Quotes from Thomas Aquinas

By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.

It is better to illuminate than merely to shine. Maius est illuminare quam lucere solum.

I answer that, As Augustine says (De Moribus Eccl. vi), "the soul needs to follow something in order to give birth to virtue: this something is God: if we follow Him we shall live aright.

It has become the fashion to talk about Mysticism, even to pose as Mystics, and—need it be said?—those who talk the most on such subjects are those who know the least.

He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.

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

to make peace either in oneself or among others, shows a man to be a follower of God,

knowledge depends on the mode of the knower; for what is known is in the knower according to the measure of his mode

The truth can be perceived only through thinking, as is proven by Augustine.

The splendor of a soul in grace is so seductive that it surpasses the beauty of all created things.

Temperance is simply a disposition of the mind which set bounds to the passions

our manner of knowing is so weak that no philosopher could perfectly investigate the nature of even one little fly.

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.

Even though the natural light of the human mind is inadequate to make known what is revealed by faith, nevertheless what is divinely taught to us by faith cannot be contrary to what we are endowed with by nature. One or the other would have to be false, and since we have both of them from God, he would be the cause of our error, which is impossible.

Of all human pursuits, the pursuit of wisdom is the most perfect, the most sublime, the most useful, and the most agreeable.

Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious

justice without mercy is cruelty; mercy without justice is dissolution.

Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.

The world tempts us either by attaching us to it in prosperity, or by filling us with fear of adversity. But faith overcomes this in that we believe in a life to come better than this one, and hence we despise the riches of this world and we are not terrified in the face of adversity.

Again, it is self-evident that truth exists. For truth exists if anything at all is true, and if anyone denies that truth exists, he concedes that it is true that it does not exist, since if truth does not exist it is then true that it does not exist.

If, then, the final happiness of man does not consist in those exterior advantages which are called goods of fortune, nor in goods of the body, nor in goods of the soul in its sentient part, nor in the virtues of practical intellect, called art and prudence, it remains that the final happiness of man consists in the contemplation of truth.

In deliberation we may hesitate; but a deliberated act must be performed swiftly.

The person who truly understands love could love anyone.

Whatever is received into something is received according to the condition of the receiver