Lives of the Saints 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

“The smart of poverty, says a spiritual writer, is allayed even more by one word of true sympathy than by the alms we give. 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

“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

“My God, I pretend to nothing upon this earth, except to be so firmly united to you by prayer, that to be separated from you may be impossible: let others desire riches and glory; for my part, I desire but one thing, and that is, to be inseparably united to you, and to place in you alone all my hopes of happiness and repose.”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“Each year may bring us fresh changes and trials; let us learn from St. Fulgentius to receive all that happens as from the hand of God, and appointed for our salvation.”
― Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints (with Supplemental Reading: A Brief Life of Christ) [Illustrated]

“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]

“After his death, in 865, St. Rembert was unanimously chosen archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen, and superintended all the churches of Sweden, Denmark, and the Lower Germany, finishing the work of their conversion. He also began the conversion of the Sclavi and the Vandals, now called Brandenburghers”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“There never was a truly great man, who was not a lover and encourager of learning, as of the highest improvement of the human mind”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“His cousit. Roland, who followed him with the rear of his army, in his return was set upon in the Pyrenean mountains by a troop of Gascon robbers, and slain; and is the famous hero of numberless old French romances and songs”
― 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 Hom. 3, p. 30, he exaggerates the grievousness of sin in a priest, and has these remarkable words, “I do not believe that many priests are saved; but that far the greater number are lost: for this dignity requires a great soul and much courage.”
― 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

“Experience shows that in such undertakings, the imagination is alarmed not so much by realities as phantoms, which vanish before a courageous heart which can look them in the face with contempt”
― 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

“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 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

“329 A maxim which he frequently repeats is, that the knowledge of ourselves is the necessary and only step by which we can ascend to the knowledge and love of God.”
― 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

“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

“The Pelagian heresy having taken deep root among the Christians in those parts, he so vigorously opposed that fatal, growing evil, as entirely to banish that hydra out of the church of the Picts”
― Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition

“For his innocence and great virtues he was beloved by his master, and all who were acquainted with that religious family, above all his fellow-disciples, for which reason he was called Munghu, or Mungho, which in the language of that country signified “one dearly beloved;” and this is the name which the Scots usually give him to this day.”
― 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

“Ease and enjoyment must not be the end of Christian retirement, but penance, labor, and assiduous contemplation; without great fervor and constancy in which, close solitude is the road to perdition.”
― 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

“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