Thomas Aquinas Quotes

The forgiveness of God

In God, there is another perfection, which inclines Him to forgive immediately the gravest and most numerous offenses, if we make a firm resolution to turn from them and truly to amend.

Even more, God forgets these offenses in return for a single lamentation for a contrite heart, as Scripture says. And if we remain in this good will, He does not contemplate vengeance for our sins later, nor does He contemplate reproaching us with them in order to dismay us, nor charging us with them in order to love us less, nor driving us away from Him by withdrawing His intimacy.

Being taken simply, as including all perfection of being, surpasses life and all that follows it; for thus being itself includes all these. And in this sense Dionysius speaks. But if we consider being itself as participated in this or that thing, which does not possess the whole perfection of being, but has imperfect being, such as the being of any creature; then it is evident that being itself together with an additional perfection is more excellent. Hence in the same passage Dionysius says that things that live are better than things that exist, and intelligent better than living things. Reply Obj. 3: Since the end corresponds to the beginning; this argument proves that the last end is the first beginning of being, in Whom every perfection of being is: Whose likeness, according to their proportion, some desire as to being only, some as to living being, some as to being which is living, intelligent and happy. And this belongs to few.

Love follows knowledge.

Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious

All that I have written seems like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me.

Locus ab auctoritate est infirmissimus. [The argument from authority is the weakest.]

Jesus Christ: Bene scripsísti de me, Thoma; quam ergo mercédem accípies? Aquinas: Non áliam, Dómine, nisi teípsum.

A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.

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

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

Vita enim in hoc maxime manifestatur quod aliquid movet se ipsum; quod autem non potest moveri nisi ab alio, quasi mortuum esse videtur.

The human mind may perceive truth only through thinking, as is clear from Augustine.

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

Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.

Man reaches the highest point of his knowledge about God when he knows that he knows him not, inasmuch as he knows that that which is God transcends whatsoever he conceives of him.