Select Thoughts
Oh People! How arrogantly proud you are! Your pretensions are truly comic. You want to know everything and your fundamental ideas, you must know, oppose the faculty of universal comprehension. You will only come to understand this wonderful nature through persevering work. You will only have the joy of exploring these treasures and foreseeing glimpse of the inifinty of God, but through your own betterment and charity, and doing everything for the common good and reporting that faculty to God who in His singular generosity will reward you beyond any expectation.
Massillon
The human being is at the mercy of events, as they frequently say; which event are they talking about? What would be their cause and objective? God’s finger has never been associated to that. Such vague and materialistic thought, the mother of fatality has sent many great spirits and beautiful minds astray. This is what Balzac said: “There are no principles; there are only events.” It means that, according to him, the human being has no free will; he is taken over by fatality since birth and fatality leads him to the tomb. Monstrous invention of the human spirit! Such a thought abates freedom; that is to say progress, the elevation of the human soul, evident demonstration of God’s existence.
Thus, would people be led like that, slave of men and oneself? Oh brothers and sisters! Analyze yourself. Were you born to be a slave? No. You were born for freedom.
Lamennais
