Selections from the Writings of Fenelon: With a Memoir of His Life

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Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, 1831 - 304 pages

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Page 288 - The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. 35 Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.
Page 35 - Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
Page 121 - ... begin to cure them. We must neither flatter nor be impatient with ourselves, in the correction of our faults. Despondency is not a state of humility ; on the contrary it is the vexation and despair of a cowardly pride — nothing is worse ; whether we stumble or whether we fall, we must only think of rising again and going on in our course.
Page 106 - God, complain that he refuses to answer their prayers ! Ought they not to acknowledge, that it is their sins which have formed a thick cloud between Heaven and them, and that God has justly hidden himself from them ? How often has he recalled us from our wanderings ! How often, ungrateful as we are, have we been deaf to his voice, and insensible to his goodness ! He would make us feel, that we are blind and miserable when we forsake him ; he would teach us, by privation, the value of the blessings...
Page 266 - I must be violent about nothing; for it is dangerous either to perform the works of God with negligence or to appropriate them to ourselves by selflove and false zeal. In that case we act from our own individual feeling, and we do the work ill, for we get fretted and excited, and think only of success. The glory of God is the pretext that covers this illusion. Self-love, under the disguise of zeal, complains and thinks itself injured if it does not succeed. Almighty God, grant me Thy grace to be...
Page 70 - I cannot help laughing : such a one cannot persuade me : it is within myself, by consulting this inward teacher, that I must ascertain the truth of a proposition. Far from pronouncing judgment upon this teacher, we are in all cases judged by it. It is disinterested and superior to us. We may refuse to listen to it, and go astray from it ; but if we do listen, we cannot contradict it. There seem to be two kinds of reason within me ; one .is self, the other superior to it. That which is self, is very...
Page 117 - He must take from us what is most dear, lest we love it too much, lest we love it to the prejudice of our love for him. We weep, we despair, we groan in our spirits, and we murmur against God; but he leaves us to our sorrow, and we are saved; our present grief saves us from an eternal sorrow. He has placed the friends whom he has taken from us in safety, to restore them to us in eternity. He has deprived us of them, that he may teach us to love them with a pure love, a love that we may enjoy in his...
Page 295 - WE sleep in peace in the arms of God, when we yield ourselves up to His providence, in a delightful consciousness of His tender mercies ; no more restless uncertainties, no more anxious desires, no more impatience at the place we are in ; for it is God who has put us there, and who holds us in His arms. Can we be unsafe where He has placed us ? FRANCOIS DE LA MOTHE FENELON.
Page 37 - THE MIND OF MAN I CANNOT open my eyes without admiring the skill that everything in nature displays. A single glance enables me to perceive the hand that has made all things. Men accustomed to meditate upon abstract truths, and recur to first principles, recognize the Divinity, by the idea of him they find in their minds. But the more direct this road is, the more it is untrodden and neglected by common men, who follow their own imagination. It is so simple a demonstration, that from this very cause...
Page 291 - Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren," Peter continued, "see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.

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