Jean Baptiste Massillon Quotes

To be proud and inaccessible is to be timid and weak.

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“God should be the object of all our desires, the end of all our actions, the principle of all our affections, and the governing power of our whole souls.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“Our acts of kindness we reserve for our friends, our bounties for our dependants, our riches for our children and relations, our praises for those who appear worthy of them, our time we give all to the world; we expose it, I may say, a prey to all mankind.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“Slander is perhaps the only vice which no circumstance can palliate, as well as being one which we are most ingenious in concealing from ourselves.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“There are some sins which are more justly to be denominated surprises than infidelities. To such the world should be lenient, as, doubtless, Heaven is forgiving.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

We die every day; every moment deprives us of a portion of life and advances us a step toward the grave; our whole life is only along and painful sickness.

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“Every Christian is born great because he is born for heaven.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“True charity is liable to excesses and transports.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“I would have none of that rigid circumspect charity which is never done without scrutiny, and which always mistrusts the truth of the necessities laid open to it.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“Charity is that sweet-smelling savor of Jesus Christ, which vanishes and is extinguished from the moment that it is exposed.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“Every effort is made in forming matrimonial alliances to reconcile matters relating to fortune, but very little is paid to the congeniality of dispositions, or to the accordance of hearts.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

Nothing is more detestable than a professed declaimer who retails his discourses as a quack does his medicines.

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“Agreeable advice is seldom useful advice.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“Time is short, your obligations are infinite. Are your houses regulated, your children instructed, the afflicted relieved, the poor visited, the work of piety accomplished?”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

Yes, great God, these torrents of tears which flow down from my eyes announce thy divine presence in my soul. This heart hitherto so dry, so arid, so hard; this rock which thou hast struck a second time, will not resist thee any longer, for out of it there now gushes healthful waters in abundance. The selfsame voice of God which overturns the mountains, thunders, lightens, and divides the heaven above, now commands the clouds to pour forth showers of blessings, changing the desert of his soul into a field producing a hundredfold; that voice I hear.

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“I love a serious preacher, who speaks for my sake and not for his own; who seeks my salvation, and not his own vain glory. He best deserves to be heard who uses speech only to clothe his thoughts, and his thoughts only to promote truth and virtue.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon

“Whatever passes away is too vile to be the price of time, which is itself the price of eternity.”

— Jean Baptiste Massillon