Jerome Quotes

it is easier for us to make light of things which we know well than of things which take us unprepared.

it is extremely trying when one has once tasted pleasure to abstain from its enticements, so the reward of doing this is proportionately great.

The battering-ram of natural affection which so often shatters faith must recoil powerless from the wall of the Gospel.

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.

لا تكونوا عبيداً لأموالكم

The privileges of a few do not make common law.

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.

every one praises most what is within his reach,

I could not pray, if I did not believe; but if I really believed, I should cleanse that heart of mine with which God is seen, I should beat my hands upon my breast, the tears would stream down my cheeks, my body would shudder, my face grow pale, I should lie at my Lord's feet, weep over them, and wipe them with my hair, I should cling to the cross and not let go my hold until I obtained mercy. But, as it is, frequently in my prayers I am either walking in the arcades, or calculating my interest, or am carried away by base thoughts, so as to be occupied with things the mere mention of which makes me blush.

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.

Qui nescit Scripturas, nescit Dei virtutem, ejusque sapientiam. Ignoratio Scripturarum ignoratio Christi est.

Quem ignora as Escrituras ignora o poder e a sabedoria de Deus. A ignorância das Escrituras é ignorância de Cristo.

see the hidden meaning of Scripture in all its fullness (for the word of God is a pearl and may be pierced on every side)

you will know that it is a more difficult work to reject the opinion of others than to establish your own.

It is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin.

Just as divorce according to the Saviour's word was not permitted from the beginning, but on account of the hardness of our heart was a concession of Moses to the human race, so too the eating of flesh was unknown until the deluge. But after the deluge, like the quails given in the desert to the murmuring people, the poison of flesh-meat was offered to our teeth. … At the beginning of the human race we neither ate flesh, nor gave bills of divorce, nor suffered circumcision for a sign. Thus we reached the deluge. But after the deluge, together with the giving of the law which no one could fulfil, flesh was given for food, and divorce was allowed to hard-hearted men, and the knife of circumcision was applied, as though the hand of God had fashioned us with something superfluous. But once Christ has come in the end of time, and Omega passed into Alpha and turned the end into the beginning, we are no longer allowed divorce, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat flesh.