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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He suddenly announced that he could not write any more since "All that I have written seems like straw to me."
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The meaning of what is said is according to the motive for saying it: because things are not subject to speech, but speech to things. Therefore we should take account of the motive of the lawgiver, rather than of his very words.
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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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O saving Victim, opening wide The gate of heaven to man below, Our foes press on from every side, Thine aid supply, Thy strength bestow.
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Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice.
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Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.
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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.
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Gods are called many by the error of some who worshipped many deities, thinking as they did the planets and other stars were gods, and also the separate parts of the world.
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There must be must be a first mover existing above all – and this we call God.
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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.
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Better to illuminate than merely to shine.
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Devotion is a certain act of the will by which man gives himself promptly to divine service.
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All my words are but chaff next to the faith of a simple man.
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To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them.
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All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.
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Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.
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The soul is perfected by knowledge and virtue.
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Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace.
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God has no need for our worship. It is we who need to show our gratitude for what we have received.
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How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God.
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He who achieves power by violence does not truly become lord or master.
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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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To love is to will the good of the other.