Thomas Aquinas Quotes
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The soul is perfected by knowledge and virtue.
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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.
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Without doubt one is allowed to resist against the unjust aggressor to one's life, one's goods or one's physical integrity; sometimes, even 'til the aggressor's death... In fact, this act is aimed at preserving one's life or one's goods and to make the aggressor powerless. Thus, it is a good act, which is the right of the victim.
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Of all the pursuits open to men, the search for wisdom is most perfect, more sublime, more profitable, and more full of joy.
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By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.
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To live well is to work well, to show a good activity.
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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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Well-ordered self-love is right and natural.
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Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice.
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We ought to cherish the body. Our body's substance is not from an evil principle, as the Manicheans imagine, but from God. And therefore, we ought to cherish the body by the friendship of love, by which we love God.
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One aspect of neighbourly love is that we must not merely will our neighbours good, but actually work to bring it about.
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Reasoning is compared to understanding as movement is to rest, or acquisition to possession.... Since movement always proceeds from something immovable, and ends in something at rest, hence it is that human reasoning, in the order of inquiry and discovery, proceeds from certain things absolutely understood--namely, the first principles; and, again, in the order of judgment, returns by analysis to first principles, in the light of which it examines what it has found. Now it is clear that rest and movement are not to be referred to different powers, but to one and the same.
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The soul is known by it's acts.
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Better to illuminate than merely to shine.
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The knowledge of God is the cause of things. For the knowledge of God is to all creatures what the knowledge of the artificer is to things made by his art.
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Venial sin becomes mortal sin when one approves it as an end. . .
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The truth of the Christian faith surpasses the capacity of reason.
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The Church has ever proved indestructible. Her persecutors have failed to destroy her; in fact, it was during times of persecution that the Church grew more and more; while the persecutors themselves, and those whom the Church would destroy, are the very ones who came to nothing. . . .Again, errors have assailed her; but in fact, the greater the number of errors that have arisen, the more has the truth been made manifest. . . . Nor has the Church failed before the assaults of demons: for she is like a tower of refuge to all who fight against the Devil.
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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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As mariners are guided into port by the shining of a star, so Christians are guided to heaven by Mary.
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Pain itself can be pleasurable accidentally in so far as it is accompanied by wonder, as in stage – plays; or in so far as it recalls a beloved object to one's memory, and makes one feel one's love for the thing, whose absence gives us pain. Consequently, since love is pleasant, both pain and whatever else results from love, in so far as they remind us of our love, are pleasant.
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The proper effect of the Eucharist is the transformation of man into God.
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A man does not always choose what his guardian angel intends.
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The light of faith makes us see what we believe.