Thomas Aquinas Quotes

“Charity is love; not all love is charity.”

“Whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance.”

“We should love others truly, for their own sakes rather than our own.”

“Charity is the form, mover, mother and root of all the virtues.”

“If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.”

“No man truly has joy unless he lives in love.”

“Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice.”

“I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain.”

“Man has free choice, or otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain.”

“The happy man in this life needs friends.”

“Characteristics which define beauty are wholeness, harmony and radiance.”

“The greatness of the human being consists in this:that it is capable of the universe.”

“Now this relaxation of the mind from work consists on playful words or deeds. Therefore it becomes a wise and virtuous man to have recourse to such things at times.”

“Distinctions drawn by the mind are not necessarily equivalent to distinctions in reality.”

“An act of love always tends towards two things; to the good that one wills, and to the person for whom one wills it.”

“Don't ask who said it? Ask what they said.”

“One aspect of neighbourly love is that we must not merely will our neighbours good, but actually work to bring it about.”

“Art is right reason in the doing of work.”

“Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him.”

“It must be understood that prime matter, and form as well, is neither generated nor corrupted, because every generation is from something to something. Now that from which generation proceeds is matter, and that to which it proceeds is form. So that, if matter or form were generated, there would be a matter for matter and a form for form, endlessly. Whence, there is generation only of the composite, properly speaking.”

“He who is dying of hunger must be fed rather than taught.”

“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.”

“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.”

“By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.”

“Love is a binding force, by which another is joined to me and cherished by myself.”