Vianney Quotes

We must take great care never to do anything before having said our morning prayers...The Devil once declared that if he could have the first moment of the day, he was sure of all the rest.

We are each of us like a small mirror in which God searches for His reflection

How good is our God! When we can no longer come to Him, He comes to us.

All our religion is but a false religion, and all our virtues are mere illusions and we ourselves are only hypocrites in the sight of God, if we have not that universal charity for everyone--for the good, and for the bad, for the poor and for the rich, and for all those who do us harm as much as those who do us good.

You must accept your cross; if you bear it courageously it will carry you to heaven.

A priest goes to Heaven or a priest goes to Hell with a thousand people behind.

The worst pain of suffering lies in rejecting it. To the pain itself we then add rebellion, resentment, and the upset this suffering arouses in us. The tension within us increases our pain. But when we have the grace to accept a suffering and consent to it, it becomes at once much less painful. “Peaceful suffering is no longer suffering,” said the Curé of Ars, St. Jean-Marie Vianney.

Our soul is like a garden in which the weeds are ever ready to choke the good plants and flowers that have been sown in it. If the gardener who has charge of this garden neglects it, if he is not continually using the spade and the hoe, the flowers and plants will soon disappear.

Humility is to the various virtues what the chain is in a Rosary. Take away the chain and the beads are scattered; remove humility, and all virtues vanish.

One day a woman went to the saintly Father John Vianney, the Curé of Ars, in France, and said, “My husband has not been to the sacraments or to Mass for years. He has been unfaithful, wicked, and unjust. He has just fallen from a bridge and was drowned —a double death of body and soul.” The Curé answered, “Madam, there is a short distance between the bridge and the water, and it is that distance which forbids you to judge.

only the Holy Spirit permits us to become aware of the gravity of sin and of the tragedy of the loss of the sense of God, and gives the desire for conversion. But our love for mankind cannot be resigned to seeing them deprive themselves of salvation. We cannot directly produce the conversion of souls, but we are responsible for the proclamation of the Faith, of the totality of the Faith and of its demands.

Evil claims to be natural, and this is the heart of its deceit. Sin rarely declares itself as sin, and the sinner tends to claim some high motive and some pink-and-white complexion for each decay. Each enslavement to sin calls itself a new form of liberation as it tightens its chains. Rare is the tyrant who does not cloak his extravagant selfishness in the titles of altruism and affected goodwill.

The functional defect of socialism is that it is not social. It has not helped the poor man by eradicating the prince; it has only made the prince poor. If it has not put a chicken in every pot, it has removed the peacock from every lawn. It has made liberality a casualty of an artifact called liberalism. Such may satisfy the motive of envy; it is irrelevant to the motive of charity, and in the collectivist bosom it engenders the very greed it scorned.

If one of the damned could just once say ‘My God, I love you’ it would no longer be hell for him.

Espero de la vida y la experiencia un estilo nuevo que haga brotar de mi pluma lo mucho que encierra mi corazón.

Ah, my brethren, how small is the number of those who get to Heaven, for it only consists of those who, without ceasing, and courageously fight the devil and his servants and who despise the world and its ridicule!

O my God, how small is the number of those who will go to heaven, for there are so few who do what they ought to do to serve Thee.

More souls are released by the Mass than any other means. St. Jerome said that "for every Mass devoutly celebrated, many souls leave Purgatory and fly to Heaven". St. Bernadette, who had a great devotion for the holy souls, would tell her fellow religious sisters "I have heard Mass for the souls in Purgatory: nothing but the Precious Blood of Jesus applied for them, can liberate them". St. John Vianney (the Curé d’Ars) emphasized that the Mass is greater than any works preformed, "All good works taken together cannot equal the value of one Holy Mass; because they are the works of men, whereas Holy Mass is the work of God." The Mass is the most effective way to help the holy souls in Purgatory.

le coup de journal qui s'abattit lourdement sur son bureau lui fit naître un mal de crâne à décrocher les araignées du plafond.

We put pride into everything, like salt. — St. John Vianney

dejemos a esos pobres desdichados que griten y se mofen de los buenos cristianos; dejemos a esos insensatos en su demencia; dejemos a esos ciegos en sus tinieblas; escuchemos los gritos aullidos de los réprobos, pero nada temamos, sigamos nuestro camino; el mal se lo hacen a sí mismos y no a nosotros; compadezcámoslos, y no nos separemos de nuestra línea de conducta.

When he returned from St. John Vianney, Charlie felt fully vindicated. “They couldn’t find one thing wrong with me, Stephen.” All I could think was, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” I knew in my heart; I could not even cast a pebble.

¿Sabéis cuál es la primera tentación que el demonio presenta a una persona que ha comenzado a servir mejor a Dios? Es el respeto humano. No se atreve a mostrarse en público, ocúltase de las personas con las cuales en otro tiempo había compartido sus placeres; si se le hace notar que ha cambiado mucho, ¡se avergüenza

¡Ay, hermanos míos! con tanta repugnancia como ahora sentirnos en confesarnos, si, cinco minutos antes de aquel gran día, Dios nos concediese sacerdotes para confesar nuestros pecados, para que se nos borrasen, ¡ah! ¡con qué diligencia nos aprovecharíamos de esta gracia!

Hemos de concluir que es necesario no perder jamás de vista que un día seremos juzgados sin misericordia, y que nuestros pecados se manifestarán a la vista del universo entero; y que, después de este juicio, si nos hallamos culpables de estos pecados, iremos a llorarlos en los infiernos, sin poder ni borrarlos, ni olvidarlos. ¡Oh!

You cannot please both God and the world at the same time. They are utterly opposed to each other in their thoughts, their desires and their actions.

Saint John Vianney said this, “Oh, my children, how sad it is! Three-quarters of those who are Christians labor for nothing but to satisfy this body, which will soon be buried and corrupted, while they do not give a thought to their poor soul, which must be happy or miserable for all eternity.

The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus.

man is saved with the world and not from it.

the sacramental union of fecundity and faithfulness converging in the Resurrection of Christ is the reason for life and the cure for death.

celibacy, the sign of our unlimited availability to Christ and to others.

In one of his sermons, St. John Vianney preached: The Sign of the Cross is the most terrible weapon against the Devil. For this reason, the Church displays images of the cross so that we can have it continually in front of our minds to recall to us just what our souls are worth and what they cost Jesus Christ. For the same reason, the Church wants us to make the Sign of the Cross ourselves at every juncture of our day: when we go to bed, when we awaken during the night, when we get up, when we begin any action, and above all when we’re tempted. . . . Fill your children, my dear brethren, with the greatest respect for the Cross, and always have a blessed cross on yourselves. Respect for the Cross will protect you against the Devil, from the vengeance of heaven, and from all danger.

On the road of abnegation,” M. Vianney was wont to say, “it is only the first step that is difficult; once we have started we go on almost mechanically.