A Quote by Francis of Assisi

Blessed is the servant who esteems himself no more highly when he is praised and exalted by people than when he is considered worthless, foolish, and to be despised; since what a man is before God, that he is and nothing more.
The man who has given himself to his country loves it better; the man who has fought for his friend honors him more; the man who has labored for his community values more highly the interests he has sought to conserve; the man who has wrought and planned and endured for the accomplishment of God's plan in the world sees the greatness of it, the divinity and glory of it, and is himself more perfectly assimilated to it.
The sense that a man is serving a Higher than himself, with a service which will become ever more and more perfect freedom, evokes more profound, more humbling, more exalted emotions than any thing else in the world can do. The spirit of man is an instrument which cannot give out its deepest, finest tones, except under the immediate hand of the Divine Harmonist.
The more humble a man is before God the more he will be exalted; the more humble he is before man, the more he will get rode roughshod.
If we are in Christ the whole basis of our goings is God, not conceptions of God, not ideas of God, but God Himself. We do not need any more ideas about God, the world is full of ideas about God, they are all worthless, because the ideas of God in anyone’s head are of no more use than our own ideas. What we need is a real God, not more ideas about Him.
At bottom God is nothing more than an exalted father.
No man's condition is so base as his; None more accurs'd than he; for man esteems Him hateful, 'cause he seems not what he is; God hates him, 'cause he is not what he seems; What grief is absent, or what mischief can Be added to the hate of God and man?
The simple person lives the way he breathes, with no more effort or glory, with no more affectation and without shame Simplicity is freedom, buoyancy, transparency. As simple as the air, as free as the air The simple person does not take himself too seriously or too tragicallyHe has nothing to prove, since he has no appearances to keep up, and nothing to seek, since everything is before him. What is more simple than simplicity? What is lighter? It is the virtue of wise men and the wisdom of saints.
But even friendship like our heroes' Exist no more; for we've outgrown All sentiments and deem men zeroes-- Except of course ourselves alone. We all take on Napoleon's features, And millions of our fellow creatures Are nothing more to us than tools... Since feelings are for freaks and fools. Eugene, of course, had keen perceptions And on the whole despised mankind, Yet wasn't, like so many, blind; And since each rule permits exceptions, He did respect a noble few, And, cold himself, gave warmth its due.
If men are paid/praised more than women for the same work than it always pays to allow the man to have more freedom to pour himself into his work - think of athletes, actors over the age of 28, lawyers, accountants, college deans.
He found himself weeping. Not for the future or for the emperor. These were the tears of a man who saw before himself a masterpiece. True art was more than beauty; it was more than technique. It was not just imitation. It was boldness, it was contrast, it was subtlety.
Before the tribunal of nature, a man has no more right to life than a rattlesnake; he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast; his right to the pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain the struggle for existence, if he can find within himself the powers with which to do it.
It doesn't promise to solve or erase suffering but to transform it, pledging that by loving one another, even through pain, we will find more life. And it insists that by opening ourselves to strangers, the despised or frightening or unintelligible other, we will see more and more of the holy, since, without exception, all people are one body: God's.
We have an idea that we Americans are God's chosen people, that God loves us more than any other people, and that we are God's blessed. I tell you that God doesn't love us any more than He does the Russians.
The more that man is able to distinguish himself from the rest of creation, the more he becomes conscious of himself as subject, as an "I", to whom the whole world is Object, the more does he tend to confuse himself with God, to confuse his spirit with the Spirit of God.
I do not doubt that we would become more useful if we praised God more, and others would join us, for they would see that God has blessed us.
There is nothing to be valued more highly than to have people praying for us; God links up His power in answer to their prayers.
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