Quotes from Jerome

To will and to run are mine, but they will cease to be mine unless God brings me His continual aid.

Overcome as much as you can—nay even more than you can—the sensitiveness of your mind and check the copious flow of your tears. Else your deep affection for your nephew may be construed by unbelievers as indicating despair of God. You must regretim not as dead but as absent. You must seem to be looking for him rather than have lost him.

For it is eloquence all the same whether few things are said in many words, or many things in few words.

every one praises most what is within his reach

I do not ask for grace of style, I look for purity of soul: for with Christians it is the greatest of solecisms and of vices of style to introduce anything base either in word or action.

holy men only know what God reveals to them.

A mind willing to learn deserves commendation even when it has no teacher. What is of importance to me is not what you find but what you seek to find. Wax is soft and easy to mould even where the hands of craftsman and modeller are wanting to work it.

he who claims to believe in Christ must rejoice in all Christ's judgments.

It is easier to guard against one who professes hostility than to make head against an enemy who lurks under the guise of a friend.

the wicked find it a consolation to carp at the good, supposing the guilt of sin to be less, in proportion as the number of those who commit it is greater.

Oh, unheard of compassion of the apostle! In seeking to make the Jews Christians, he himself became a Jew! For he could not have persuaded the luxurious to become temperate if he had not himself become luxurious like them;

faciamque in eis ultiones magnas arguens in furore et scient quia ego Dominus cum dedero vindictam meam super eos

there is no good in frequently seeing objects which may one day lead to your captivity, or in making trial of things which you would find it hard to do without.

human language is inadequate to the divine praise

in the things of God we must look not at the work which we are able to accomplish, but at the spirit in which it is undertaken, and that he can never be at a loss for words who has believed on the Word.

A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept. Let those who will, allow gold to dazzle them and be borne along in splendor, their very baggage glittering with gold and silver. Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price. The friendship which can cease has never been real.

Heliodorus, tells me that there are many parts of the Scriptures which you seek and cannot find. But even if you have them all, affection is sure to assert its rights and to seek for itself more than it already has.

You know yourselves how slippery is the path of youth—a path on which I have myself fallen, and which you are now traversing not without fear.

Let us go back a little farther and read on until we come to these words, for we must not seek to learn the whole meaning of the section, from the concluding parts of it, or, if I may so say, from the tail of the chapter.

We must cast away by any contrivance, and cut out by fire and sword and contrivances of all kinds, disease from the body, ignorance from the soul, luxury from the belly, sedition from the state, discord from the family, excess from all things alike.

The belief which has not been accorded to conviction may come to be extorted by very shame.

God be thanked that you are well and that the fire of faith glows in you even when you are in the midst of the devil's wiles. My greatest joy is to hear that my spiritual sons are fighting in the cause of Christ;

Christ is our redemption, for He is at once our Redeemer and our Ransom. Christ is all, that he who has left all for Christ may find One in place of all, and may be able to proclaim freely, " The Lord is my portion.

As long as you are at home make your cell your paradise, gather there the varied fruits of scripture, let this be your favourite companion, and take its precepts to your heart.