Saint Augustine
If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.Collection: God
Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also the case when people withdraw from God.Collection: God
The measure of love is to love without measuring.Collection: Love Is
If God is, why is there evil? But if God is not, why is there good?Collection: God
In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.Collection: Character
Sin is believing the lie that you are self-created, self-dependent and self-sustained.Collection: Self Esteem
God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail.Collection: Men
Trust the past to the mercy of God, the present to His love, and the future to His providence.Collection: Christian
Beware of despairing about yourself: you are commanded to put your trust in God, and not in yourself.Collection: Trust In God
The Old (Testament) is in the New (Testament) revealed, the New is in the Old concealed.Collection: Christian
Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.Collection: Faith
God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.Collection: Christian
Where Scripture speaks of the world's creation, it is not plainly said whether or when the angels were created; but if mention is made, it is implicit under the name of "heaven," when it is said, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."Collection: Angel
By and by never comes.Collection: Time
The fellow who eggs you on to avenge yourself will rob you of what you were going to say - as we forgive our debtors . When you have forfeited that, all your sins will be held against you; absolutely nothing is forgiven.Collection: Eggs
There is nothing more serious than the sacrilege of schism because there is no just cause for severing the unity of the Church.Collection: Unity
Poetry is devil's wine.Collection: Art
The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind commands the hand to move, and it so easy that one hardly distinguishes the order from its execution. Yet mind is mind and hand is body. The mind orders the mind to will. The recipient of the order is itself, yet it does not perform it.Collection: Moving
Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms.Collection: Wisdom
The playthings of our elders are called business.Collection: Elders
Such then in number and importance are the precious ties belonging to the Christian name which keep a believer in the Catholic Church, as it is right they should ... With you, where there is none of these things to attract or keep me... No one shall move me from the faith which binds my mind with ties so many and so strong to the Christian religion... For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.Collection: Christian
The same divine authority that forbids the killing of a human being establishes certain exceptions, as when God authorizes killing by a general law or when He gives an explicit commission to an individual for a limited time.Collection: Law
To dye oneself with paints in order to have a rosier or a paler complexion is a lying counterfeit.Collection: Lying
Woman does not possess the image of God in herself but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned the role as helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, then she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one.Collection: Taken
The weakness of little children's limbs is innocent, not their souls.Collection: Children
Disturbers are to be rebuked, the low spirited to be encouraged, the infirm to be supported, objectors confuted, the treacherous guarded against, the unskilled taught, the lazy aroused, the contentious restrained, the haughty repressed, the poor relieved, the oppressed liberated, the good approved, the evil borne with, and all are to be loved!Collection: Evil
Of this I am certain, that no one has ever died who was not destined to die some time. Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest... And of what consequence is it what kind of death puts an end to life, since he who has died once is not forced to go through the same ordeal a second time? They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them.Collection: Life
Love can be angry... with a kind of anger in which there is no gall, like the dove's and not the ravens.Collection: Marriage
He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.Collection: Jesus
They who shall enter into [the] joy [of the Lord] shall know what is going on outside in the outer darkness. . .The saints'. . . knowledge, which shall be great, shall keep them acquainted. . .with the eternal sufferings of the lost.Collection: Joy
Wicked sons do not have the Holy Ghost in the same way as do beloved sons, and yet they do have Baptism. So, too, heretics do not have the Church as Catholics have, even though they have Baptism.Collection: Son
...But we enjoyed playing games and were punished for them by men who played games themselves. However, grown-up games are known as 'business' and even though boys' games are much the same, they are punished for them by their elders. No one pities either the boys or the men, though surely we deserve pity, for I cannot believe that a good judge would approve of the beatings I received as a boy on the ground that my games delayed my progress in studying subjects which would enable me to play a less creditable game later in life.Collection: Believe
You have been professing yourself reluctant to throw off your load of illusion because truth was uncertain. Well, it is certain now, yet the burden still weighs you down, while other people are given wings on freer shoulders, people who have not worn themselves out with research, nor spent a decade and more reflecting on these questions.Collection: Wings
The ministry is a weight from which even an angel might shrinkCollection: Angel
I do not doubt that all those who have received Baptism anywhere and from whomever do have Baptism, as long as it was consecrated with the words of the Gospel and they received it without pretence on their part and with some degree of faith. However, it would not avail them for their spiritual salvation if they were lacking in that charity by which they might be implanted in the Catholic Church.Collection: Spiritual
Woman was merely man's helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God.Collection: Men
Everyone who observes himself doubting observes a truth, and about that which he observes he is certain; therefore he is certain about a truth. Everyone therefore who doubts whether truth exists has in himself a truth on which not to doubt.... Hence one who can doubt at all ought not to doubt the existence of truth.Collection: Doubt
I too have sworn heedlessly and all the time, I have had this most repulsive and death-dealing habit. I'm telling your graces; from the moment I began to serve God , and saw what evil there is in forswearing oneself, I grew very afraid indeed, and out of fear I applied the brakes to this old, old, habit.Collection: Old Habits
The Devil often transforms himself into an angel to tempt men, some for their instruction, some for their ruin.Collection: Angel
For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next...They are set up on the course of their existence, and the faster they climb towards its zenith, the more they hasten towards the point where they exist no more.Collection: Giving
So if you can manage it, you shouldn't touch your partner, except for the sake of having children.Collection: Children
And so, lastly, does the very name of "Catholic", which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house.Collection: Names
A wanton eye is a messenger of an unchaste heart.Collection: Heart
Not to give to those in need what is to you superfluous is akin to fraud.Collection: Giving
The Devil invented gambling.Collection: Gambling
He pleaseth God whom God pleaseth.Collection: God
It is not often that we use language correctly; usually we use it incorrectly, though we understand each others meaning.Collection: Education
The most venerable, clearly understood, enlightened, and reliable constant in the world is not only that we want to be happy, but that we want only to be so. Our very nature requires it of us.Collection: Happiness