Famous quotes, aphorisms and phrases of Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar who lived in the thirteenth century, considered by the Catholic Church to be a doctor of the church.
Quotes of St. Thomas Aquinas
- Anyone can experience that nobody can grow well in science as well as when he communicates to others what he knows.
- Man is much more certain of what he hears than of what he sees.
- Just as enlightening goes beyond being simply luminous, so transmitting to others what has been contemplated goes beyond being simply contemplative.
- Moral virtues belong to contemplation as preliminary provisions.
- Short sermons are the most pleasant, because if they are good they listen with more desire, if they are bad they weigh less.
- It is required for the relaxation of the mind that occasional jokes and jokes be used.
- The study of philosophy is not made to know what men's opinion has been, but rather to know what the truth of things is.
- It happens that the prayer made for others does not obtain the desired effect, in spite of the conditions most favorable to its effectiveness: right intention, fervor, perseverance. Reason must be sought in the obstacle imposed by the person who should benefit from it, an obstacle that cannot be eliminated as long as free will persists.
- What is hoped must be believed to be achieved; this is what adds hope to pure desire.
- Individuals of the human species cannot be naturally generated from any other matter. Now only God, creator of nature, can give existence to things outside the course of nature. Therefore only God could form man from the mud of the earth and woman from the rib of man.
Recommended readings- Phrases of St. Dominic of Guzman: biography
- Phrases of Santa Gemma Galgani: quotes and aphorisms
- Phrases of Saint Anthony of Padua: quotes, aphorisms
- Phrases of San Filippo Neri: famous aphorisms from the writings
- Phrases of San Camillo de Lellis: quotes and thoughts
- Humility is the virtue that restrains man's innate desire to rise above his merit.
- To the truths that transcend our nature it is necessary to adhere with faith, and what we believe we owe to authority.
- The reasoning is to intelligence, as motion is to rest.
- Only God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, exists from all eternity. This in fact considers the Catholic faith as an indubitable truth, and any contrary assertion must be rejected as heretical. In fact, in creating things, God produced them from nothing, that is, after there was nothing.
- As the eyes of the night are dazzled by the light of the sun that they cannot see, but they see poorly lit things well, so does the human intellect in the face of the first principles, which are of all things, by nature, the more manifest.
- When the rich consume for their personal ends the surplus necessary for the subsistence of the poor, they rob them.
- You do not possess the Truth, but it is the Truth that possesses you.
Aphorisms of Saint Thomas Aquinas
- The intermediate motors do not move except in so far as they are moved by the first motor, just as the stick does not move except in so far as it is moved by the hand. So it is necessary to arrive at a first engine that is not driven by others; and everyone recognizes that it is God.
- Imperfectly we know and imperfectly love.
- It was necessary for woman to be created to help man, as the Scripture says: and this is not because it was of help to him in some other function, as some said, since for any other function man can be better helped by another man than the woman, but to cooperate with the generation.
- Our knowledge is so weak that no philosopher has ever been able to thoroughly investigate the nature of a single fly.
- There can be no joy in life without the joy of work.
- The person is the most perfect thing in all nature.
- The devil is an occasional and indirect cause of all our sins as it was he who induced the first man to that sin from which human nature was spoiled in order to make us all proclaimed to guilt: how could it be said that it is the cause of combustion the one who has dried the wood, from which derives its ease in burning.
- Among the commitments to which a man can devote himself, none is more perfect, more sublime, more fruitful and sweeter than the search for Wisdom.
- When faith does not coincide with reason, one must refrain from giving reason to faith.
- The wise man honors the intellect because, among human realities, it is the one to which God reserves the most intense love. We must, however, invoke God to "penetrate the darkness of our intellect with a ray of his light, removing from us the double darkness in the midst of which we were born, that of sin and ignorance". And of all our thinking and acting God "inspire the beginning, guide the progress and crown the end".
- Nothing is in the mind that before was not in the senses.
- The way of existence that involves the human person is the most worthy of all.
- To convert someone, go and take them by the hand and guide them.
- Just as there cannot be something that has not been created by God, so there cannot be something that is not subject to his government.
- The innate principles of reason prove to be very true: to the point that it is not even possible to think that they are false.
- Man's life consists in the affection that mainly sustains him and in which he finds his greatest satisfaction.
- I fear the reader of a single book.
- Love gathers us where knowledge leaves us.
- Nature is nothing but the plan of an Artist, and of a divine Artist, inscribed within things, thanks to which they move towards a specific goal, as if the builder of a ship could supply pieces of wood with ability to move by itself to produce the shape of the ship.
Phrases of Saint Thomas Aquinas
- According to the Catholic faith, it must be assumed that the first man's first sin is transmitted to his descendants by way of origin. So even newborn babies are brought to baptism to be cleansed of the guilt infection.
- Working well means living well.
- In God are the perfections of all things.
- God is the first cause on which everything depends in his being, but He does not impose the same type of necessity on all created effects: God causes some effects to occur in a necessary way, others in a contingent way.
In any case, the woman serves only for the propagation of the species. However, the woman drags the soul of the man down from her sublime height, bringing her body into a more bitter bondage than any other.
- For the one who has faith, no explanation is needed. For the one who has no faith, no explanation is possible.
- What is lacking in intelligence does not aim at the end except because it is directed by a cognitive and intelligent being, like the arrow from the archer. There is therefore some intelligent being from whom all natural realities are ordered in order: and this being we call God.
- (...) Men are ordained by divine providence to a higher vein than human life can experience over time, it was necessary that the soul was called to something higher than what our reason can reach in this life: and thus learning to wait passionately for something that transcends the state of present life. (...)
- Prudence is a virtue extremely necessary for human life. In fact, living well consists in working well. But for one to do well, one must not consider only what he does, but also the way he does it: that is, he requires that he act not out of a surge of passion, but following a right option.
- If a man shows compassionate compassion towards animals, he will be even more willing to behave with pity towards his fellow humans.
- Perfect bliss is natural only for God, for whom being and being blessed are the same thing. For all creatures, on the other hand, being blessed is not part of their nature, but their ultimate goal.
Therefore, although human reason cannot fully understand those truths which are superior to reason, it nevertheless improves considerably if it accepts them at least by faith. (...)
- According to the Catholic faith it must be firmly held that all men descended from Adam, with the sole exception of Christ, contract original sin: otherwise not everyone would need the redemption of Christ; which is untrue.
- An ill-considered sadness is a disease of the soul; a moderate sadness pertains instead to a correct conduct of the spirit, given the condition of this life.
- Good can exist without evil, where evil cannot exist without good.
- Anyone who wants to live in perfection does nothing but despise what Christ despised on the cross, and desire what he desired. In fact, no example of virtue is absent from the cross.
- To love is to want someone's good.
- Whoever receives something without suffering keeps it without love.
- In need all riches are in common.
- From the moment of birth, the man benefits from the assistance of an angel.
- True friends rejoice and be saddened by the same things.
