St. jerome quotes

Endeavor to have always in your hand a pious book, that with this shield you may defend yourself against bad thoughts.

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

Playing keys is more than just knowing what notes to play. You have to know about the buttons too.

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.

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

The line, often adopted by strong men in controversy, of justifying the means by the end.

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

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

The eating of meat was unknown up to the big flood, but since the flood they have put the strings and stinking juices of animal meat into our mouths, just as they threw in front of the grumbling sensual people in the desert. Jesus Christ, who appeared when the time had been fulfilled, has again joined the end with the beginning, so that it is no longer allowed for us to eat animal meat.

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

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.

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

Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most.

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

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

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

[O]pulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessors.

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

Failure is the inspiration of tomorrow's entrepreneurs.

An ethic is not an ethic, and a value not a value without somesacrifice for it. Something given up, something not gained.

It is our part to seek, His to grant what we ask; ours to make a beginning, His to bring it to completion; ours to offer what we can, His to finish what we cannot.

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

Do not marvel at the novelty of the thing, if a Virgin gives birth to God.

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

Woman is the root of all evil.

It is idle to play the lyre for an ass.

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.

We need more music that is passionate and meaningful and honest.

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.

What cannot be changed cannot be blamed.

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.

A vice in the heart is an idol on the altar.

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.

Begin now what you will be hereafter.

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

Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.

The most base of men can be civilized through suffering.

To ignore Scripture is to ignore Christ.

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.

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

Honest speech does not seek secret places.

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

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.

To read without writing is to sleep.

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

To saints their very slumber is a prayer.

Let us learn upon earth those things which can call us to heaven.

Always be doing something worthwhile; then the devil will always find you busy.

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.

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

We must love Christ and always seek Christ's embraces. Then everything difficult will seem easy.

The tired ox treads with a firmer step.

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

The charges we bring against others often come home to ourselves; we inveigh against faults which are as much ours as theirs; and so our eloquence ends by telling against ourselves.

Haste is of the Devil.

Marriage fills the Earth, virginity Heaven.

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

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

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.

Time would fail me were I to try to lay before you in order all the passages in the Holy Scriptures which relate to the efficacy of baptism or to explain the mysterious doctrine of that second birth which though it is our second is yet our first in Christ.

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

He is rich enough who does not want bread.

The Church was founded upon Peter: although elsewhere the same is attributed to all the Apostles, and they all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the strength of the Church depends upon them all alike, yet one among the twelve is chosen so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.

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

The best advice that I can give you is this. Church-traditions — 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; and the use of one church is not to be annulled because it is contrary to that of another.

Athletes as a rule are stronger than their backers; yet the weaker presses the stronger to put forth all his efforts.

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

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

Others drink for sterility and commit murder on the human not yet sown. Some when they sense that they have conceived by sin, consider the poisons for abortion, and frequently die themselves along with it, and go to Hell guilty of three crimes: murdering themselves, committing adultery against Christ, and murder against their unborn child.

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

Whosoever you are who introduce new doctrines, I beseech you to spare the ears of Romans! Spare that faith which was commended by the voice of an Apostle. Why should you attempt to teach us, at the end of hundreds of years, that which we never heard before? Why bring forward what Peter and Paul did not will to make known? Until this day, the world was Christian without your doctrine. Thus, I hold as an old man onto that faith wherein I was regenerated as a boy.

Small minds can never handle great themes.

The enemy of reflection is the breakneck pace - the thousand pictures.

No created mind, no created heart, no human force is capable of knowing how much love the Heart of Mary had for the Lord.

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

Everything must have in it a sharp seasoning of truth.

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

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?

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

Nothing is hard for lovers, no labor is difficult for those who wish it.

Virginity can be lost by a thought.

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

True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.

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

Love knows nothing of order.

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

The scars of others should teach us caution.

Malice swallows the greatest part of its own venom.

Why do you not practise what you preach.

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.

For it is good to cleave to God, and to put our hopes in the Lord, so that, when we have exchanged this poor life for the kingdom of heaven, we may cry aloud: 'Whom have I in heaven but thee? There is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.' Assuredly, when we have found such wealth in heaven, we may well grieve to have sought after poor passing pleasures here on earth.

Small minds cannot grasp great subjects.

It is hard for the human soul not to love something, and our mind must of necessity be drawn to some kind of affection.

Whoever eats the Lamb outside this House is profane.

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.

They please the world most, who please Christ least.

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

Wine is the first weapon that devils use in attacking the young

If you call [the synagogue] a brothel, a den of vice, the devil's refuge, Satan's fortress, a place to deprave the soul, an abyss of every conceivable disaster or whatever else you will, you are still saying less than it deserves.

A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts.

Sometimes the character of the mistress is inferred from the dress of her maids.

Make knowledge of the Scripture your love ... Live with them, meditate on them, make them the sole object of your knowledge and inquiries.

Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.

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

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

The friendship that can cease has never been real.

When I could not see the light with my blind eyes, I blamed not my eyes, but the sun.

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

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

They talk like angels but they live like men.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Seek to learn on earth those truths which will remain ever valid in Heaven

Instead of speaking saintly words we must act them.

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

That clergyman soon becomes an object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to go.

Who would have believed that the daughters of that mighty city would one day be wandering as servants and slaves on the shores of Egypt and Africa, or that Bethlehem would daily receive noble Romans, distinguished ladies, brought up in wealth and now reduced to beggary? I cannot help them all, but I grieve and weep with them, and am completely absorbed in the duties which charity imposes on me. I have put aside my commentary on Ezekiel and almost all study. For today we must translate the precepts of the Scriptures into deeds; instead of speaking saintly words, we must act them.

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

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.

While truth is always bitter, pleasantness waits upon evildoing.

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.