Sheed Quotes & Sayings

It is of the very nature of partial seeing that we cannot see all the reconciliation of the parts we see, because it is only in the whole that they are one, and we do not see the whole. The word we form cannot wholly express God: only the Word He generates can do that. To be irked at this necessary darkness is as though we were irked at not being God. — Frank Sheed

A Mystery in short is an invitation to the mind. For it means that there is an inexhaustible well of Truth from which the mind may drink and drink again in the certainty that the well will never run dry, that there will always be water for the mind's thirst. — Frank Sheed

St. Thomas adopts a division of the nine choirs into three groups, according to their intellectual perfection and consequent nearness in being to God - Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; Dominations, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Other writers suggest different arrangements; and there is a mass of magnificent theological speculation as to the difference of function between one choir and another. But the Church has defined nothing upon this matter. — Frank Sheed

Sanity, remember, does not mean living in the same world as everyone else; it means living in the real world. — Frank Sheed

Every writer is a writer of the generation before. — Wilfrid Sheed

I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find. — Wilfrid Sheed

We cannot always analyse intimacy; but there is no mistaking it: we know the person quite differently. You do not learn intimacy, or reap the fruit of someone else's. You grow into it. In the Gospels one really can grow into this intimacy with Our Lord, precisely because the evangelists do not obtrude their own personalities. Anyhow, know Him we must. — Frank Sheed

For now, I'm supposing that all movements are equal, which they're not, except in this respect: that none of them gives a damn about artists beyond their immediate utility. Good movements will use a writer just as ruthlessly as bad ones; since they all fancy they have better things to do than worry about one man's artistic survival. — Wilfrid Sheed

One way to prevent conversation from being boring is to say the wrong thing. — Francis Joseph Sheed

Man is a rational animal. But that does not mean that he is a reasonable animal. It means only that he has reason, and therefore can misuse it. If he had not reason, he could not be unreasonable. But he has, and is. — Frank Sheed

But the plain truth about most of us is that we have let our intellects sink into a condition in which they have neither the muscles nor the energy nor the right habits for the job, nor any effective inclination towards it. We must see how they may be made fit. — Frank Sheed

Here the dialogue form breaks down. From the believer's mouth there emerges what can only be called a soup of words, sentences that begin and do not end, words that change into something else halfway. This goes on for a longer or shorter time. — Frank Sheed

Of course, history is only a muddle of facts and a fuddle of professors, and anyone who thinks it is one clear voice saying "Arise, sir Knight" deserves a life sentence in Camelot. — Wilfrid Sheed

As things now stand, the office is a slightly meaner battleground than the home. Male bosses seem to dominate their women underlings as they would never dominate their wives. — Wilfrid Sheed

People talk about talent as though it were some neutral substance that can be applied to anything. But talent is narrow and only functions with a very few subjects, which it is up to the writer to find. — Wilfrid Sheed

The theologian can ask far profounder questions because he knows more about God; by that same knowledge he knows that there are depths that he will never know. But to see why one cannot know more is itself a real seeing; there is a way of seeing the darkness which is a kind of light. — Frank Sheed

Now when a man is as right as that in his forecasts, there is some reason to think he may be right in his premises. — Frank Sheed

Eternity is not time at all. It is God's total possession of Himself. — Frank Sheed

What follows is very simple but revolutionary. If a carpenter makes a chair, he can leave it and the chair will not cease to be. For the material he used in its making has a quality called rigidity, by virtue of which it will retain its nature as a chair. The maker of the chair has left it, but the chair can still rely for continuance in existence upon the material he used, the wood. Similarly if the Maker of the Universe left it, the Universe too would have to rely for continuance in existence upon the material He used - nothing. In short, the truth that God used no material in our making carries with it the not-sufficiently-realized truth that God continues to hold us in being, and that unless He did so we should simply cease to be. — Frank Sheed

Sin, for instance, is an effort to gain something against the will of God; but the will of God is all that holds us in existence; — Frank Sheed

With what purpose did God make material beings and spiritual beings and men who are both? Each thing He made to serve Him, and to serve Him by being totally itself. But within this total ordering of everything towards God there is a division: for, under God, spiritual beings are an end in themselves, matter is not. The earth is made for man, whereas man is not similarly made for the angels but men and angels alike for God only: they can serve one another, but it is not the service of a means to an end, but reciprocal service of the children of one father: the immortal beings have no end but God Himself. — Frank Sheed

It is possible that the malice of writers has been overrated (by myself among others). Reading their ruminations on their craft, one sees why this writer could not possibly like that one, would indeed consider him a menace. Literature is a battleground of conflicting faiths, and nobler passions than envy are involved. — Wilfrid Sheed

We can never attain a maximum love of God with only a minimum knowledge of God — Frank Sheed

The actual Irish weather report is really a recording made in 1922, which no one has had occasion to change. "Scattered showers, periods of sunshine." — Wilfrid Sheed

Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of National Geographics, is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one goes back to one's Michener. — Wilfrid Sheed

Just as space has parts lying alongside one another, time has parts following one another. The Infinite has no parts, of either (or any other conceivable) sort. Eternity is not time, however much we may try to glorify the concept of time. — Frank Sheed

The 1930s - a Golden Age for American humor, mainly because everything else was going so badly. The wisecrack was the basic American sentence because there were so many things that could not be said any other way. — Wilfrid Sheed

Whether or not Big Brother is watching us, we certainly have to watch him, which may be even worse. — Wilfrid Sheed

To say that one sees the answer clearly would be to say that the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity is no mystery at all. We know that the Three Persons are not each other: we know that each is infinite and wholly God. — Frank Sheed

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities. — Wilfrid Sheed

Bernard Shaw phrased the experience very admirably: "When we learn something, it feels at first as if we have lost something." It is so, for instance, with a new stroke at tennis. Our old stroke had been a pretty incompetent affair, of the sort to make a professional laugh. But it had been ours, we were used to it, all our muscles were in the habit of it. The new stroke is doubtless better, but we are not in the way of it, we cannot do anything with it, and all the joy goes out of tennis - but only until we have mastered the new way. Then, quite suddenly, we find that the whole game is a new experience. — Frank Sheed

The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn't decide which one to jumo into. — Wilfrid Sheed

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English. — Wilfrid Sheed

Beware the fictionist writing his own life. Even candor becomes a strategy. — Wilfrid Sheed

For Catholics before Vatican II, the land of the free was pre-eminently the land of Sister Says-except, of course, for Sister, for whom it was the land of Father Says. — Wilfrid Sheed

Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test. — Wilfrid Sheed

Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy - but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of misery. — Wilfrid Sheed

What is sure is what God has revealed. With that we can start our exploration. In our exploring what is sure is that what the Church has defined is true, what the Church has condemned is false: Christ established a Church that could do us this essential service. For most of us, exploration will be only the effort to understand as much as is thus certain. And it is immensely rewarding. — Frank Sheed

The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them. — Wilfrid Sheed

How does one make a movie about decadence these days? Now that we're allowed to do it, it's too late. — Wilfrid Sheed

A mental habit has been annihilated, but at least the way towards a sounder mental habit is clear. For although we are made of nothing, we are made into something; and since WHAT WE ARE MADE OF does not account for us, we are forced to a more intense concentration upon THE GOD WE ARE MADE BY. — Frank Sheed

The first effect of realizing that one is made of nothing is a kind of panic-stricken insecurity. One looks round for some more stable thing to clutch, and in this matter none of the beings of our experience are any more stable than we, for at the origin of them all is the same truth: all are made of nothing. — Frank Sheed

Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets. — Wilfrid Sheed

One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers. — Wilfrid Sheed

All theology consists in finding out what is meant by the words "He is." Let us begin. — Frank Sheed

There is no external operation of the divine nature which is the work of one Person as distinct from the Others. — Frank Sheed

Even the God of Calvin never judged anyone as harshly as married couples judge each other. — Wilfrid Sheed

Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America. — Wilfrid Sheed

It is a fallacy to think that carping is the strongest form of criticism: the important work begins after the artist's mistakes have been pointed out, and the reviewer can't put it off indefinitely with sneers, although some neophytes might be tempted to try: "When in doubt, stick out your tongue" is a safe rule that never cost one any readers. But there's nothing strong about it, and it has nothing to do with the real business of criticism, which is to do justice to the best work of one's time, so that nothing gets lost. — Wilfrid Sheed

As you approach the presidency, no one seems worthy of it, since it wasn't designed for a human in the first place. — Wilfrid Sheed

The man who knows of the universe of spirit walks upright, the materialist hugs the earth. — Frank Sheed

I've won every debate I've had with an atheist, and never converted even a single one. — Francis Joseph Sheed