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Avoid all refined speculation; confine yourself to simple reflections, and recur to them frequently. Those who pass too rapidly from one truth to another feed their curiosity and restlessness; they even distract their intellect with too great a multiplicity of views. Give every truth time to send down deep root into the heart.

— François Fénelon

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Spirituality

More quotes by François Fénelon

All the human kind is but one family, dispersed over the face of the whole earth; all men are brothers, and ought to love each other as such.

Les aventures de Télémaque (1699)

The good historian is not for any time or any country: while he loves his fatherland, he never flatters it in anything.

In general, those who govern children forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

The presence of God calms the soul, and gives it quiet and repose.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Let us endeavor to commence every enterprise with a pure view to the glory of God, continue it without distraction, and finish it without impatience.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

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Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.

Mircea Eliade Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1967)

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Thomas Jefferson

The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.

Confucius

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: François Fénelon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.