Quotes from Thomas Aquinas

I answer that, Even, as in the blessed in heaven there will be most perfect charity, so in the damned there will be the most perfect hate.

Whatever is received is received according to the nature of the recipient.

Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.

Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.

Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious.

Temperance is simply a disposition of the mind which binds the passion.

It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation.

Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures.

The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Love; It signifies Love, It produces love. The Eucharist is the consummation of the whole spiritual life.

Baptism is the door of the spiritual life and the gateway to the sacraments.

Charity brings to life again those who are spiritually dead.

Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.

There is, therefore, a more perfect intellectual life in the angels. In them the intellect does not proceed to self-knowledge from anything exterior, but knows itself through itself.

The soul, which is the first principle of life, is not a body, but the act of a body; just as heat, which is the principle of calefaction, is not a body, but an act of a body.

That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.

It is clear that he does not pray, who, far from uplifting himself to God, requires that God shall lower Himself to him, and who resorts to prayer not to stir the man in us to will what God wills, but only to persuade God to will what the man in us wills.

To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them.

Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.

Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good.

The principal act of courage is to endure and withstand dangers doggedly rather than to attack them.

We can't have full knowledge all at once. We must start by believing; then afterwards we may be led on to master the evidence for ourselves.

If, then, you are looking for the way by which you should go, take Christ, because He Himself is the way.

The same fire" (which he decides to be material) " torments the damned in hell and the just in purgatory...The least pain in purgatory exceeds the greatest in this life.

A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.