Top 100 St. Jerome Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”

— St. Jerome

2. “The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.”

— St. Jerome

3. “The Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for theologians to swim in without ever reaching the bottom.”

— St. Jerome

4. “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best.”

— St. Jerome

5. “There are things in life that are bigger than ourselves. Life is short, live it well.”

— St. Jerome

6. “Woman is the root of all evil.”

— St. Jerome

7. “To read without writing is to sleep.”

— St. Jerome

8. “A false interpretation of Scripture causes that the gospel of the Lord becomes the gospel of man, or, which is worse, of the devil.”

— St. Jerome

9. “Shun, as you would the plague, a cleric who from being poor has become wealthy, or who, from being nobody has become a celebrity.”

— St. Jerome

10. “It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.”

— St. Jerome

11. “Why do you not practice what you preach.”

— St. Jerome

12. “Woman is the gate of the devil, the road to iniquity, the sting of the scorpion, in a word, a dangerous species.”

— St. Jerome

13. “Even brute beasts and wandering birds do not fall into the same traps or nets twice.”

— St. Jerome

14. “A man who is well grounded in the testimonies of the Scripture is the bulwark of the Church.”

— St. Jerome

15. “It is easier to mend neglect than to quicken love.”

— St. Jerome

16. “Haste is of the Devil.”

— St. Jerome

17. “Thank God I am deemed worthy to be hated by the world.”

— St. Jerome

18. “No one cares to speak to an unwilling listener. An arrow never lodges in a stone: often it recoils upon the sender of it.”

— St. Jerome

19. “Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most.”

— St. Jerome

20. “Marriage is good for those who are afraid to sleep alone at night.”

— St. Jerome

21. “Martyrdom does not consist only in dying for one’s faith. Martyrdom also consists in serving God with love and purity of heart every day of one’s life.”

— St. Jerome

22. “Small minds can never handle great themes.”

— St. Jerome

23. “We need more music that is passionate and meaningful and honest.”

— St. Jerome

24. “We must love Christ and always seek Christ’s embraces. Then everything difficult will seem easy.”

— St. Jerome

25. “Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you.”

— St. Jerome

26. “If it is good not to touch a woman, then it is bad to touch a woman always and in every case.”

— St. Jerome

27. “The Church of Christ has been founded by shedding its own blood, not that of others; by enduring outrage, not by inflicting it. Persecutions have made it grow; martyrdoms have crowned it.”

— St. Jerome

28. “The friendship that can cease has never been real.”

— St. Jerome

29. “Malice swallows the greatest part of its own venom.”

— St. Jerome

30. “Vanity is truly the motive power that moves humanity, and it is flattery that greases the wheels.”

— St. Jerome

31. “True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.”

— St. Jerome

32. “Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied.”

— St. Jerome

33. “They please the world most, who please Christ least.”

— St. Jerome

34. “Even while living in the world, the heart of Mary was so filled with motherly tenderness and compassion for men that no-one ever suffered so much for their own pains, as Mary suffered for the pains of her children.”

— St. Jerome

35. “Strictly speaking, one should not even rightly compare virginity to marriage because you cannot make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil.”

— St. Jerome

36. “When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us.”

— St. Jerome

37. “While truth is always bitter, pleasantness waits upon evildoing.”

— St. Jerome

38. “When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.”

— St. Jerome

39. “It is idle to play the lyre for an ass.”

— St. Jerome

40. “Music to me is a voice, my voice, it’s my way of expressing what colours can I bring in, what emotions, what feel. What ideas can I bring out from these instruments that would make this song come alive.”

— St. Jerome

41. “Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price.”

— St. Jerome

42. “For all riches come from iniquity, and unless one were to lose another could not gain. Hence the common adage seems to me to be very true: The rich man is unjust or the heir of an unjust one.”

— St. Jerome

43. “Keep doing some kind of work, that the devil may always find you employed.”

— St. Jerome

44. “If then you remain constant in faith in the face of trial, the Lord will give you peace and rest for a time in this world, and forever in the next.”

— St. Jerome

45. “To perceive is to categorize, to conceptualize is to categorize, to learn is to form categories, to make decisions is to categorize.”

— St. Jerome

46. “The scars of others should teach us caution.”

— St. Jerome

47. “If Christ did not want to dismiss the Jews without food in the desert for fear that they would collapse on the way, it was to teach us that it is dangerous to try to get to heaven without the Bread of Heaven.”

— St. Jerome

48. “What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way.”

— St. Jerome

49. “I praise wedlock, I praise marital union, but only because they produce me virgins.”

— St. Jerome

50. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

— St. Jerome