Frederick William Faber

"O Paradise! O Paradise! The world is growing old; Who would not be at rest and free Where love is never cold?"

"No kind action ever stopped with itself. Fecundity belongs to it in its own right. One kind action leads to another. By one we commit ourselves to more than one. Our example is followed. The single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make fresh trees, and the rapidity of the growth is equal to its extent. But this fertility is not confined to ourselves, or to others who may be kind to the same person to whom we have been kind. It is chiefly to be found in the person himself whom we have benefited. This is the greatest work which kindness does to others,—that it makes them kind themselves."

"See! he sinks Without a word; and his ensanguined bier Is vacant in the west, while far and near Behold! each coward shadow eastward shrinks, Thou dost not strive, O sun, nor dost thou cry Amid thy cloud-built streets."

"There is hardly ever a complete silence in our souls. God is whispering to us wellnigh incessantly. Whenever the sounds of the world die out in the soul or sink low, then we hear these whisperings of God. This is so invariable that we come to believe he is always whispering to us, only that we do not always hear, because of the hurry, noise, and distraction which life causes as it rushes on."

"Labor is sweet, for Thou hast toiled, And care is light, for Thou hast cared; Let not our works with self be soiled, Nor in unsimple ways ensnared. Through lifes long day and deaths dark night, O gentle Jesus! be our light."

"All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that are to be said about Him. Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done; but that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more."

"O Majesty unspeakable and dread! Wert Thou less mighty than Thou art, Thou wert, O Lord! too great for our belief, Too little for our heart."

"This world is … only the porch of another and more magnificent temple of the Creators majesty."

"I find great numbers of moderately good people who think it fine to take scandal. They regard it as a sort of evidence of their own goodness, and of their delicacy of conscience; while in reality it is only a proof either of their inordinate conceit or of their extreme stupidity."

"Now we must remember, that if all the manifestly good men were on one side, and all the manifestly bad men on the other, there would be no danger of any one, least of all the elect, being deceived by lying wonders. It is the good men ,good once, we must hope good still, who are to do the work of the Antichrist, and so sadly to crucify afresh the Lord whom they … more than profess to love. Bear in mind this feature of the last days, that their deceitfulness arises from good men being on the wrong side."

"Faith is a letting down our nets into the untransparent deeps at the divine command, not knowing what we shall take."

"There is seldom a line of glory written upon the earths face, but a line of suffering runs parallel with it; and they that read the lustrous syllables of the one, and stoop not to decipher the spotted and worn inscription of the other, get the.least half of the lesson earth has to give."