189 quotes
How hateful to me are the enemies of your Scripture! How I wish that you would slay them [the Jews] with your two-edged sword, so that there should be none to oppose your word! Gladly would I have them die to themselves and live to you!
They who have waged war in obedience to the divine command, or in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."
Slow was I, Lord, too slow in loving you. ... You were waiting within me while I went outside me, looking for you there, misshaping myself as I flung myself upon the shapely things you made.
But I am aware of some that murmur: What, say they, if all men should abstain from all sexual intercourse, whence will the human race exist? Would that all would this, only in "charity out of a pure heart, and good conscience, and faith unfeigned"; much more speedily would the City of God be filled, and the end of the world hastened.
So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor.
When the apostle James was talking about faith and works against those who thought their faith was enough, and didn’t want to have good works, he said, You believe God is one; you do well; the demons also believe, and tremble.” (Jas 2:19)
To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of things eternal; to knowledge, the rational apprehension of things temporal.
Disputed The Anchor Book of Latin Quotations: with English translations (1990)
If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
Disputed
Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.
Disputed Majority of One (1957)
In necessariis unitas, In dubiis libertas, In omnibus autem caritas.
Misattributed
There is no greater freedom than the freedom to obey.
Misattributed
The truth is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose and it will defend itself.
Misattributed
Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.
Disputed Spirituality and Liberation: Overcoming the Great Fallacy (1988)
By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.
Disputed
The world is a great book, of which they that never stir from home read only a page.
Misattributed
There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.
Misattributed
To my God a heart of flame; To my fellow man a heart of love; To myself a heart of steel.
Disputed
Do not despair: one thief was saved. Do not presume: one thief was damned.
Disputed
Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.
Disputed If God Be For Us : Sermons on the Gifts of the Gospel (1954)
My mother spoke of Christ to my father, by her feminine and childlike virtues, and, after having borne his violence without a murmur or complaint, gained him at the close of his life to Christ.
Disputed