Thomas Aquinas Quotes

“Better to illuminate than merely to shine; to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.”

“There is nothing in your mind which wasn't experienced before hand.”

“The things that we love tell us what we are.”

“If there were some solitary or feral man, the passions of the soul would be sufficient for him; by them he would be conformed to things in order that he might have knowledge of them. But because man is naturally political and social, there is need for one man to make his conceptions known to others, which is done with speech. So significant speech was needed if men were to live together. Which is why those of different tongues do not easily live together.”

“Fear is such a powerful emotion for humans that when we allow it to take us over, it drives compassion right out of our hearts.”

“Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.”

“A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.”

“Wonder is the desire for knowledge.”

“Pain itself can be pleasurable accidentally in so far as it is accompanied by wonder, as in stage-plays; or in so far as it recalls a beloved object to one's memory, and makes one feel one's love for the thing, whose absence gives us pain. Consequently, since love is pleasant, both pain and whatever else results from love, in so far as they remind us of our love, are pleasant.”

“To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them.”

“Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need.”

“If you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.”

“Love must precede hatred, and nothing is hated save through being contrary to a suitable thing which is loved. And hence it is that every hatred is caused by love.”

“Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious.”

“Give, expecting nothing there of.”

“Beware of the person of one book.”

“Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.”

“It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation.”

“Peace is the work of justice indirectly, in so far as justice removes the obstacles to peace; but it is the work of charity (love) directly, since charity, according to its very notion, causes peace.”

“Beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: so that "good" means that which simply pleases the appetite; while the "beautiful" is something pleasant to apprehend.”

“All men are equal in nature, and also in original sin. It is in the merits and demerits of their actions that they differ.”

“If a man deliberately abstains from wine to such an extent that he does serious harm to his nature, he will not be free from blame.”

“There is no leisure about politics.”

“It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need”

“For in order that man may do well, whether in the works of the active life, or in those of the contemplative life, he needs the fellowship of friends.”