Alban Butler > Quotes

“St. Bonaventure, pointing to his crucifix before him, said, “This is the source of all my knowledge. I study only Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“Once the saint saw in a vision the whole earth covered so thick with snares, that it seemed scarce possible to set down a foot without falling into them. At this sight he cried out, trembling: “Who, O Lord, can escape them all?” A voice answered him: “Humility, O Antony!”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“The saint shows (Hom. 86, p. 810) the malice and danger of small faults wilfully committed, which many are apt to make slight of; but from such the most dreadful falls take their rise.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“In Hom. 12, we have an excellent instruction on that important maxim in a spiritual life, That we must never think how far we have run, but what remains of our course, as in a race a man thinks only on what is before him. It will avail nothing to have begun, unless we finish well our course”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“In 381, he attended the general council held at Constantinople, and joined the other bishops in condemning the Macedonian heretics.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“He was exceedingly cautious in conferring holy orders. He ordained but few, neither was it without the strictest scrutiny passed upon all their qualifications for the priesthood.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“The only affair which a Christian has in this world, and in which consists all his happiness and joy, is to seek God, to attain to the perfect possession of his grace and love, and in all things most perfectly to do his will. By this disposition of heart he is raised above all created things, and united to the eternal and unchangeable object of his felicity. He receives the good things of this world with gratitude to the Giver, but always with indifference; leaves them with joy, if God requires that sacrifice at his hands; and, in his abundance, fears not so much the flight of what he possesses as the infection of his own heart, or lest his affections be entangled by them. Such attachments are secretly and imperceptibly contracted, yet are ties by which the soul is held captive, and enslaved to the world. Only assiduous prayer and meditation on heavenly things, habitual self-denial, humble distrust and watchfulness, and abundant almsdeeds proportioned to a person’s circumstances, can preserve a soul from this dangerous snare amidst worldly affluence. To these means is that powerful grace annexed. This disengagement of the heart, how sincere soever, usually acquires a great increase and perfection by the actual sacrifice of earthly goods, made with heroic sentiments of faith and divine love, when God calls for it. Such an offering is richly compensated by the most abundant spiritual graces and comforts at present, and an immense weight of eternal glory in the next life.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“(Helmold,1. 6, c. 49) Henry, king of the Sclavi, being dead, and his two sons, St. Canut his nephew succeeded, paid homage to the emperor Lothaire II. and was crowned by him king of the Obotrites, or western Sclavi. St. Canut was much honored by that emperor, in whose court he had spent part of his youth. Valor, prudence, zeal, and goodness, endeared him to all. He was slain by conspiracy of the jealous Danes, the 7th of January, 1130, and canonized in 1171. His son became duke of Sleswig, and in 1158 king of Denmark, called Valdemar I. and the Great, from his virtuous and glorious actions.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“Nothing can have so prevalent a power to still the agitation of passion in the breast, nothing is so fit to induce a smooth and easy flow, and a constant evenness of temper, as a frequent application to the throne of grace.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“The example of all the saints confirms the fundamental maxim of our divine Redeemer, that the foundation of all solid virtue and of true sanctity, is to be laid by subduing the passions and dying to ourselves. Pride, sensuality, covetousness, and every vice must be rooted out of the heart, the senses must be mortified, the inconstancy of the mind must be settled, and its inclination to roving and dissipation fixed by recollection, and all depraved affections curbed.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“Kings and subjects, rich and poor, reciprocally depend upon each other; and it is the command of God that every one perform well the part which is assigned him.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“He who has charity is far from all sin.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“The motive of revenge is criminal if it creeps into the breast even in demanding the just punishment of a delinquent; much more if it push men to vindicate their own cause themselves by returning injury for injury, and wreaking wrongs on those that inflicted them.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“One morning while he was making ready a mess of beans for his community’s dinner, he happened to be thus ravished in spirit, and stood for a considerable time with his hand in the beans, having his mind absorbed in God, and tears streaming from his eyes, fell into the vessel of beans before him. The duke of Adria, or Atria, in whose estate Conversano was comprised, and who often retired from the court of king Ferdinand I. to pass some months in the country, coming to this convent, passed through the kitchen, and saw the holy brother in this wonderful rapture. He stood some time in great surprise, and said, “Blessed are the religious brethren whose meals are seasoned with such tears.” After”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“The twelve degrees of humility, which he lays down in his Rule,1017 are commended by St. Thomas Aquinas.1018 The first is a deep compunction of heart, and holy fear of God and his judgments, with a constant attention to walk in the divine presence, sunk under the weight of this confusion and fear. 2. The perfect renunciation of our own will. 3. Ready obedience. 4. Patience under all sufferings and injuries. 5. The manifestation of our thoughts and designs to our superior or director. 6. To be content, and to rejoice, in all humiliations; to be pleased with mean employments, poor clothes, &c., to love simplicity and poverty, (which he will have among monks, to be extended even to the ornaments of the altar,) and to judge ourselves unworthy, and bad servants in every thing that is enjoined us. 7. Sincerely to esteem ourselves baser and more unworthy than every one, even the greatest sinners.1019 8. To avoid all love of singularity in words or actions. 9. To love and practise silence. 10. To avoid dissolute mirth and loud laughter. 11. Never to speak with a loud voice, and to be modest in our words. 12. To be humble in all our exterior actions, by keeping our eyes humbly cast down with the publican,1020 and the penitent Manasses”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“Our ancestors had a particular veneration for St. Maurus, under the Norman kings; and the noble family of Seymour (from the French Saint Maur) borrow from him its name, as Camden observes in his Remains.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“A spiritual joy is the greatest sign of the divine grace dwelling in a soul.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“. It is an illusion of false zeal, and a temptation of the enemy, for young novices to begin to teach before they have learned themselves how to practise”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“We cannot detect falsehood till we know and love the truth; and to us the truth is not an abstraction, but a Person, Jesus Christ, God and Man.”
― Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints (with Supplemental Reading: A Brief Life of Christ) [Illustrated]

“He extols the efficacy of the sign of the cross in chasing him, and dissipating his illusions, and lays down rules for the discernment of spirits, the first of which is, that the devn leaves on the soul impressions of fear, sadness, confusion, and disturbance.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“AS IN CORPORAL distempers a total loss of appetite, which no medicines can restore, forebodes certain decay and death; so in the spiritual life of the soul, a neglect or disrelish of pious reading and instruction is a most fatal symptom.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“Every year ought to find us more fervent in charity; every day ought our soul to augment in strength, and be decked with new flowers of virtue and good works.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“Alms coldly and harshly given irritate rather than soothe. Even when we cannot give, words of kindness are as a precious balm; and when we can give, they are the salt and seasoning of our alms.”
― Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints

“He severely forbade the custom of Valentines or giving boys, in writing, the names of girls to be admired and attended on by them; and, to abolish it”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“The method of forming men to virtue by example, is, of all others, the shortest, the most easy, and the best adapted to all circumstances and dispositions.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“As the great work of the sanctification of our souls is to be begun by humility, so must it be completed by the same”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“As much as the heavens exceed the earth, so much larger is the field of spiritual meditation than that of all terrestrial concerns.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“He was son to a British lord, who, to procure him a virtuous education placed him in his infancy in the monastery of St. Iltutus in Glamorganshire. The surname of Badonicus was given him, because, as we learn from his writings, he was born in the year in which the Britons under Aurelius Ambrosius, or, according to others, under king Arthur, gained the famous victory over the Saxons at Mount Badon, now Bannesdown, near Bath, in Somersetshire. This Bede places in the forty-fourth year after the first coming of the Saxons into Britain, which was in 451.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“Among his ordinary remarkable sayings, we read that he often repeated to bishop Camus, “That truth must be always charitable; for bitter zeal does harm instead of good”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“There is no preparation for a good death but a good life.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition