A Voice for the Ages: Quotes from Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Archbishop Fulton Sheen was an American archbishop and media personality who became one of the most influential Catholic voices. He used modern media to evangelize with clarity, wit, and conviction.

He is known for his Emmy-winning TV show Life Is Worth Living and wrote over 70 books. Archbishop Fulton Sheen had a gift for making deep theological truths accessible to the average person and continues to inspire many today.

He is declared “Venerable” by the Church and is on the path to be declared a Saint. Catholics admire Fulton Sheen not only for his zealous preaching and defense of the faith, but also for engaging the modern world without compromising truth.

If you know Archbishop Fulton Sheen then you know that there is a rich treasure trove of beautiful teachings from him. Below are some of my favorite quotes gathered from his talks and books.

On Love of God

• “God could have forced faith on man’s mind and a higher love on His will, but He did not want to destroy human freedom.” 
  
• “You will never be happy if your happiness depends on getting solely what you want. Change the focus. Get a new center. Will what God wills, and your joy no man shall take from you.”
  
• “Someday we will thank God not only for what He gave us, but also for that which He refused.”
  
• “Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.”
  
• “The greatest love story of all time is contained in a tiny white Host.”
  
• “Prayer does not change God’s will, but it may change ours, that we become receptive to His blessings.”
  
• “God will judge me rather by how much I reflected Him, not only in work but in word and life.”
  
• “The less we connect the Providence of God with all that happens, the more we are upset with the smallest annoyances of daily life.”
  
• “The closer a person approaches God, the less worthy he feels.”

On Character & Moral Principles

• “Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.”
  
• “If you don’t behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.”
  
• “Criticism of others is an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked”.
  
• “Truth is intolerant of error, love is intolerant of hate”.
  
• “As men love God, they will also love their country.”
  
• “The wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their consciences. The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.”
  
• “Crisis does not create character, it reveals it.”

On Holiness

• “The holier and purer the life, the more it would attract malignity and hate.”
  
• “Nothing is more harmful to a man than his resistance to grace.”
  
• “To save souls we must be holy: God does not use dirty tools.”
  
• “God loves you despite your unworthiness. It is His love which will make you better, rather than your betterment which will make Him love you. Often during the day say: God loves me, and He is on my side, by my side.”
  
• “The more empty the soul is of self, the greater the room in it for God.”

• “It doesn’t require much time to make us saints. It requires only much love.”
  
• “Hidden in the vocation of Peter was the lesson: ‘Never despair. If you fail, start again. Launch out into deep waters.’ Duc in altum.”
  
• “They, and all who would be united with Him through this apostolic body, were to be in the world, but not of it.”
  
• “To live in the midst of the infection of the world and at the same time to be immunized from it is something that is impossible without grace.”
  
• “Prayer begins by talking to God, but it ends by listening to Him. In the face of Absolute Truth, silence is the soul’s language.”

On Sin & Forgiveness

• “Satan always tempts the pure – the others are already his.”
  
• “There is nothing wrong with you if you are tempted. You are not tempted because you are evil; you are tempted because you are human…Evil begins only when we open the door and consent to the temptation. Scripture praises the man who suffers temptations. When we resist temptations, we strengthen our character.”
  
• “Nothing in human experience is as efficacious in curing the memory and imagination as confession – it cleanses us of guilt and, if we follow the admonitions of Our Lord, we shall put completely out of mind, our confessed sins”.
  
• “Before the sin, Satan assures us that it is of no consequence; after the sin, he persuades us that it is unforgivable.”
  

On Catholicism

• “The Catholic faith is like a lion in a cage.You don’t need to defend it – you simply need to open the cage door.”
  
• “Most people today want a religion which suits the way they live, rather than the one which makes demands upon them. Religion thus becomes a luxury like an opera, not a responsibility like life.”
  
• “Judas was too materialistic to be concerned with the beauty of the deed. He failed to see that some offerings are so sacred that a price cannot be put upon them…What a contrast between the money box of Judas and the alabaster box of Mary; between the thirty pieces of silver, and the two hundred silver pieces; between true liberality and hypocritical interest in the poor. Judas became the spokesman of all those who through the centuries would protest the ornamentation of the Christian cult and would feel that, when the best of gold and jewels were given to the God Who made them, there was some slight made to the poor—not because they were interested in the poor, but because they were envious of that wealth. The chances are that if Judas had the two hundred silver pieces, he would not give them to the poor.”

On Mary

• “God, Who made the sun, also made the moon. The moon does not take away from the brilliance of the sun. All its light is reflected from the sun. So Mary reflects her Divine Son; without Him, she is nothing. With Him, she is the Mother of men.”
  
• “Mary receives praise as a mirror receives light: She stores it not, nor even acknowledged it, but makes it pass from her to God to whom is due all praise, all honor and thanksgiving.”
  
• “Let those who think that the Church pays too much attention to Mary give heed to the fact that our Blessed Lord Himself gave ten times as much of His life to her as He gave to His Apostles.”

On Love for Others

• “You may not like somebody, but you can still love him, because loving is a duty; it is good for your soul, and it also glorifies God. If you do an injury to someone you do not like, you will dislike him still more; if you do a favor to someone you do not like, you will love him more.”
  
• “The longer I live the more I become convinced that in the face of injustices we must begin to say I love. Kind deeds are not enough. We must learn to say I forgive.”
  
• “Love burdens itself with the wants and woes and losses and even the wrongs of others.”

On Knowledge

• “I would spend about thirty hours preparing every telecast, which meant that enough material was gathered to talk for an hour or more. As in breathing, there is always more oxygen outside of the body than that which is taken in by the lungs, so the knowledge that one has on a certain subject must be far greater than that which is imparted. Though I would forget this or that point which I intended to deliver, I could draw on the store of accumulated information to take its place.”
  
• “When I had completed the conditions for the agrégé of Louvain, I paid a visit to Cardinal Mercier. ‘Your Eminence, you were always a brilliant teacher; would you kindly give me some suggestions about teaching?’ ‘I will give you two: always keep current: know what the modern world is thinking about; read its poetry, its history, its literature; observe its architecture and its art; hear its music and its theater; and then plunge deeply into St. Thomas and the wisdom of the ancients and you will be able to refute its errors. The second suggestion: tear up your notes at the end of each year. There is nothing that so much destroys the intellectual growth of a teacher as the keeping of notes and the repetition of the same course the following year.'”

Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s Humor

• “On the occasion of the Emmy Awards every recipient thanked producers, directors, friends, colleagues and assistants. When my name was called out for an award, I was momentarily lost for words and then it struck me: since everyone was thanking others, I should say a word of thanks, too. ‘I wish to thank my four writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.’”
  
• “They say a woman’s mind is cleaner than a man’s because she changes it more often.”
  
• “Everybody takes Jonah very seriously… I might tell you that one day I was talking on this subject and somebody interrupted me and said, ‘Tell me. How could Jonah be in the belly of the whale for three days?’
  I said, “I don’t know. When I go to heaven, I’ll ask Jonah.”
  He said, ‘Suppose Jonah isn’t there?’
  Then I said, ‘You ask him.’”
  
• “I gave many lectures in Philadelphia and each year for a number of years, one was given at the Town Hall. One evening I lost my way and I asked a few boys for directions. They told me where it was and then they asked: ‘What are you going to do there?’
  I said: ‘I’m going to give a lecture.’
  ‘On what?’ they asked.
  I did not tell them the title of the lecture but simplified it by saying: “Boys, I’m going to talk on Heaven and how to get there. Would you like to come and find out?”
  They said: ‘You don’t even know the way to the Town Hall.'”
  
• “One day on a New York subway when the door opened at Forty-second Street a drunk got in and threw himself alongside of me and began reading a paper which I doubted very much he could see in his condition. Then he said to me: ‘How does a man get diabetes?’
  I said: ‘Oh, by getting drunk and paying no attention to his wife and children.’
  A moment later I was sorry for having made that quick diagnosis. I asked him: ‘Why did you want to know how a man got diabetes?’ He said: ‘I was just reading that the Pope had diabetes.'”
  
• “In a certain parish a couple had taken a lottery ticket, and they won. The husband however was getting along in years and was suffering from heart trouble. And the wife was afraid that if she told her husband that he had won $50,000 that he would really die that day.
  So she went to the pastor and she said, ‘Father, I wish you would break the news to him in such a way that would not kill him’.
  So the pastor spoke about many odd things and said to the man, ‘Suppose you won $50,000 in the lottery, what would you do with it?’
  Well he said, ‘I’d give it to you, Father’.
  Then the priest dropped dead.”

During my reversion, Archbishop Fulton Sheen played a huge role in helping me understand the faith better with his humor, wisdom, and deep theological insight. I’m hoping you find a deeper love for God through his teachings as I do every time I come back to it.

If you’re just discovering Archbishop Fulton Sheen, these are the top three books from him that I recommend:
– Life of Christ
– Treasure in Clay
– Go to Heaven

Please continue to pray for the canonization of Archbishop Fulton Sheen. 

Ven. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, pray for us –

And in the words of Fulton Sheen himself, “Bye now; and God love you!”
-D