Quotes from Alban Butler

Experience shows that in such undertakings, the imagination is alarmed not so much by realities as phantoms, which vanish before a courageous heart which can look them in the face with contempt

pride and vain-glory are the most dangerous of all vices, and that they are the most difficult to be discovered, and the last that are vanquished in the spiritual warfare; that humility is the very foundation of all true virtue, and our progress in it the measure of our advancement in Christian perfection.

Ease and enjoyment must not be the end of Christian retirement, but penance, labor, and assiduous contemplation; without great fervor and constancy in which, close solitude is the road to perdition.

The saint shows (Hom. 86, p. 810) the malice and danger of small faults wilfully committed, which many are apt to make slight of; but from such the most dreadful falls take their rise.

329 A maxim which he frequently repeats is, that the knowledge of ourselves is the necessary and only step by which we can ascend to the knowledge and love of God.

He extols the efficacy of the sign of the cross in chasing him, and dissipating his illusions, and lays down rules for the discernment of spirits, the first of which is, that the devn leaves on the soul impressions of fear, sadness, confusion, and disturbance.

Among his ordinary remarkable sayings, we read that he often repeated to bishop Camus, "That truth must be always charitable; for bitter zeal does harm instead of good

No one is to practise or aspire after virtue or perfection upon a motive of greatness, or of being exalted by it. This would be to fall into the snare of pride, which is to be feared under the cloak of sanctity itself.

Those who in the practice of virtue prefer great or singular actions, because they appear more shining, whatever pretexts of a more heroic virtue, or of greater utility to others they allege, are the dupes of a secret pride, and follow the corrupt inclinations of their own heart, while they affect the language of the saints

As the great work of the sanctification of our souls is to be begun by humility, so must it be completed by the same

Earthly comforts used with moderation, and as supports of our weakness, may be sanctified by a good intention; but whilst they bolster up our weakness, they keep it alive and strengthen it; and if they are sought after, or made use of with eagerness and attachment, immoderately or frequently, they strongly nourish self love and sensuality, and produce a distrust of the solid food of devotion and divine love.

Every year ought to find us more fervent in charity; every day ought our soul to augment in strength, and be decked with new flowers of virtue and good works.

Our ancestors had a particular veneration for St. Maurus, under the Norman kings; and the noble family of Seymour (from the French Saint Maur) borrow from him its name, as Camden observes in his Remains.

In 381, he attended the general council held at Constantinople, and joined the other bishops in condemning the Macedonian heretics.

In Hom. 12, we have an excellent instruction on that important maxim in a spiritual life, That we must never think how far we have run, but what remains of our course, as in a race a man thinks only on what is before him. It will avail nothing to have begun, unless we finish well our course

Kings and subjects, rich and poor, reciprocally depend upon each other; and it is the command of God that every one perform well the part which is assigned him.

He who has charity is far from all sin.

Once the saint saw in a vision the whole earth covered so thick with snares, that it seemed scarce possible to set down a foot without falling into them. At this sight he cried out, trembling: "Who, O Lord, can escape them all?" A voice answered him: "Humility, O Antony!

After his death, in 865, St. Rembert was unanimously chosen archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen, and superintended all the churches of Sweden, Denmark, and the Lower Germany, finishing the work of their conversion. He also began the conversion of the Sclavi and the Vandals, now called Brandenburghers

The prosperity of the wicked will appear at the last day to have often been the most dreadful judgment, and a state in which they were goaded on in the pursuit of their evil courses; whilst, on the contrary, it will then be manifested to all men that the afflictions of the saints have been the greatest effects of divine mercy.

His cousit. Roland, who followed him with the rear of his army, in his return was set upon in the Pyrenean mountains by a troop of Gascon robbers, and slain; and is the famous hero of numberless old French romances and songs

The motive of revenge is criminal if it creeps into the breast even in demanding the just punishment of a delinquent; much more if it push men to vindicate their own cause themselves by returning injury for injury, and wreaking wrongs on those that inflicted them.

There is no preparation for a good death but a good life.

Nothing can have so prevalent a power to still the agitation of passion in the breast, nothing is so fit to induce a smooth and easy flow, and a constant evenness of temper, as a frequent application to the throne of grace.