St. Thomas Aquinas Quotes

“What does it take to become a saint? Will it.”

“There can be no joy in living without joy in work.”

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

“Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures.”

“Nothing created has ever been able to fill the heart of man. God alone can fill it infinitely.”

“God’s precepts are light to the loving, heavy to the fearful.”

“We set forth our petitions before God, not in order to make known to Him our needs and desires, but rather so that we ourselves may realize that in these things it is necessary to have recourse to God’s help.”

“Every truth without exception - and whoever may utter it - is from the Holy Spirit.”

“It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.”

“Well-ordered self-love is right and natural.”

“While injustice is the worst of sins, despair is the most dangerous; because when you are in despair you care neither about yourself nor about others.”

“Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.”

“The study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.”

“The slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things.”

“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.”

“If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.”

“Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious.”

“We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.”

“Do not heed by whom a thing is said, but rather what is said.”

“Rarely affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish.”

“Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.”

“One cannot use an evil action with reference to a good intention.”

“To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.”

“The soul is known by its acts.”

“The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions.”

“Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man’s own will.”

“The times are never so bad that a good man cannot live in them.”

“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.”

“We should love others truly, for their own sakes rather than our own.”

“In deliberation we may hesitate; but a deliberated act must be performed swiftly.”

“The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work, but in the excellence of the work he produces.”

“The principal act of courage is to endure and withstand dangers doggedly rather than to attack them.”

“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.”

“The happy man in this life needs friends.”

“Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.”

“Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.”

“The greatest kindness one can render to any man consists in leading him from error to truth.”

“He who is dying of hunger must be fed rather than taught.”

“Whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance.”