Jerome Quotes

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

A dreadful rumor reached us from the West. We heard that Rome was besieged, that the citizens were buying their safety with gold, and that when they had been thus despoiled they were again beleaguered, so as to lose not only their substance but their lives. ...The speaker's voice failed and sobs interrupted his utterance. The city which had taken the whole world was itself taken; nay, it fell by famine before it fell by the sword, and there were but few to be found to be made prisoner.

if you do fall, repentance will restore you, and you who were hypocrites at baptism may have a firm faith in your repentance. Be not disturbed by the thought of a difference between the righteous and the penitent, and do not imagine that pardon even gives a lower place; rather believe that it takes away your crown. For there is one reward: he who stands on the right hand shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.

as by the favour of the sovereign those guilty of various crimes are released from prison, and each one, according to his toil and exertions, is in this or that condition of life, so too the penny, as it were by the favour of our Sovereign, is the discharge from prison of us all by baptism. Now our work is, according to our different virtues, to prepare for ourselves a different future.

When you have said what you like, you shall bear what you do not like.

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.

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

Libet, sarcina corporis abiecta, ad purum aetheris evolare fulgorem. Paupertatem times? sed beatos Christus pauperes appellat. Labore terreris? at nemo athleta sine sudore coronatur. De cibo cogitas? sed fides famem non timet. Super nudam metuis humum exesa ieiuniis membra collidere? sed Dominus tecum iacet. Squalidi capitis horret inculta caesaries? sed caput tuum Christus est. Infinita eremi vastitas te terret? sed tu paradisum mente deambula. Quotiescumque illuc cogitatione conscenderis, toties in eremo non eris.

To sin is human, to lay snares is diabolical.

It is not the sheep only who abide in the Church.

And do ye tell it to those
who come after you, how
amid swords and deserts
and wild beasts, chastity
was never captive: and how
a man devoted to Christ may
die, but cannot be defeated.

In the case of Tertullian we praise his great talent, but we condemn his heresy. In that of Origen we admire his knowledge of the Scriptures, but nevertheless we do not accept his false doctrine. As to Didymus, however, we extol both his powers of memory, and the purity of his faith in the Trinity, while on the other point in which he erred in trusting to Origen we withdraw from him. The vices of our teachers are not to be imitated, their virtues are.

I am told that your mother is a religious woman, a widow of many years' standing; and that when you were a child she reared and taught you herself. Afterwards when you had spent some time in the flourishing schools of Gaul she sent you to Rome, sparing no expense and consoling herself for your absence by the thought of the future that lay before you. She hoped to see the exuberance and glitter of your Gallic eloquence toned down by Roman sobriety, for she saw that you required the rein more than the spur. So we are told of the greatest orators of Greece that they seasoned the bombast of Asia with the salt of Athens and pruned their vines when they grew too fast. For they wished to fill the wine-press of eloquence not with the tendrils of mere words but with the rich grape-juice of good sense.

To change one's disposition is a greater achievement than to change one's dress. It is harder for us to part with arrogance than with gold and gems.

[She] personally tended the unhappy and impoverished victims of hunger and disease. I have often seen her washing wounds which others – even men – could hardly bear to look at ... She founded a hospital and gathered there the sufferers from the streets, and gave them all the attention of a nurse... How often she carried home, on her shoulders, the dirty and poor who were plagued with epilepsy! How she washed the pus from sores which others could not even behold.