The Spiritual Maxims of St. Francis de Sales

[Denise]

Good advice ought to be well received whether steeped in gall or preserved in honey.

Choose some particular saints, whose lives you can best appreciate and imitate, and in whose intercession you may have a particular confidence.

The beginning of good things is good, the progress is better, the end is best.

[Denise]

Mount Calvary is the academy of love.

On Liberty of Spirit

Blessed are the hearts which can bend; they shall never be broken.

The mind must be persuaded, it cannot be constrained.

We must do all by love and nothing by force. We must love obedience rather than fear disobedience.

[Denise]

Constraint is a certain want of liberty by which the soul is overwhelmed with either disgust or anger, when it cannot do what it has planned, though still able to do better.

A horse that is shackled and tethered cannot run.

Liberty of spirit is a detachment of the Christian heart from all things to follow the known will of God.

[Denise]

I leave you the spirit of liberty-not that which excludes obedience, for that is the liberty of the flesh; but that which excludes constraint, scruple and worry.

Our minds must not be kept always on the stretch.

Have a holy liberty of spirit about the means of perfection.

[Denise]

A soul which has true liberty of spirit will leave its exercises with an equal countenance, and a heart gracious toward the importunate person who has inconvenienced her.

One must not be devoted to even the most pious practices as to be unable to break into them.

We have only to take care not to use a superfluous attention when we seek out the will of God in all the particular details of small, ordinary and trifling actions.

[Denise]

There is no annoyance so great as the annoyance which is composed of many trifling, but continuous worries.

I do not approve that your will should be anticipated by firm resolutions, but only by sweet attractions.

You were never told not to think about your advancement, but that you were not to think about it anxiously.

[Denise]

Let your superior part bear the disorder of the inferior.

Do not be so anxiously solicitous for Him, for He told Martha that He was better pleased that there should be no solicitude, not even in doing good.

We must not be unjust and require from ourselves what is not in ourselves.

The good which is true fears not to be lessened by the increase of other true goods.

[Denise]

Little By Little

We are little chicks and have not our wings yet.

Our arms are not yet long enough to reach the cedars of Lebanon; let us content ourselves with the hyssop of the valleys.

Let us leave the lofty heights to the souls who have been raised so high; we shall only be too happy to serve Him in His kitchen and pantry.

[Denise]

Let us go by land, since the high sea makes our head turn.

Better is the possession of a small treasure found than the expectation of a greater which is to find.

Let us not be troubled by finding ourselves always novices in the exercise of virtues, for in the monastery of a devout life everyone considers himself always a novice.

[Denise]

While we are busy and anxious to find out what is the better, we unprofitably let slip the time for doing many good things.

To advance well we must apply ourselves to make good way in the road nearest us, and do the first day's journey.

We must sometimes take a step back to get a better spring.

[Denise]

We must not busy ourselves with wanting to do the last day's journey, but remember that we are to do and work out the first.

Soon enough, if well enough.

It is a well-regulated mixture of both sugar and salt which produces a flavor in a salad.

[Denise]

A sensible mind is a medium mind, which is neither too great nor too little.

Those who wish to straighten a young tree, not only bring it to the direction in which they wish it to grow, but even bend it somewhat beyond, so that it may not return to its former direction.

Salt and sugar are both excellent things, but too much of either spoils the dish.

[Denise]

If you must go to excess on one or the other side, let it be toward indulgence, for no sauce was ever spoiled by sugar.

[Denise]

On Dying to Self

May we be annihilated in ourselves to live wholly to God.

We do not become perfect by the multiplication of exercises, penances and austerities, but rather by the purity of love with which we do them.

The crosses that we shape for ourselves are always lighter than the ones laid upon us.

[Denise]

We do not love crosses unless they are in gold, with pearls and enamel.

Devout souls find much bitterness in their exercises of mortification; but in performing them they convert them into the most delicious sweetness.

How agreeable to God should we be, if we knew how to use properly the subjects of mortification which our vocation affords.