Inspirational Quotes by Francois Fenelon
“You are always trying to “be something” or to be noticed for your spirituality. There are a lot of people who have an outward spirituality, but inwardly they still think too much of themselves. People who think they are lowering themselves have a lot of conceit. They think they are doing others a favor in “getting down to their level.” True humility is not like this. A truly humble person is content in all situations. He doesn’t notice if he is being praised or blamed, and isn’t always weighing if what is being said to him or about him is to his advantage.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“Far from looking for friends, the friends they used to enjoy now irritate them. Here is agony and despair. Joy cannot be found. Does this surprise you? God takes everything because you do not know how to love, so do not speak of friendship. The very idea brings tears to your eyes. Everything overcomes you. You do not know what you want. You are moody and cry like a child. You are a mass of swirling emotions which change from moment to moment. Do you find it hard to believe that a strong and high-minded person can be reduced to such a state? To speak of friendship is like speaking of dancing to a sick person. Wait until the winter is past. Your true friends will come back to you. You will no longer love for yourself, but in and for God. Before, you were somehow always afraid of losing—no matter how generous you appeared. If you didn't seek wealth or honor, you sought common interest or confidence or understanding. Take away these comforts and you are pained, hurt, and offended. Doesn't this show who you really love? When it is God you love in someone, you stand by that person no matter what. If the friendship is broken in the order of God, you are at peace. You may feel a deep pain, for the friendship was a great gift, but it is a calm suffering, and free from the cutting grief of a possessive love. God's love sets you free.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“Christ leaves no emptiness within you. You will be led to do things which you will find enjoyable, and you will like them better than doing all the things which have led you astray.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“Sometimes the annoyances that make you long for solitude are better for producing humility than the most complete solitude could be.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“If you give up all those things that provoke your curiosity and set your mind spinning, you will have more than enough time to spend with God and to attend to your business. Living your life prayerfully will make you clear-headed and calm no matter what happens. Your self-nature is overactive, impulsive, and always striving for something just outside your reach. But God, working within your spirit, produces a calm and faithful heart that the world cannot touch. I really want you to take an adequate amount of time to spend with God so that you might refresh your spirit. All your busyness surely drains you. Jesus took His disciples aside to be alone, and interrupted their most urgent business. Sometimes He would even leave people who had come from afar to see Him in order to come to His Father. I suggest the same to you. It is not enough to give out—you must learn to receive from God, too.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“It has been four months since I have had any time to study. But I am glad to give up study and not cling to anything that God wants to take away. Perhaps this winter I will have time to set foot in my library. I shall enter it cautiously and listen for the slightest hint that God would have me elsewhere. The mind must fast as well as the body. I have no desire to write, speak or be spoken about, reason, or persuade anybody. I live each day simply. I put up with any inconveniences which present themselves, but I also take the time for entertainment when I need to do so.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“What are you afraid of? All that you own will eventually leave you. Your possessions cannot fill your spirit. Aren’t you tired of the emptiness of your possessions? Don’t they secretly tell you that they are not enough?”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“We can often do more for other men by trying to correct our own faults than by trying to correct theirs.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“If you give up all those things that provoke your curiosity and set your mind spinning, you will have more than enough time to spend with God and to attend to your business. Living your life prayerfully will make you clear-headed and calm no matter what happens. Your self-nature is overactive, impulsive, and always striving for something just outside your reach. But God, working within your spirit, produces a calm and faithful heart that the world cannot touch. I really want you to take an adequate amount of time to spend with God so that you might refresh your spirit. All your busyness surely drains you. Jesus took His disciples aside to be alone, and interrupted their most urgent business. Sometimes He would even leave people who had come from afar to see Him in order to come to His Father. I suggest the same to you. It is not enough to give out—you must learn to receive from God, too.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“You can often help others more by correcting your own faults than theirs.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“I warn you again: beware of philosophers. They will trap you and do you more harm than you know how to do them good. Their discussions go on forever, yet they never come to the simple truth. Intellectuals are unwisely curious; they are link conquerors who destroy the world without possessing it. Solomon himself testifies to the vanity of endless reasoning. Never study spiritual subjects unless God prompts you to. And do not study more than you can use. Study with a prayerful spirit. God is both Truth and Love. You can only know the truth to the degree that you love. Love the truth and you will understand the truth. If you do not love, you do not know love. Love with a humble heart and the Truth will love you. You will know what philosophers cannot know and even what philosophers do not want to know. I hope that you will obtain the knowledge that is kept for babes and the simple-minded. Such knowledge is hid from the wise and prudent. (Matthew 6.25)”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“Think little and do much. If you are not careful, you will acquire so much knowledge that you will need another lifetime to put it all into practice.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“Live in peace without worrying about the future. Unnecessary worrying and imagining the worst possible scenario will strangle your faith. God alone knows what will happen to you. You really don’t even own the present moment, for even this belongs to God.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“Often, when you suffer, it is the life of your self-nature that causes you pain. When you are dead, you do not suffer. If you were completely dead to your old nature, you would no longer feel many of the pains that now bother you.”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“I warn you again: beware of philosophers. They will trap you and do you more harm than you know how to do them good. Their discussions go on forever, yet they never come to the simple truth. Intellectuals are unwisely curious; they are like conquerors who destroy the world without possessing it. Solomon himself testifies to the vanity of endless reasoning. Never study spiritual subjects unless God prompts you to. And do not study more than you can use. Study with a prayerful spirit. God is both Truth and Love. You can only know the truth to the degree that you love. Love the truth and you will understand the truth. If you do not love, you do not know love. Love with a humble heart and the Truth will love you. You will know what philosophers cannot know and even what philosophers do not want to know. I hope that you will obtain the knowledge that is kept for babes and the simple-minded. Such knowledge is hid from the wise and prudent. (Matthew 6.25)”
― Francois Fenelon ,
from The Seeking Heart
“Y bien; purificar el alma, ¿no es, como antes decíamos, separarla del cuerpo, y acostumbrarla a encerrarse y recogerse en sí misma, renunciando al comercio con aquel cuanto sea posible, y viviendo, sea en esta vida, sea en la otra, sola y desprendida del cuerpo, como quien se desprende de una cadena?”
“And when you see a man who is repining at the approach of death, is not his reluctance a sufficient proof that he is not a lover of wisdom, but a lover of the body, and probably at the same time a lover of either money or power, or both?”
“Mais ceux qui sont reconnus avoir passé leur dans la sainteté, ceux-là sont délivrés de ces lieux terrestres, comme d'une prison, et s'en vont là-haut, dans l'habitation pure au-dessus de la terre.”
topics: philosophy
“Idées développée dans Phédon : 1° jugement des âmes après la mort 2° système de punitions graduées en même temps système d'expiation et de purification 3° retour des âmes à la vie sous des formes plus ou moins parfaites”
topics: philosophy
“It is a small matter, say they; true, but it is of amazing consequence to you; it is a matter that you love well enough to refuse to give it up to God; a matter which you sneer at in words, that you may have a pretence to retain it; a small matter, but one that you withhold from your Maker, and which will prove your ruin.”
Group of Brands
© 2026 Bibleportal.com All rights reserved.
Francois Fenelon (1651 - 1715)
He was inducted into the Acadmie Francaise in 1693 and named Archbishop of Cambrai in 1695. During his time as the educator and teacher of the Duke, Fenelon wrote several entertaining and educational works, including the extensive novel Les Aventures de Telemaque, fils d'Ulysse (The Adventures of Telemachus, son of Ulysses), which depicted the ideal of a wise king. When this novel began circulating anonymously among the court, having been fragmentarily published in 1699 without his knowledge, Louis XIV, who saw many criticisms of his absolutistic style of rule in Telemaque, stopped the printing and banned Fenelon from court. Fenelon then retreated to his bishopric in Cambrai, where he remained active writing theological and political treatises until his death on January 17, 1715.In Church history, Fenelon is known especially for his part in the Quietism debate with his earlier patron Bossuet. In his work Explication des maximes des Saints sur la vie interieure (Explanation of the Adages of the Saints on the Inner Life) in 1697, he defended Madame du Guyon, the main representative of Quietistic mysticism. He provided proof that her "heretical" teachings could also be seen in recognized saints. In 1697, Fenelon called on the pope for a decision in the Quietism debate. After long advisement, the Pope banned the Explication in 1699. Fenelon complied with the pope's decision immediately and allowed the remaining copies of his book to be destroyed.
Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fenelon, more commonly known as Francois Fenelon, was a French Roman Catholic theologian, poet and writer. He today is remembered mostly as one of the main advocates of quietism and as the author of The Adventures of Telemachus, a scabrous attack on the French monarchy, first published in 1699.
Francois Fenelon (specifically Francois de Salignac de la Motte-Fenelon) was born on August 6, 1651, at Fenelon Castle in Perigord. Fenelon studied at the seminary Saint-Sulpice in Paris, where he was ordained as a priest. Fenelon published his pedagogical work Traite de l'education des filles (Treatise on the Education of Girls) in 1681, which brought him much attention, not only in France, but abroad as well. At this time, he met Jacques Benigne Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, who soon became his patron and through whose influence Fenelon was contracted by Louis XIV to carry out the re-conversion of the Hugenots in the provinces of Saintonge and Poitou in 1686 and was appointed in 1689 as educator of his grandson and potential successor, the Duc de Bourgogne. Because of this position, he gained much influence at the court.
He was inducted into the Academie Francaise in 1693 and named Archbishop of Cambrai in 1695. During his time as the educator and teacher of the Duke, Fenelon wrote several entertaining and educational works, including the extensive novel Les Aventures de Telemaque, fils d'Ulysse (The Adventures of Telemachus, son of Ulysses), which depicted the ideal of a wise king. When this novel began circulating anonymously among the court, having been fragmentarily published in 1699 without his knowledge, Louis XIV, who saw many criticisms of his absolutistic style of rule in Telemaque, stopped the printing and banned Fenelon from court. Fenelon then retreated to his bishopric in Cambrai, where he remained active writing theological and political treatises until his death on January 17, 1715.
In Church history, Fenelon is known especially for his part in the Quietism debate with his earlier patron Bossuet. In his work Explication des maximes des Saints sur la vie interieure (Explanation of the Adages of the Saints on the Inner Life) in 1697, he defended Madame du Guyon, the main representative of Quietistic mysticism. He provided proof that her "heretical" teachings could also be seen in recognized saints. In 1697, Fenelon called on the pope for a decision in the Quietism debate. After long advisement, the Pope banned the Explication in 1699. Fenelon complied with the pope's decision immediately and allowed the remaining copies of his book to be destroyed.