Top 100 Bernard of Clairvaux Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Many of those who are humiliated are not humble. Some react to humiliation with anger, others with patience, and others with freedom. The first are culpable, the next harmless, the last just.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

52. “Nothing can work me damage except myself.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

53. “The more I contemplate God, the more God looks on me. The more I pray to him, the more he thinks of me too.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

54. “If anyone makes himself his own master in the spiritual life, he makes himself scholar to a fool.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

55. “Let no one believe that he has received the divine kiss, if he knows the truth without loving it or loves it without understanding it. But blessed is that kiss whereby not only is God recognized but also the Father is loved; for there is never full knowledge without perfect love.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

56. “O Blessed Mary, whoever loves you honors God; whoever serves you pleases God; whoever invokes your holy name with a pure heart will infallibly receive the object of his petition.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

57. “Vines and trees will teach you that which you will never learn from masters.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

58. “God has aroused the spirit of kings and princes to root up from the earth the enemies of the Christian name. Therefore gird yourselves manfully and take up joyful arms for the name of Christ.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

59. “The reason for our loving God is God.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

60. “Love is alone sufficient by itself, it pleases by itself and for it’s own sake. It is itself a merit, and itself it’s own recompense. It seeks neither cause, nor consequences beyond itself. It is its own fruit, its own object and usefulness. I love because I love you, I love that I may love.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

61. “Believe one who has tried, you shall find a fuller satisfaction in the woods than in the books. The trees and the rocks will teach you that which you cannot hear from the masters.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

62. “Rest is in Him alone. Man knows no peace in the world; but he has no disturbance when he is with God.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

63. “A saint is not someone who never sins, but one who sins less and less frequently and gets up more and more quickly.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

64. “Persecution shows who is a hireling, and who a true pastor.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

65. “Understanding is the sure and clear knowledge of some invisible thing.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

66. “From the best bliss that earth imparts, we turn unfilled to Thee again.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

67. “Humility in furs is better than pride in tunics.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

68. “What of the souls already released from their bodies? We believe that they are overwhelmed in that vast sea of eternal light and of luminous eternity.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

69. “To have a restful or peaceful life in God is good; to bear a life of pain in patience is better; but to have peace in the midst of pain is the best of all.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

70. “Jesus, what made You so small? LOVE!”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

71. “As patience leads to peace, and study to science, so are humiliations the path that leads to humility.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

72. “When God forgives a sinner who humbly confesses his sin, the devil loses his dominion over the heart he had taken.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

73. “So far from being able to answer for my sins, I cannot even answer for my righteousness!”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

74. “The tears of those repenting are the wine of angels.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

75. “A pretext is never lacking to him who would break with a friend.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

76. “Love of Mary and devotion to her are a sure sign of obtaining eternal salvation.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

77. “Let us not imagine that we obscure the glory of the Son by the great praise we lavish on the Mother; for the more she is honored, the greater is the glory of her Son. There can be no doubt that whatever we say in praise of the Mother gives equal praise to the Son.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

78. “Let us then cast ourselves at the feet of this good Mother, and embracing them let us not depart until she blesses us, and accepts us for her children.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

79. “It’s not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice – with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

80. “Action and contemplation are...”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

81. “Have death always before your eyes as a salutary means of returning to God.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

82. “It is a fault, not a virtue, to wish your humility recognized and applauded.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

83. “The peacemakers shall be called the sons of God, who came to make peace between God and man. What then shall the sowers of discord be called, but the children of the devil? And what must they look for but their father’s portion?”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

84. “He rightly reads scripture who turns words into deeds.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

85. “Pride causes us to use our gifts as though they came from ourselves, not benefits received from God, and to usurp our benefactor’s glory.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

86. “Let your prayer for temporal blessings be strictly limited to things absolutely necessary.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

87. “There are three distinct comings of the Lord of which I know: His coming to men, His coming into men, and His coming against men.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

88. “I have ascended to the highest in me, and look, the Word is towering above that. I have descended to explore my lowest depths, and I found Him deeper still.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

89. “He won me over entirely by giving Himself entirely to me.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

90. “Pride only, the chief of all iniquities, can make us treat gifts as if they were rightful attributes of our nature, and, while receiving benefits, rob our Benefactor of His due glory.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

91. “For I have learnt for a fact that nothing so effectively obtains, retains and regains grace, as that we should always be found not high-minded before God, but filled with holy fear.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

92. “I have no other masters than the beeches and the oaks.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

93. “In Him should all our affections center, so that in all things we should seek only to do His will, not to please ourselves.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

94. “Humility is, of all graces, the chiefest when it does not know itself to be a grace at all.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

95. “Righteousness is the natural and essential food of the soul, which can no more be satisfied by earthly treasures than the hunger of the body can be satisfied by air. If you should see a starving man standing with mouth open to the wind, inhaling draughts of air as if in hope of gratifying his hunger, you would think him lunatic. But it is no less foolish to imagine that the soul can be satisfied with worldly things which only inflate it without feeding it.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

96. “If you would know whether you have made a good confession, ask yourself I you have resolved to abandon your sins.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

97. “To them that long for the presence of the living God, the thought of Him is sweetest itself: but there is no satiety, rather an ever-increasing appetite...”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

98. “Many often err and accomplish little or nothing because they try to become learned rather than to live well.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

99. “The reason for loving God is God Himself. As to how He is to be loved, there is only one measure: It is immeasurable!”

— Bernard of Clairvaux

100. “It is so that these impious ones wander in a circle, longing after something to gratify their yearnings, yet madly rejecting that which alone can bring them to their desired end, not by exhaustion but by attainment.”

— Bernard of Clairvaux