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Jerome Quotes
347–420
Saint Jerome (c. 347 – 30 September 420), full name Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, is best known as the translator of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin. Jerome's edition, the Vulgate, is still the official biblical text of the Roman Catholic Church.
Historians Theologians Translators Also known as: Saint Jerome, St. Jerome
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No one cares to speak to an unwilling listener. An arrow never lodges in a stone: often it recoils upon the sender of it.
Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness?
Dicæarchus in his book of Antiquities, describing Greece, relates that under Saturn, that is in the Golden Age, when the ground brought forth all things abundantly, no one ate flesh, but every one lived on field produce and fruits which the earth bore of itself.
And had I taken the line—so often adopted by strong men in controversy—of justifying the means by the result.
Cum subito raptus in spiritu....
Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, "Why do you not practice what you preach?"
A clergyman who engages in business, and who rises from poverty to wealth, and from obscurity to a high position, avoid as you would the plague.
No one can take to himself the prerogative of Christ, no one before the day of judgment can pass judgment upon men. If the Church is already cleansed, what shall we reserve for the Lord?
In paradise Eve was a virgin, and it was only after the coats of skins that she began her married life. Now paradise is your home too. Keep therefore your birthright and say: Return unto your rest, O my soul.
Speak against nobody, and do not slander your mother's son. Who are you that judgest the servant of another? To his own lord he stands or falls; yea, he shall be made to stand, for the Lord has power to make him stand.
It is idle to play the lyre for an ass.
To be deceived is the common lot of both layman and bishop.
It is not the sheep only who abide in the Church.
... had I taken the line, so often adopted by strong men in controversy, of justifying the means by the result.
Pardon me for having praised Origen's zeal for Scriptural learning in my youthful days before I fully knew his heresies; and I will grant you (Rufinus) forgiveness for having written an Apology for his works when your head was grey.
I translate Greek into Latin unworthily. Either read Greek works (if you have knowledge of the language) or, if you know only Latin, do not unnecessarily judge gifts and, as the common saying goes, look a gift horse in the mouth [lit. "teeth"].
All, whoever they may be, that are ordained at the present day from among the literate class make it their study not how to seek out the marrow of Scripture, but how to tickle the ears of the people with the flowers of rhetoric.
At [Nero's] hands [Peter] received the crown of martyrdom being nailed to the cross with his head towards the ground and his feet raised on high, asserting that he was unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord.
The command to increase and multiply first finds fulfilment after the expulsion from paradise, after the nakedness and the fig-leaves which speak of sexual passion. Let them marry and be given in marriage who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow; whose land brings forth to them thorns and thistles, Genesis 3:18-19 and whose crops are choked with briars.
Why should I speak of other nations when I myself, a youth on a visit to Gaul, heard that the Atticoti, a British tribe, eat human flesh, and that although they find herds of swine, and droves of large or small cattle in the woods, it is their custom to cut off the buttocks of the shepherds and the breasts of their women, and to regard them as the greatest delicacies?
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