Francis of Assisi Quotes

       Francis of Assisi
       1181-1226
      
       Francis of Assisi was a Catholic deacon and the founder of the Order of Friars Minor, more commonly known as the Franciscans.
      
       Francis heard a sermon that changed his life. The sermon was about Matthew 10:9, in which Christ tells his followers that they should go forth and proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven was upon them, that they should take no money with them, nor even a walking stick or shoes for the road. Francis was inspired to devote himself to a life of poverty.
      
       Francis's attitude towards the natural world, while poetically expressed, was conventionally Christian. He believed that the world was created good and beautiful by God but suffers a need for redemption because of the primordial sin of man. He preached to man and beast the universal ability and duty of all creatures to praise God (a common theme in the Psalms) and the duty of men to protect and enjoy nature as both the stewards of God's creation and as creatures ourselves.

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow men.     Topics: Animals, Compassion, Men Grant that we may not so much seek to be understood as to understand.     Topics: Character Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.     Topics: Charity, Wisdom If a superior give any order to one who is under him which is against that man's conscience, although he do not obey it yet he shall not be dismissed.     Topics: Conscience All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.     Topics: Examples, Light It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.     Topics: Forgiveness Where there is injury let me sow pardon.     Topics: Forgiveness For it is in giving that we receive.     Topics: Giving No one is to be called an enemy, all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm. You have no enemy except yourselves.     Topics: Hatred, Enemies Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty: permit the distinctive sign of our order to be that it does not possess anything of its own beneath the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it have no other patrimony than begging.     Topics: Humility Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love.     Topics: Love Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.     Topics: Peace, Hatred, Love