Quotes from Thomas Aquinas

How is it they live in such harmony the billions of stars - when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds about someone they know.

The celestial bodies are the cause of all that takes place in the sublunar world.

How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God.

To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.

Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.

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

It is possible to demonstrate God's existence, although not a priori, yet a posteriori from some work of His more surely known to us.

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

The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work, but in the excellence of the work he produces.

Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.

The knowledge of God is the cause of things. For the knowledge of God is to all creatures what the knowledge of the artificer is to things made by his art.

To live well is to work well, to show a good activity.

Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice.

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power.

Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man's own will.

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

The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.

Those who are more adapted to the active life can prepare themselves for contemplation in the practice of the active life, while those who are more adapted to the contemplative life can take upon themselves the works of the active life so as to become yet more apt for contemplation.

Well-ordered self-love is right and natural.

There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.

Fear is such a powerful emotion for humans that when we allow it to take us over, it drives compassion right out of our hearts.

Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen.

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.

Wonder is the desire of knowledge.