Covering two thousand years of Church history, this unique anthology presents hundreds of sayings from the writings and recorded works of both famous and obscure saints.
Ranging from the polished statements of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists, to the cry of the martyr on the scaffold, these quotations treat a wide variety of themes such as joy, death, faith, hope, folly, and much more.
The volume includes diary notations, lists of personal resolutions, naive remarks of saintly children who have foreseen their own destiny, and the somewhat legendary utterances of early saints who worked miracles in Ireland. The Wisdom of the Saints offers the wisdom of European, African, and Japanese saints, as well as an appendix of biographical sketches.
Despite the diversity of the individuals represented--hermits and Popes, the urbane and the uncouth, the sensible and the passionately foolish--this book uncovers a degree of harmony of thought among all of the saints included here. By bringing the saints to life, this collection reminds us that they were real people--not a group of museum figures carved in marble--with a range of temperaments and personalities.