Top 100 St. Jerome Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “When I could not see the light with my blind eyes, I blamed not my eyes, but the sun.”

— St. Jerome

52. “A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept.”

— St. Jerome

53. “They talk like angels but they live like men.”

— St. Jerome

54. “Wine is the first weapon that devils use in attacking the young.”

— St. Jerome

55. “Failure is the inspiration of tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.”

— St. Jerome

56. “What cannot be changed cannot be blamed.”

— St. Jerome

57. “Nothing gives us a greater idea of our soul, than that God has given us, at the moment of our birth, an angel to take care of it.”

— St. Jerome

58. “Keep always busy so that the devil will find you always engaged.”

— St. Jerome

59. “Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business.”

— St. Jerome

60. “So valuable to heaven is the dignity of the human soul that every member of the human race has a guardian angel from the moment the person begins to be.”

— St. Jerome

61. “Either we must speak as we dress, or dress as we speak. Why do we profess one thing and display another? The tongue talks of chastity, but the whole body reveals impurity.”

— St. Jerome

62. “Whoever eats the Lamb outside this House is profane.”

— St. Jerome

63. “Out of one hundred thousand sinners who continue in sin until death, scarcely one will be saved.”

— St. Jerome

64. “A vice in the heart is an idol on the altar.”

— St. Jerome

65. “A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts.”

— St. Jerome

66. “No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow.”

— St. Jerome

67. “And as regards Adam and Eve we must maintain that before the fall they were virgins in Paradise: but after they sinned, and were cast out of Paradise, they were immediately married.”

— St. Jerome

68. “Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal.”

— St. Jerome

69. “Virginity can be lost by a thought.”

— St. Jerome

70. “My speech is too fast; my oration confused; love knows no order.”

— St. Jerome

71. “The enemy of reflection is the breakneck pace – the thousand pictures.”

— St. Jerome

72. “To saints their very slumber is a prayer.”

— St. Jerome

73. “Neither Britain, a land fertile in tyrants, nor the people of Ireland, knew Moses and the prophets.”

— St. Jerome

74. “Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.”

— St. Jerome

75. “Without doubt, the Lord grants all favors which are asked of Him in Mass, provided they be fitting for us.”

— St. Jerome

76. “Instead of speaking saintly words we must act them.”

— St. Jerome

77. “For the preservation of chastity, an empty and rumbling stomach and fevered lungs are indispensable.”

— St. Jerome

78. “Love knows nothing of order.”

— St. Jerome

79. “The fact is that my native land is a prey to barbarism, that in it men’s only God is their belly, that they live only for the present, and that the richer a man is the holier he is held to be.”

— St. Jerome

80. “The tired ox treads with a firmer step.”

— St. Jerome

81. “Seek to learn on earth those truths which will remain ever valid in Heaven.”

— St. Jerome

82. “That rain is the best which falls steadily on the earth. A sudden and excessive downpour ruins the fields.”

— St. Jerome

83. “Catch, then, O catch the transient hour; Improve each moment as it flies!”

— St. Jerome

84. “The truly miserable have a timbre in their voices strong enough to erase smiles from the faces and souls of the contented.”

— St. Jerome

85. “The best advice I can give you is this. Church tradition – especially when they do not run counter to the Faith – are to be observed in the form in which previous generations have handed them down.”

— St. Jerome

86. “When you believe you are excusing yourself, you are accusing yourself.”

— St. Jerome

87. “The Roman world is in collapse but we do not bend our neck.”

— St. Jerome

88. “Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness?”

— St. Jerome

89. “No one loves to tell of scandal except to him who loves to hear it. Learn, then, to rebuke and check the detracting tongue by showing that you do not listen to it with pleasure.”

— St. Jerome

90. “Matrimony is always a vice, all that can be done is to excuse it and sanctify it; therefore it was made a religious sacrament.”

— St. Jerome

91. “Among us, what is not allowed to women is equally not allowed to men.”

— St. Jerome

92. “It is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin.”

— St. Jerome

93. “Marriage fills the Earth, virginity Heaven.”

— St. Jerome

94. “Let your daughter have first of all the book of Psalms for holiness of heart, and be instructed in the Proverbs of Solomon for her godly life.”

— St. Jerome

95. “Honest speech does not seek secret places.”

— St. Jerome

96. “Everything must have in it a sharp seasoning of truth.”

— St. Jerome

97. “Preferring to store her money in the stomachs of the needy rather than hide it in a purse.”

— St. Jerome

98. “It is not being in Jerusalem, but living a good life there that is praiseworthy.”

— St. Jerome

99. “If a soul is not clothed with the teachings of the Church he cannot merit to have Jesus seated in him.”

— St. Jerome

100. “If there is but little water in the stream, it is the fault, not of the channel, but of the source.”

— St. Jerome