”

— François Fénelon

106. “Little opportunities should be improved.”

— François Fénelon

107. “To pray is to desire; but it is to desire what God would have us desire.”

— François Fénelon

108. “Pity enlarges the heart.”

— François Fénelon

109. “Even if no command to pray had existed, our very weakness would have suggested it.”

— François Fénelon

110. “We may be sure that it is the love of God only that can make us come out of self. If His powerful hand did not sustain us, we should not know how to take the first step in that direction.”

— François Fénelon

111. “The past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.”

— François Fénelon

112. “The greatest defect of common education is, that we are in the habit of putting pleasure all on one side, and weariness on the other; all weariness in study, all pleasure in idleness.”

— François Fénelon

113. “Temptations are a file which rub off much of the rust of our self-confidence.”

— François Fénelon

114. “The history of the world suggests that without love of God there is little likelihood of a love for man that does not become corrupt.”

— François Fénelon

115. “Were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be.”

— François Fénelon

116. “As a general rule, those truths which we highly relish, and which shed a degree of practical light upon the things which we are required to give up for God, are leadings of Divine grace, which we should follow without hesitation.”

— François Fénelon

117. “There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.”

— François Fénelon

118. “Frequently a big advantage can be gained by knowing how to give in at the right moment.”

— François Fénelon

119. “All wars are civil ones; for it is still man spilling his own blood, tearing out his own bowels.”

— François Fénelon

120. “He who prays without confidence cannot hope that his prayers will be granted.”

— François Fénelon

121. “How desirable is this simplicity! Who will give it to me? I will quit all else; it is the pearl of great price.”

— François Fénelon

122. “Nothing marks so much the solid advancement of a soul, as the view of one’s wretchedness without anxiety and without discouragement.”

— François Fénelon

123. “I believe that we are conforming to the divine order and the will of Providence when we are doing even indifferent things that belong to our condition.”

— François Fénelon

124. “The greater our dread of crosses, the more necessary they are for us.”

— François Fénelon

125. “The greatest of all crosses is self. If we die in part every day, we shall have but little to do on the last. These little daily deaths will destroy the power of the final dying.”

— François Fénelon

126. “We may as well tolerate all religions, since God Himself tolerates all.”

— François Fénelon

127. “The art of cookery is the art of poisoning mankind, by rendering the appetite still importunate, when the wants of nature are supplied.”

— François Fénelon

128. “We are not to choose the manner in which our blessings shall be bestowed.”

— François Fénelon

129. “Our piety must be weak and imperfect if it do not conquer our fear of death.”

— François Fénelon

130. “This is the love that does all things; that brings to pass even the evils we suffer; so shaping them that they are but instruments of preparing the good which, as yet, has not arrived.”

— François Fénelon

131. “The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of other people.”

— François Fénelon

132. “There are two principal points of attention necessary for the preservation of this constant spirit of prayer which unites us with God; we must continually seek to cherish it, and we must avoid everything that tends to make us lose it.”

— François Fénelon

133. “Let us often think of our own infirmities, and we shall become indulgent toward those of others.”

— François Fénelon

134. “Had we not faults of our own, we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.”

— François Fénelon

135. “Crosses are of no use to us but inasmuch as we yield ourselves up to them and forget ourselves.”

— François Fénelon

136. “God’s treasury where He keeps His children’s gifts will be like many a mother’s store of relics of her children, full of things of no value to others, but precious in His eyes for the love’s sake that was in them.”

— François Fénelon

137. “As long as anything in this world means anything to you, your freedom is only a word. You are like a bird that is held by a leash; you can only fly so far.”

— François Fénelon

138. “Fear is like the strong medicine used to fight serious diseases; it purges, but it also alters your temperament and wears out the body organs. A person who is driven by fear will always be the weaker for it.”

— François Fénelon

139. “Good taste rejects excessive nicety.”

— François Fénelon

140. “Prayer is so necessary, and the source of so many blessings, that he who has discovered the treasure cannot be prevented from having recourse to it, whenever he has an opportunity.”

— François Fénelon

141. “O Lord, I do most cheerfully commit all unto Thee.”

— François Fénelon

142. “Nothing is so costly as the pursuit of a cure for imaginary ills.”

— François Fénelon

143. “When kings interfere in matters of religion, they enslave instead of protecting it.”

— François Fénelon

144. “We are never less alone than when we are in the society of a single, faithful friend; never less deserted than when we are carried in tne arms of the All-Powerful.”

— François Fénelon

145. “The youth who, like a woman, loves to adorn his person, has renounced all claim to wisdom and to glory; glory is due to those only who dare to associate with pain, and have trampled pleasure under their feet.”

— François Fénelon

146. “If we were faultless we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate.”

— François Fénelon

147. “God would behold in you a simplicity which will contain so much the more of His wisdom as it contains less of your own.”

— François Fénelon

148. “God, who is liberal in all his other gifts, shows us, by the wise economy of His providence, how circumspect we ought to be in the management of our time, for He never gives us two moments together.”

— François Fénelon

149. “When tempted, the shortest and surest way is to act like a little child at the breast; when we show it a frightful monster, it shrinks back and buries its face in its mother’s bosom, that it may no longer behold it.”

— François Fénelon

150. “God has not chosen to save us without crosses; as He has not seen fit to create men at once in the full vigor of manhood, but has suffered them to grow up by degrees amid all the perils and weaknesses of youth.”

— François Fénelon