Thomas Aquinas Quotes
-
Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.
-
Law; an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community.
-
Justice is in subjects as well as in rulers.
-
The celestial bodies are the cause of all that takes place in the sublunar world.
-
By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.
-
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.
-
All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.
-
To love is to will the good of the other.
-
The same fire" (which he decides to be material) " torments the damned in hell and the just in purgatory...The least pain in purgatory exceeds the greatest in this life.
-
I receive Thee ransom of my soul. For love of Thee have I studied and kept vigil toiled preached and taught.
-
An angel can illumine the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision and by bringing within his reach some truth which the angel himself contemplates.
-
The proper task of the Savior is that he is a savior; indeed, for this he came into the world: to seek and save what was lost.
-
The magnitude of the punishment matches the magnitude of the sin. Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin-it is more criminal to strike a head of state than a private citizen-and God is of infinite greatness. Therefore an infinite punishment is deserved for a sin committed against Him.
-
God destines us for an end beyond the grasp of reason.
-
One faith, St. Paul writes (Eph. 4:5). Hold most firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church ... We must hold this for certain, namely: that the faith of the people at the present day is one with the faith of the people in past centuries. Were this not true, then we would be in a different church than they were in and, literally, the Church would not be One.
-
If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.
-
It covetousness is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.
-
The soul, which is the first principle of life, is not a body, but the act of a body; just as heat, which is the principle of calefaction, is not a body, but an act of a body.
-
To restore man, who had been laid low by sin, to the heights of divine glory, the Word of the eternal Father, though containing all things within His immensity, willed to become small. This He did not by putting aside His greatness but by taking to Himself our littleness.
-
To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them.
-
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.
-
Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen.
-
Mary means Star of the sea, for as mariners are guided to port by the ocean star, so Christians attain to glory through Mary's maternal intercession.
-
God is not related to creatures as though belonging to a different "genus," but as transcending every "genus," and as the principle of all "genera.