Thomas Aquinas Quotes
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Better to illuminate than merely to shine; to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.
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Whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance.
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Down in adoration falling, Lo! the sacred Host we hail; Lo! o'er ancient forms departing, Newer rites of grace prevail; Faith for all defects supplying, Where the feeble senses fail.
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Man can sin against nature in two ways. First, when he sins against his specific rational nature, acting contrary to reason. In this sense, we can say that every sin is a sin against man's nature, because it is against man's right reason.
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Arrive at knowledge over small streamlets, and do not plunge immediately into the ocean, since progress must go from the easier to the more difficult.
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The celestial bodies are the cause of all that takes place in the sublunar world.
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Justice is in subjects as well as in rulers.
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Man is closer to God according to his existence in grace than he is according to his existence in nature.
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If you seek patience, you will find no better example than the cross. Great patience occurs in two ways: either when one patiently suffers much, or when one suffers things which one is able to avoid and yet does not avoid. Christ endured much on the cross, and did so patiently, because when he suffered he did not threaten; he was led like a sheep to the slaughter and he did not open his mouth.
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He who achieves power by violence does not truly become lord or master.
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If you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.
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He who does not embrace the teaching of the Church does not have the habit of faith.
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Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.
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Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.
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Pray thee, spare, thyself at times: for it becomes a wise man sometimes to relax the high pressure of his attention to work.
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Love works in a circle, for the beloved moves the lover by stamping a likeness, and the lover then goes out to hold the beloved inreality. Who first was the beginning now becomes the end of motion.
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Give, expecting nothing there of.
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Sacred Scripture, since it has no science above itself, can dispute with one who denies its principles only if the opponent admits some at least of the truths obtained through divine revelation; thus we can argue with heretics from texts in Holy Writ, and against those who deny one article of faith we can argue from another. If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections - if he has any - against faith.
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The last end of every maker, as such, is himself, for what we make we use for our own sake; and if at any time a man make a thing for the sake of something else, it is referred to his own good, whether his use, his pleasure, or his virtue.
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Better to illuminate than merely to shine.
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All my words are but chaff next to the faith of a simple man.
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Beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: so that "good" means that which simply pleases the appetite; while the "beautiful" is something pleasant to apprehend.
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A man's heart is right when he wills what God wills.
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All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.