St. Jerome Quotations

Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best.

The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.

True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.

A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept.

Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you.

Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.

Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price.

Marriage is good for those who are afraid to sleep alone at night.

What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way.

Catch, then, O catch the transient hour; Improve each moment as it flies!

Why do you not practice what you preach.

The scars of others should teach us caution.

Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied.

The friendship that can cease has never been real.

Keep doing some kind of work, that the devil may always find you employed.

Let your daughter have first of all the book of Psalms for holiness of heart, and be instructed in the Proverbs of Solomon for her godly life.

They talk like angels but they live like men.

Having experienced the vexation of marriage, why should she be like the dog who returns to his own vomit,

Nothing gives us a greater idea of our soul, than that God has given us, at the moment of our birth, an angel to take care of it.

Among us, what is not allowed to women is equally not allowed to men.

Small minds cannot grasp great subjects.

Nothing is hard for lovers, no labor is difficult for those who wish it.

Malice swallows the greatest part of its own venom.

My speech is too fast; my oration confused; love knows no order.

The laws of Caesar are one thing, those of Christ, another. Papinianus judges one way, our Paul another.

It is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin.

[O]pulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessors.

It is easier to mend neglect than to quicken love.

I praise wedlock, I praise marital union, but only because they produce me virgins.

Everything must have in it a sharp seasoning of truth.

It is not being in Jerusalem, but living a good life there that is praiseworthy.

A man who is well grounded in the testimonies of the Scripture is the bulwark of the Church.

For all riches come from iniquity, and unless one were to lose another could not gain. Hence the common adage seems to me to be very true: The rich man is unjust or the heir of an unjust one.

Love knows nothing of order.

Marriage fills the Earth, virginity Heaven.

Virginity can be lost by a thought.

Quick enough, if good enough.

The truly miserable have a timbre in their voices strong enough to erase smiles from the faces and souls of the contented.

The most base of men can be civilized through suffering.

Neither Britain, a land fertile in tyrants, nor the people of Ireland, knew Moses and the prophets.

Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness?

Small minds can never handle great themes.

Sometimes the character of the mistress is inferred from the dress of her maids.

That clergyman soon becomes an object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to go.

Playing keys is more than just knowing what notes to play. You have to know about the buttons too.

An ethic is not an ethic, and a value not a value without somesacrifice for it. Something given up, something not gained.

The enemy of reflection is the breakneck pace - the thousand pictures.

It is hard for the human soul not to love something, and our mind must of necessity be drawn to some kind of affection.

Time would fail me were I to try to lay before you in order all the passages in the Holy Scriptures which relate to the efficacy of baptism or to explain the mysterious doctrine of that second birth which though it is our second is yet our first in Christ.

If you call [the synagogue] a brothel, a den of vice, the devil's refuge, Satan's fortress, a place to deprave the soul, an abyss of every conceivable disaster or whatever else you will, you are still saying less than it deserves.

For the preservation of chastity, an empty and rumbling stomach and fevered lungs are indispensable.

Haste is of the Devil.

Do not marvel at the novelty of the thing, if a Virgin gives birth to God.

No one loves to tell of scandal except to him who loves to hear it. Learn, then, to rebuke and check the detracting tongue by showing that you do not listen to it with pleasure.

Matrimony is always a vice, all that can be done is to excuse it and sanctify it; therefore it was made a religious sacrament.

What cannot be changed cannot be blamed.

That rain is the best which falls steadily on the earth. A sudden and excessive downpour ruins the fields.

Even brute beasts and wandering birds do not fall into the same traps or nets twice.

It is idle to play the lyre for an ass.

If a soul is not clothed with the teachings of the Church he cannot merit to have Jesus seated in him.

Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most.

To read without writing is to sleep.

Failure is the inspiration of tomorrow's entrepreneurs.

Keep always busy so that the devil will find you always engaged.

Wine is the first weapon that devils use in attacking the young

Whoever eats the Lamb outside this House is profane.

A vice in the heart is an idol on the altar.

We need more music that is passionate and meaningful and honest.

Strictly speaking, one should not even rightly compare virginity to marriage because you cannot make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil.

Let us learn upon earth those things which can call us to heaven.

Out of one hundred thousand sinners who continue in sin until death, scarcely one will be saved.

Martyrdom does not consist only in dying for one's faith. Martyrdom also consists in serving God with love and purity of heart every day of one's life

The Roman world is in collapse but we do not bend our neck.

He is rich enough who does not want bread.

Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal.

To ignore Scripture is to ignore Christ.

Vanity is truly the motive power that moves humanity, and it is flattery that greases the wheels.

They please the world most, who please Christ least.

Honest speech does not seek secret places.

While truth is always bitter, pleasantness waits upon evildoing.

And as regards Adam and Eve we must maintain that before the fall they were virgins in Paradise: but after they sinned, and were cast out of Paradise, they were immediately married.

Athletes as a rule are stronger than their backers; yet the weaker presses the stronger to put forth all his efforts.

Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business.

To saints their very slumber is a prayer.

No one cares to speak to an unwilling listener. An arrow never lodges in a stone: often it recoils upon the sender of it.

Either we must speak as we dress, or dress as we speak. Why do we profess one thing and display another? The tongue talks of chastity, but the whole body reveals impurity.

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

Preferring to store her money in the stomachs of the needy rather than hide it in a purse.

Always be doing something worthwhile; then the devil will always find you busy.

Begin now what you will be hereafter.

A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts.

Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.

The Church of Christ has been founded by shedding its own blood, not that of others; by enduring outrage, not by inflicting it. Persecutions have made it grow; martyrdoms have crowned it.

Shun, as you would the plague, a cleric who from being poor has become wealthy, or who, from being nobody has become a celebrity.

The eating of meat was unknown up to the big flood, but since the flood they have put the strings and stinking juices of animal meat into our mouths, just as they threw in front of the grumbling sensual people in the desert. Jesus Christ, who appeared when the time had been fulfilled, has again joined the end with the beginning, so that it is no longer allowed for us to eat animal meat.

No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow.

If there is but little water in the stream, it is the fault, not of the channel, but of the source.

Endeavor to have always in your hand a pious book, that with this shield you may defend yourself against bad thoughts.

Even while living in the world, the heart of Mary was so filled with motherly tenderness and compassion for men that no-one ever suffered so much for their own pains, as Mary suffered for the pains of her children.