"The greatness of the human being consists..." - Quote by Thomas Aquinas

“Whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance. So Ambrosius says, and it is also to be found in the Decretum Gratiani: The bread which you withhold belongs to the hungry: the clothing you shut away, to the naked: and the money you bury in the earth is the redemption and freedom of the penniless.”

“Wonder [admiratio astonishment, marvel] is a kind of desire for knowledge. The situation arises when one sees an effect and does not know its cause, or when the cause of the particular effect is one that exceeds his power of understanding. Hence, wonder is a cause of pleasure insofar as there is annexed the hope of attaining understanding of that which one wants to know. ... For desire is especially aroused by the awareness of ignorance, and consequently a man takes the greatest pleasure in those things which he discovers for himself or learns from the ground up.”

“For creation is not a change, but that dependence of the created existence on the principle from which it is instituted, and thus is of the genus of relation; whence nothing prohibits itbeing in the created as in the subject. Creation is thus said to be a kind of change, according to the way of understanding, insofar as our intellect accepts one and the same thing as notexisting before and afterwards existing.”

“Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man.”

“We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.”

“If we take people only as they are, then we make them worse; if we treat them as if they were what they should be, then we bring them to where they can be brought.”

“Bach is thus a terminal point. Nothing comes from him; everything merely leads to him.”

“In your hands you hold the seeds of failure or the potential for greatness. Your hands are capable, but they must be used and for the right things to reap the rewards you are capable of attaining. The choice is yours.”

“You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as you dominant aspiration.”