Top 40 Clement of Alexandria Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “He who knows himself knows god.”

— Clement of Alexandria

2. “Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she isa woman.”

— Clement of Alexandria

3. “GOD became man so that we in our turn may become God.”

— Clement of Alexandria

4. “There is one river of Truth which receives tributaries from every side.”

— Clement of Alexandria

5. “It is not your outward appearance that you should beautify, but your soul, adorning it with good works.”

— Clement of Alexandria

6. “If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.”

— Clement of Alexandria

7. “All our life is like a day of celebration for us; we are convinced, in fact, that God is always everywhere. We work while singing, we sail while reciting hymns, we accomplish all other occupations of life while praying.”

— Clement of Alexandria

8. “When you see your brother, you see God.”

— Clement of Alexandria

9. “The rule of life for a perfect person is to be in the image and likeness of God.”

— Clement of Alexandria

10. “Above all Christians are not allowed to correct by violence sinful wrongdoings.”

— Clement of Alexandria

11. “I think that one must approach the Logos Savior, not induced by the fear of punishment and not in the expectation of some kind of a reward, but primarily for the sake of the good in itself. Such will stand on the right in the sanctuary.”

— Clement of Alexandria

12. “Those who glory in their looks – not in their hearts – dress to please others.”

— Clement of Alexandria

13. “The Lord has turned all our sunsets into sunrise.”

— Clement of Alexandria

14. “When lies have been accepted for some time, the truth always astounds with an air of novelty.”

— Clement of Alexandria

15. “If you enroll as one of God’s people, then heaven is your country and God your lawgiver.”

— Clement of Alexandria

16. “Explain the Scriptures by the Scriptures.”

— Clement of Alexandria

17. “Prayer is happy company with God.”

— Clement of Alexandria

18. “And Numenius, the Pythagorean philosopher, expressly writes: ‘For what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek.’”

— Clement of Alexandria

19. “Therefore let us repent and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from licentiousness to self-control, from injustice to righteousness, from godlessness to God.”

— Clement of Alexandria

20. “The Lord ate from a common bowl, and asked the disciples to sit on the grass. He washed their feet, with a towel wrapped around His waist – He, who is the Lord of the universe!”

— Clement of Alexandria

21. “But those who are ready to toil in the most excellent pursuits, will not desist from the search after truth, till they get the demonstration from the Scriptures themselves.”

— Clement of Alexandria

22. “For, in truth, an image is only dead matter shaped by the craftsman’s hand. But we have no sensible image of sensible matter, but an image that is perceived by the mind alone: God, who alone is truly God.”

— Clement of Alexandria

23. “The Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God.”

— Clement of Alexandria

24. “Just as God’s will is creation and is called ‘the world’ so His intention is the salvation of men, and it is called ‘the Church.’”

— Clement of Alexandria

25. “But by no manner of means are women to be allotted to uncover and exhibit any part of their person, lest both fall,-the men by being excited to look, they by drawing on themselves the eyes of the men.”

— Clement of Alexandria

26. “We are not to throw away those things which can benefit our neighbor. Goods are called good because they can be used for good: they are instruments for good, in the hands of those who use them properly.”

— Clement of Alexandria

27. “But the art of sophistry, which the Greeks cultivated, is a fantastic power, which makes false opinions like true by means of words. For it produces rhetoric in order to persuasion, and disputation for wrangling. These arts, therefore, if not conjoined with philosophy, will be injurious to every one.”

— Clement of Alexandria

28. “It is far better to be happy than to have our bodies act as graveyards to animals.”

— Clement of Alexandria

29. “We say that knowledge is not mere talk, but a certain divine knowledge, that light which is kindled in the soul as a result of obedience to the commandments, and which reveals all that is in a state of becoming, enables man to know himself and teaches him to become possessed of God.”

— Clement of Alexandria

30. “What does God think of spurious beauty, rejecting utterly as He does all falsehood?”

— Clement of Alexandria

31. “But true philosophic demonstration will contribute to the profit not of the listeners’ tongues, but of their minds. And, in my opinion, he who is solicitous about truth ought not to frame his language with artfulness and care, but only to try to express his meaning as he best can.”

— Clement of Alexandria

32. “For, in a word, if one thinks himself made beautiful by gold, he is inferior to gold; and he that is inferior to gold is not lord of it.”

— Clement of Alexandria

33. “And this is being just and holy with wisdom; for the Divinity needs nothing and suffers nothing; whence it is not, strictly speaking, capable of self-restraint, for it is never subjected to perturbation, over which to exercise control; while our nature, being capable of perturbation, needs self-constraint, by which disciplining itself to the need of little, it endeavours to approximate in character to the divine nature.”

— Clement of Alexandria

34. “For why should not the wine of their own country satisfy men’s desires, unless they were to import water also, like the foolish Persian kings?”

— Clement of Alexandria

35. “We shall understand the mode of purification by confession, and that of contemplation by analysis, advancing by analysis to the first notion, beginning with the properties underlying it; abstracting from the body its physical properties, taking away the dimension of depth, then that of breadth, and then that of length. For the point which remains is a unit, so to speak, having position; from which if we abstract position, there is the conception of unity.”

— Clement of Alexandria

36. “For pre-eminently a divine image, resembling God, is the soul of a righteous man; in which, through obedience to the commands, as in a consecrated spot, is enclosed and enshrined the Leader of mortals and of immortals, King and Parent of what is good, who is truly law, and right, and eternal Word, being the one Saviour individually to each, and in common to all.”

— Clement of Alexandria

37. “Do not think that we say that these things are only to be received by faith, but also that they are to be asserted by reason. For indeed it is not safe to commit these things to bare faith without reason, since assuredly truth cannot be without reason.”

— Clement of Alexandria

38. “The law itself exhibits justice and teaches wisdom by abstinence from sensible images and by calling out to the Maker and Father of the universe.”

— Clement of Alexandria

39. “Now the images and temples constructed by mechanics are made of inert matter, so that they too are inert, material, and profane. Even if you perfect the art, it partakes of mechanical coarseness. Works of art cannot then be sacred and divine.”

— Clement of Alexandria

40. “He alone can remit sins who is appointed our Master by the Father of all; He only is able to discern obedience from disobedience.”

— Clement of Alexandria

41. “Those who have castrated themselves from all sin for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, are blessed; they abstain from the world.”

— Clement of Alexandria

42. “When the two shall be one, the outside as the inside, and the male and the female neither male nor female.”

— Clement of Alexandria

43. “The purified righteous man has become a coin of the Lord, and has the impress of his King stamped upon him.”

— Clement of Alexandria

44. “Prayer that runs its course till the last day of life needs a strong and tranquil soul.”

— Clement of Alexandria

45. “It is absolutely impossible at the same time to be a man of understanding and not to be ashamed to gratify the body.”

— Clement of Alexandria

46. “Our superintendence in instruction and discipline is the office of the Word, from whom we learn frugality and humility, and all that pertains to love of truth, love of humanity, and love of excellence. And so, in a word, being assimilated to God by participation in moral excellence, we must not retrograde into carelessness and sloth. But labor, and faint not.”

— Clement of Alexandria