Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Pope Benedict XVI

Quote by Pope Benedict XVI

“I believe that it is dangerous for a young person simply to go from achieving goal after goal, generally being praised along the way. So it is good for a young person to experience his limit, occasionally to be dealt with critically, to suffer his way through a period of negativity, to recognise his own limits himself, not simply to win victory after victory. A human being needs to endure something in order to learn to assess himself correctly, and not least to learn to think with others. Then he will not simply judge others hastily and stay aloof, but rather accept them positively, in his labours and his weaknesses.”

Quote by Pope Benedict XVI

Book:Last Testament: In His Own Words
Create image

Work

Last Testament: In His Own Words

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI, born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, was the 265th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, serving from 2005 to 2013. He had a deep academic background in philosophy and theology, serving as a Cardinal and President of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. During his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI worked to promote church reform and dialogue, emphasizing the importance of traditional doctrine while balancing conservative and reformist forces within the church. more

You May Also Like

“Pope Benedict XVI on Pope St Paul VI: Let us pay homage to the spirit of evangelical wisdom with which my beloved predecessor was able to guide the Church during and after the Second Vatican Council. With prophetic intuition he perceived the hopes and anxieties or the people at that time; he strove to make the most of the positive experiences, seeking to illuminate them with the light of truth and the love of Christ.”

PopeBenedict XviPaul ViCatholic Vatican 2
Book:Saint Pope Paul VI: Celebrating the 262nd Pope of the Roman Catholic Church
Create image

“One imagines that similar scenes of joy erupted throughout the world wherever two or three faithful Catholics gathered together. In contrast, the election of Ratzinger was greeted with grief and horror by those heretical theologians and cafeteria Catholics whose heresies and backsliding equivocations had been condemned by the new Pope during his many years as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As usual, these wolves in sheep’s clothing howled in unison with the wolves in the secular media, uniting themselves with the avowed enemies of the Church in their hatred of the hero of orthodoxy who had forced them into retreat during his years as John Paul II’s faithful and fearless servant. In the war of words that followed the Pope’s election, the enemies of orthodoxy decried the new German shepherd as “God’s Rottweiler.” Although the gentle and saintly Ratzinger did not deserve such an epithet, it is ironically apt that the wolves who would devour the flock should hate the Rottweiler who had courageously stopped them from doing so!”

Benedict XviBenedetto Xvi
Book:Benedict XVI: Defender of the Faith
Create image

“It had been a simpler time, when she could run carefree around the bailey, pretending to slay dragons and capture magical wisps. A time when she did not have to worry about betrothals, peace alliances, or any of the other duties she was now being forced to contend with as princess. But she would not have to worry about these duties for long. After Merida taught her how to survive the journey to Northumbria, she would have the freedom to study the region's fascinating artwork and listen to the poets who recited sonnets day in and day out. The freedom to spend her mornings tending to lost or injured animals, and her evenings singing folk songs with all the like-minded new friends she would meet.”

PrincessElinorYearning For FreedomNorthumbria
Book:Fate Be Changed
Create image

“I know of no part of Scotland so much and so visibly improved within thirty years as Aberdeenshire. At the beginning of that time the country between Keith and Stonehaven was little else than a hopeless region of stones and moss. There were pieces of many miles where literally there was nothing but large white stones, of from half a ton to ten tons weight, to be seen. A stranger to the character of the people would have supposed that despair would have held back their hands from even attempting to remove them. However, they began, and year after year have been going on, making dykes and drains, and filling up holes with these materials till at last they have created a country which, when the rain happens to cease and the sun shines, is really very endurable.”

AberdeenshireNortheast Scotland
Book:Journal of Henry Cockburn
Create image

“In nineteenth century Aberdeenshire farm service was not a career in itself, but a stage in a career that began for almost all in family farming, and would end there for a proportion of servants. Even in the middle of the century enough folk rode what Leslie Mitchell later would call the 'strange, antique whirlimagig of the Scottish peasantry' to ensure that the machine kept spinning. William Alexander called his essay on farm service "The Peasantry of North-East Scotland" because in his time English hired farm workers were conventionally - though incorrectly - described as peasants. But the error conceals a deeper truth. Aberdeenshire farm-servants, crofters, and small farmers were three fragments of a single peasant class.”

AberdeenshireFarm ServantsNorth East Scotland
Book:Rural life in Victorian Aberdeenshire
Create image

“Nineteenth-century Aberdeenshire was seething with land hunger and social strife. The interests of the landowners and muckle farmers were at odds with the democratic ideal enshrined in the concept of 'The Poor Man's County', which proclaimed the value of a finely graded rural economy with the emphasis on smaller farms and crofts as the continuing guarantee of economic opportunity and ultimately, therefore, of social justice. But the cottar class was disappearing as landlords evaded Poor Law assessment by demolishing cottages for married workers. Traditional farm touns and hamlets were being destroyed. As leases expired, holdings were thrown together into bigger units yielding high returns on the kind of investment only great capitalists could contemplate. As entry levels into farming climbed, the land was monopolised in fewer and fewer hands.”

LandAberdeenshireRural Economy
Book:Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk in the Parish of Pyketillim, with Glimpses of the Parish Politics about AD 1843
Create image

“In the agrarian economy of Aberdeenshire, the crofter, or improving smallholder generally, has filled a most useful part in the past. To them it is due that many hundreds of acres of barren moor have been brought under the plough within the last fifty or sixty years; and from his class, trained up in habits of industry, thrift, and self-reliance, there have continued to go forth into various walks of life men and women fitted to act well their part under any circumstances; the main cause of regret without doubt being that in such limited proportion of numbers have these men and women been retained in connection with the soil as settled labourers, cottars, crofters, and farmers, from the smallest tenant upward. But while it will be readily admitted that the existence of crofts in a county like Aberdeen - and indeed any agricultural county - is in the highest degree desirable; and while one may assert, without much fear of contradiction, that a judicious blending of farm and croft is greatly preferable to either a community of crofers apart from farms, or a collection of farms without a mixture of the crofter element, we are not blind to the difficulties that attend the perpetuation of the crofting system, as we have been wont to view it, under the changed conditions that now obtain.”

AberdeenshireCrofting
Book:Rural life in Victorian Aberdeenshire
Create image