"When the spirit is lukewarm, and gradually growing cold as it moves from grace, flesh and blood inevitably seek their own interests. When the soul finds no delight, what is left except for the flesh to look for some? Then the base instinct covers itself with the excuse of necessity, and the mind of the flesh forms the conscience."

"Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt."

"Francis must rank with those creative personalities to which all the deepest developments of Christian consciousness are due."

"I saw St. Francis at first in his old age, at prayer and sickly, of an indescribable cheerfulness and purity and humility. Everything in him, everything that constituted his life, all his difficulties, are now transfigured and have become translucent. And this happened through prayer. The things that occupy him no longer contain anything at all that is purely personal, not a trace of annoyance or injury or resentment for the unjust things inflicted on him. God alone is left, as well as perfect service in the indescribable happiness of one who serves and in uninterrupted contemplation."

"St. Francis is not only the most attractive of all the Christian saints, he is the most attractive of Christians, admired by Buddhists, atheists, completely secular, modern people, Communists, to whom the figure of Christ himself is at best unattractive. Partly this is due to the sentimentalization of the legend of his life and that of his companions in the early days of the order. Many people today who put his statue in their gardens know nothing about him except that he preached a sermon to the birds, wrote a hymn to the sun, and called the donkey his brother. These bits of information are important because they are signs of a revolution of the sensibility — which incidentally was a metaphysical revolution of which certainly St. Francis himself was quite unaware. They stand for a mystical and emotional immediate realization of the unity of being, a notion foreign, in fact antagonistic, to the main Judeo-Christian tradition."

"Saint Francis is the outstanding exception to the rule that Catholicism discourages concern for the welfare of nonhuman beings. "If I could only be presented to the emperor," he is reported as saying, "I would pray him, for the love of God, and of me, to issue an edict prohibiting anyone from catching or imprisoning my sisters the larks, and ordering that all who have oxen or asses should at Christmas feed them particularly well." Many legends tell of his compassion, and the story of how he preached to the birds certainly seems to imply that the gap between them and humans was less than other Christians supposed. But a misleading impression of the views of Saint Francis may be gained if one looks only at his attitude to larks and the other animals. It was not only sentient creatures whom Saint Francis addressed as his sisters: the sun, the moon, wind, fire, all were brothers and sisters to him. His contemporaries described him as taking "inward and outward delight in almost every creature, and when he handled or looked at them his spirit seemed to be in heaven rather than on earth." This delight extended to water, rocks, flowers, and trees. This is a description of a person in a state of religious ecstasy, deeply moved by a feeling of oneness with all of nature. People from a variety of religious and mystical traditions appear to have had such experiences, and have expressed similar feelings of universal love. Seeing Francis in this light makes the breadth of his love and compassion more readily comprehensible. It also enables us to see how his love for all creatures could coexist with a theological position that was quite orthodox in its speciesism. Saint Francis affirmed that "every creature proclaims: 'God made me for your sake, O man!'" The sun itself, he thought, shines for man. These beliefs were part of a cosmology that he never questioned; the force of his love for all creation, however, was not to be bound by such considerations. While this kind of ecstatic universal love can be a wonderful source of compassion and goodness, the lack of rational reflection can also do much to counteract its beneficial consequences. If we love rocks, trees, plants, larks, and oxen equally, we may lose sight of the essential differences between them, most importantly, the differences in degree of sentience. We may then think that since we have to eat to survive, and since we cannot eat without killing something we love, it does not matter which we kill. Possibly it was for this reason that Saint Francis's love for birds and oxen appears not to have led him to cease eating them; and when he drew up the rules for the conduct of the friars in the order he founded, he gave no instruction that they were to abstain from meat, except on certain fast days."

"Once, Saint Francis of Assisi said to a young monk, 'Brother, let us go and preach in the city.' And so they left the monastery, and, talking of lofty subjects, they passed through the whole city and returned to the monastery. The young monk asked in amazement, 'Father, and when shall we preach?' And Saint Francis replied, 'Brother, did you not notice that we were preaching all the time? We walked with dignity, we discussed most lofty subjects, the passers-by looked at us and received peace and comfort. Indeed, preaching does not consist of words alone, but also of behavior itself.'""

"He is great because he is everything. He is a man who wants to do things, wants to build, he founded an order and its rules, he is an itinerant and a missionary, a poet and a prophet, he is mystical. He found evil in himself and rooted it out. He loved nature, animals, the blade of grass on the lawn and the birds flying in the sky. But above all he loved people, children, old people, women. He is the most shining example of that agape we talked about earlier."

"I love the mystics; Francis also was in many aspects of his life, but I do not think I have the vocation and then we must understand the deep meaning of that word. The mystic manages to strip himself of action, of facts, objectives and even the pastoral mission and rises until he reaches communion with the Beatitudes. Brief moments but which fill an entire life."

"He detested those in the Order who dressed in three layers of clothing or who wore soft clothes without necessity. As for “necessity” not based on reason but on pleasure, he declared that it was a sign of a spirit that was extinguished. “When the spirit is lukewarm,” he said, “and gradually growing cold as it moves from grace, flesh and blood inevitably seek their own interests. When the soul finds no delight, what is left except for the flesh to look for some? Then the base instinct covers itself with the excuse of necessity, and the mind of the flesh forms the conscience."

"Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved, as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; It is in dying to self that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen."

"All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle."

"He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist."

"Lord, grant me the strength to change the things I can, the serenity to deal with the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference."

"Speak the Gospel, use deeds when necessary Mark Galli, Christianity Today, May 21, 2009. He is the author of "Francis of Assisi and His World""

"..."Yes, the true servant unceasingly rebukes the wicked, but he does it most of all by his conduct, but the truth that shines in his words, by the light of his example, by all the radiance of his life." (1989) The Road to Assisi, Sabatier as edted by Sweeney, pg 143."