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Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.

Francois Fenelon

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Francois Fenelon
Age: 63 †
Born: 1651
Born: August 6
Died: 1715
Died: January 7
Catholic Priest
Clergyman
Cleric
Philosopher
Poet
Theologian
Writer
François de Salignac de La Mothe- Fénelon
Fénelon
Phenelon
Franz von Fenelon
Francis Fenelon
abbé de Fénélon
François Fénelon
François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
Facts
Mind
Narrows
Neatness
Exactness
Moderation
Carried
Extremes
Virtue

More quotes by Francois Fenelon

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All wars are civil ones for it is still man spilling his own blood, tearing out his own bowels.
Francois Fenelon
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God bears with imperfect beings even when they resist His goodness. We ought to imitate this merciful patience and endurance. It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of other people.
Francois Fenelon
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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.
Francois Fenelon
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To pray is to desire but it is to desire what God would have us desire.
Francois Fenelon
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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.
Francois Fenelon
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Real friends are our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow. It were almost to be wished that all true and faithful friends should expire on the same day.
Francois Fenelon
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If we were faultless, we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that we have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our neighbor's weaknesses, we should show our own imperfection, and this alarms our vanity.
Francois Fenelon
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We can often do more for other men by trying to correct our own faults than by trying to correct theirs.
Francois Fenelon
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A cross borne in simplicity, without the interference of self-love to augment it, is only half a cross. Suffering in this simplicity of love, we are not only happy in spile of the cross, but because of it for love is pleased in suffering for the Well Beloved, and the cross which forms us into His image is a consoling bond of love.
Francois Fenelon
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Had we not faults of our own, we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.
Francois Fenelon
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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.
Francois Fenelon
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The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of other people.
Francois Fenelon
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God felt, God tasted and enjoyed is indeed God, but God with those gifts which flatter the soul, God in darkness, in privation, in forsakenness, in sensibility, is so much God, that he is so to speak God bare and alone. Shall we fear this death, which is to produce in us the true divine life of grace?
Francois Fenelon
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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.
Francois Fenelon
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So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others.
Francois Fenelon
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Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are they who are stripped of every thing, even of their own wills, that they may no longer belong to themselves.
Francois Fenelon
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Let gratitude for the past inspire us with trust for the future.
Francois Fenelon
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Most people I ask little from. I try to give them much, and expect nothing in return and I do very well in the bargain.
Francois Fenelon
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O God, the creature knows not to what end Thou hast made Him teach him, and write in the depths of his soul that the clay must suffer itself to be shaped at the will of the potter.
Francois Fenelon
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I am not in the least surprised that your impression of death becomes more lively, in proportion as age and infirmity bring it nearer. God makes use of this rough trial to undeceive us in respect to our courage, to make us feel our weakness, and to keep us in all humility in His hands.
Francois Fenelon