Francis of Assisi
Quotes
A wealthy merchant's son who dramatically renounced material comfort to embrace radical spiritual poverty and compassion. His profound love for nature, commitment to serving the marginalized, and creation of a new monastic order transformed Christian spirituality, emphasizing a direct, intimate connection with the divine through simplicity and unconditional love. Francis reimagined spiritual practice as a holistic experience of compassion, seeing the sacred in every living creature and challenging the hierarchical, often materialistic approach of the medieval Catholic Church.
Francis of Assisi
Quotes
A wealthy merchant's son who dramatically renounced material comfort to embrace radical spiritual poverty and compassion. His profound love for nature, commitment to serving the marginalized, and creation of a new monastic order transformed Christian spirituality, emphasizing a direct, intimate connection with the divine through simplicity and unconditional love. Francis reimagined spiritual practice as a holistic experience of compassion, seeing the sacred in every living creature and challenging the hierarchical, often materialistic approach of the medieval Catholic Church.
Pleased be you, my Lord, with all your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun, who is the day and through whom you give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendours and bears likeness of you, Most High One.
The brave unfortunate are our best acquaintance.
When we pray to God we must be seeking nothing - nothing.
....In this world I cannot see the Most High Son of God with my own eyes, except for His Most Holy Body and Blood.
Where there is darkness, let there be light.
All things of creation are children of the Father and thus brothers of man. ... God wants us to help animals, if they need help. Every creature in distress has the same right to be protected.
If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.
Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.
A promise is a child of the understanding and the will; the understanding begets it, the will brings it forth.
The greatest security we can have in this world that we are in the grace of God, does not consist in the feelings that we have of love to Him, but rather in an irrevocable abandonment of our whole being into His hands, and in a firm resolution never to consent to any sin great or small.
It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.
Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
Where there is injury let me sow pardon.
Nor did demons crucify Him; it is you who have crucified Him and crucify Him still, when you delight in your vices and sins.
You cannot all abandon your possessions, but at least you can change your attitude about them. All getting separates you from others; all giving unites to others.
Man should tremble, the world should vibrate, all heaven should be deeply moved when the Son of God appears on the altar in the hands of the priest.
A man has only so much knowledge as he puts to work.
You damned spirits! You can only do what the hand of God allows you to do.
Our actions are our own; their consequences belong to Heaven.
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the Final Judgment, there is a purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come. From this sentence, we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come.
What is it that stands higher than words? Action. What is it that stands higher than action? Silence.
