St Francis Assisi Quotes & Sayings

Spare me therefore, your good intentions, your inner sensitivities, your unarticulated and unexpressed love. And spare me also these tedious psycho-historians which, by exposing the goodness inside the bad man, and the evil in the good-invariably establish a vulgar and perverse egalitarianism, as if the arrangement of what is outside and what inside makes no moral difference. — Willard Gaylin

Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success. — Oscar Wilde

And St. Francis said: 'My dear son, be patient, because the weaknesses of the body are given to us in this world by God for the salvation of the soul. So they are of great merit when they are borne patiently. — Francis Of Assisi

And St. Francis added: My dear and beloved Brother, the treasure of blessed poverty is so very precious and divine that we are not worthy to possess it in our vile bodies. For poverty is that heavenly virtue by which all earthy and transitory things are trodden under foot, and by which every obstacle is removed from the soul so that it may freely enter into union with the eternal Lord God. It is also the virtue which makes the soul, while still here on earth, converse with the angels in Heaven. It is she who accompanied Christ on the Cross, was buried with Christ in the Tomb, and with Christ was raised and ascended into Heaven, for even in this life she gives to souls who love her the ability to fly to Heaven, and she alone guards the armor of true humility and charity. — Francis Of Assisi

St. Francis of Assisi taught me that there is a wound in the Creation and that the greatest use we could make of our lives was to ask to be made a healer of it. — Alan Paton

The servants of God who had been a besieged garrison became a marching army; the ways of the world were filled as with thunder with the trampling of their feet and far ahead of that ever swelling host went a man singing; as simply he had sung that morning in the winter woods, where he walked alone. — G.K. Chesterton

St. Francis of Assisi had a saying, which was, "We are who we are in God's eyes and no more." We should keep this in mind when the spirit of vanity and pride want to rule us! How — Victoria Spalding

I've had the sort of day that would make St. Francis of Assisi kick babies. — Douglas Adams

The Lord called me by the way of simplicity and humility, and this way He hath shown me in truth for me and those who will believe and imitate me. And therefore I would that ye name not to me any rule, neither of St. Augustine, nor St. Benedict, nor of Bernard, nor any way or form of living, but that which was mercifully shown and given me by the Lord. — Francis Of Assisi

One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights. — Simone Weil

Ethics has not only to do with mankind but with the animal creation as well. This is witnessed in the purpose of St. Francis of Assisi. Thus we shall arrive that ethics is reverence for all life. This is the ethic of love widened universally. It is the ethic of Jesus now recognized as a necessity of thought ... Only a universal ethic which embraces every living creature can put us in touch with the universe and the will which is there manifest ... — Albert Schweitzer

There can be no "free market" without government. The "free market" does not exist in the wilds beyond the reach of civilization. Competition in the wild is a contest for survival in which the largest and strongest typically win. Civilization, by contrast, is defined by rules; rules create markets, and governments generate the rules. — Robert B. Reich

As St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century said it best, "Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. — Shawn Achor

The whole story of the universe is implicit in any part of it. The meditative eye can look through any single object and see, as through a window, the entire cosmos. Make the smell of roast duck in an old kitchen diaphanous and you will have a glimpse of everything, from the spiral nebulae to Mozart's music and the stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. The artistic problem is to produce diaphanousness in spots, selecting the spots so as to reveal only the most humanly significant of distant vistas behind the near familiar object. — Aldous Huxley

It is idle to complain that a society is infringing a moral code intended to make people behave like St. Francis of Assisi if the society retorts that it does not wish to behave like St. Francis, and considers it more natural and right to behave like the Emperor Caligula. When there is a genuine conflict of opinion, it is necessary to go behind the moral code and appeal to the natural law - to prove, that is, at the bar of experience, that St. Francis does in fact enjoy a freer truth to essential human nature than Caligula, and that a society of Caligulas is more likely to end in catastrophe than a society of Franciscans. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Praised be my Lord, for our sister water.
St. Francis of Assisi,
Canticle of the Sun — Francis Of Assisi

If some glorious angel suddenly descended through my living room ceiling and offered to take away the children I have and give me other, better children - more polite, funnier, nicer, smarter - I would cling to the children I have and pray away that atrocious spectacle. — Andrew Solomon

Three highballs, and I think I'm St. Francis of Assisi. — Dorothy Parker

I look at things and try to imagine what is possible and then hope to surpass those boundaries. — Michael Jackson

The process of my transformation came to a head with my discovery of St. Francis of Assisi during a pilgrimage I went on with a scout troop from my school. — Abbe Pierre

When I think of some of the great renewals in the church I think of folks like St. Francis and Clare of Assisi who, through their lifestyle, were challenging the patterns of materialism and militarism and it affected the Christianity of their age. — Shane Claiborne

St. Seraphim, like Francis of Assisi, talked to animals. One day two nuns saw him deep in conversation with a bear. The bears of the Russian forests are very ferocious, and the two women were terrified. But Seraphim reassured them and showed them that he who is sanctified lives in peace with all creation, just as Adam did before the Fall. — Olivier Clement

I don' mean to be at all ... St. Francis of Assisi or something, but anyone can shout obscenities. Why should I become like her? Why not think that sometimes- just sometimes- you can overcome evil with silence? And let people hear their hatefulness in their own ears, without distraction. Maybe goodness is enough to expose evil for what it really is, sometimes. Rather than trying to stop evil with more evil. Not that I'm good. I don't think I'm good. — Sylvain Reynard

Ly-di-ah! I sit beneath your window, laaaass, singing 'cause I loooove your a - "
"For the love of St. Francis of Assisi, someone call a vet. There is an injured animal screaming in pain outside," Charlotte interrupted the flow of music in ill-humor. — Michelle M. Pillow

The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them. — G.K. Chesterton

St. Francis of Assisi was hoeing his garden when someone asked what he would do if he were suddenly to learn that he would die before sunset that very day. "I would finish hoeing my garden," he replied. — Francis Of Assisi

Any psychology of sign systems will be part of social psychology - that is to say, will be exclusively social; it will involve the same psychology as is applicable in the case of languages. — Ferdinand De Saussure