Thomas Aquinas Quotes
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151. “Love works in a circle, for the beloved moves the lover by stamping a likeness, and the lover then goes out to hold the beloved inreality. Who first was the beginning now becomes the end of motion.”

— Thomas Aquinas

152. “Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good.”

— Thomas Aquinas

153. “He who achieves power by violence does not truly become lord or master.”

— Thomas Aquinas

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

— Thomas Aquinas

155. “The highest perfection of human life consists in the mind of man being detached from care, for the sake of God.”

— Thomas Aquinas

156. “Whatever is received into something is received according to the condition of the receiver.”

— Thomas Aquinas

157. “A scrap of knowledge about sublime things is worth more than any amount about trivialities.”

— Thomas Aquinas

158. “Honor is due to God and to persons of great excellence as a sign of attestation of excellence already existing; not that honor makes them excellent.”

— Thomas Aquinas

159. “The image of God always abides in the soul, whether this image be obsolete and clouded over as to amount to almost nothing; or whether it be obscured or disfigured, as is the case with sinners; or whether it be clear and beautiful as is the case with the just.”

— Thomas Aquinas

160. “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.”

— Thomas Aquinas

161. “Godhead here in hiding, whom I adore Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more, See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.”

— Thomas Aquinas

162. “To pretend angels do not exist because they are invisible is to believe we never sleep because we don’t see ourselves sleeping.”

— Thomas Aquinas

163. “When the devil is called the god of this world, it is not because he made it, but because we serve him with our worldliness.”

— Thomas Aquinas

164. “To be united to God in unity of person was not fitting to human flesh, according to its natural endowments, since it was above his dignity; nevertheless, it was fitting that God, by reason of his infinite goodness, should unite it to himself for human salvation.”

— Thomas Aquinas

165. “The fact that the evil ones, as long as they live, can be corrected from their errors does not prohibit that they may be justly executed, for the danger which threatens from their way of life is greater and more certain than the good which may be expected from their improvement.”

— Thomas Aquinas

166. “Jesus Lord, kind Pelican, Cleanse my filth with Thy blood, One drop of which can save The whole world from all its sin.”

— Thomas Aquinas

167. “It is a sin directly against one’s neighbour, since one man cannot over-abound in external riches, without another man lacking them.”

— Thomas Aquinas

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

— Thomas Aquinas

169. “All my words are but chaff next to the faith of a simple man.”

— Thomas Aquinas

170. “Now this relaxation of the mind from work consists on playful words or deeds. Therefore it becomes a wise and virtuous man to have recourse to such things at times.”

— Thomas Aquinas

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

— Thomas Aquinas

172. “There being an imminent danger for the faith, prelates must be questioned, even publicly, by their subjects.”

— Thomas Aquinas

173. “All men are equal in nature, and also in original sin. It is in the merits and demerits of their actions that they differ.”

— Thomas Aquinas

174. “There would not be a perfect likeness of God in the universe if all things were of one grade of being.”

— Thomas Aquinas

175. “Do not wish to jump immediately from the streams to the sea, because one has to go through easier things to the more difficult.”

— Thomas Aquinas

176. “For just as the first general precepts of the law of nature are self-evident to one in possession of natural reason, and have no need of promulgation, so also that of believing in God is primary and self-evident to one who has faith: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is.”

— Thomas Aquinas

177. “To restore man, who had been laid low by sin, to the heights of divine glory, the Word of the eternal Father, though containing all things within His immensity, willed to become small. This He did not by putting aside His greatness but by taking to Himself our littleness.”

— Thomas Aquinas

178. “We ought to cherish the body. Our body’s substance is not from an evil principle, as the Manicheans imagine, but from God. And therefore, we ought to cherish the body by the friendship of love, by which we love God.”

— Thomas Aquinas

179. “The celestial bodies are the cause of all that takes place in the sublunar world.”

— Thomas Aquinas

180. “In the realm of evil thoughts none induces to sin as much as do thoughts that concern the pleasure of the flesh.”

— Thomas Aquinas

181. “A song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.”

— Thomas Aquinas

182. “Now, nothing can be brought from potentiality to actual existence except through something actually existing.”

— Thomas Aquinas

183. “Charity, by which God and neighbor are loved, is the most perfect friendship.”

— Thomas Aquinas

184. “Mistakes are made on two counts: an argument is either based on error or incorrectly developed.”

— Thomas Aquinas

185. “There is, therefore, a more perfect intellectual life in the angels. In them the intellect does not proceed to self-knowledge from anything exterior, but knows itself through itself...”

— Thomas Aquinas

186. “Down in adoration falling, Lo! the sacred Host we hail; Lo! o’er ancient forms departing, Newer rites of grace prevail; Faith for all defects supplying, Where the feeble senses fail.”

— Thomas Aquinas

187. “If someone knows from experience that daily Communion increases fervor without lessening reverence, then let him go every day. But if someone finds that reverence is lessened and devotion not much increased, then let him sometimes abstain, so as to draw near afterwards with better dispositions.”

— Thomas Aquinas

188. “It is necessary to posit something which is necessary of itself, and has no cause of its necessity outside of itself but is the cause of necessity in other things. And all people call this thing God.”

— Thomas Aquinas

189. “God is never angry for His sake, only for ours.”

— Thomas Aquinas

190. “Faith does not quench desire, but inflames it.”

— Thomas Aquinas

191. “It is absurd and a detestable shame, that we should suffer those traditions to be changed which we have received from the fathers of old.”

— Thomas Aquinas

192. “God answered the prayers of animals.”

— Thomas Aquinas

193. “Being born he have himself as our Companion, Eating with us he gave himself as Food, Dying He became our Ransom, Reigning he gives himself as our Reward.”

— Thomas Aquinas

194. “Don’t ask who said it? Ask what they said.”

— Thomas Aquinas

195. “I cannot understand how anyone conscious of mortal sin can laugh or be merry.”

— Thomas Aquinas

196. “There is no leisure about politics.”

— Thomas Aquinas

197. “For loving draws us more to things than knowing does, since good is found by going to the thing, whereas the true is found when the thing comes to us.”

— Thomas Aquinas

198. “How is it they live in such harmony, the billions of stars, when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds?”

— Thomas Aquinas

199. “A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.”

— Thomas Aquinas

200. “If all the sins of the flesh are worthy of condemnation because by them man allows himself to be dominated by that which he has of the animal nature, much more deserving of condemnation are the sins against nature by which man degrades his own animal nature...”

— Thomas Aquinas