MASSILLON, Jean Baptiste Quotes
(1663-1742), French bishop
Time is short—your obligations are infinite.—Are your houses regulated, your children instructed, the afflicted relieved, the poor visited, the work of piety accomplished?
I would have none of that rigid and circumspect charity which is never exercised without scrutiny, and which always mistrusts the reality of the necessities laid open to it.
God should be the object of all our desires, the end of all our actions, the principle of all our affections, and the governing power of our whole souls.
The belief of a future state is a troublesome check on human passions, and one can never make libertines tranquil and resolute without having first made them unbelievers.
I love a serious preacher, who speaks for my sake and not for his own; who seeks my salvation, and not his own vainglory. He best deserves to be heard who uses speech only to clothe his thoughts, and his thoughts only to promote truth and virtue. Nothing is more detestable than a professed declaimer, who retails his discourses as a quack does his medicine.
To be proud and inaccessible is to be timid and weak.
Religion would not have enemies, if it were not an enemy to their vices.
There are some sins which are more justly to be denominated surprises than infidelities. To such the world should be lenient, as, doubtless, Heaven is forgiving.
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