John Chrysostom Quotations

Nothing is more fallacious than wealth. It is a hostile comrade, a domestic enemy.

I know my own soul, how feeble and puny it is: I know the magnitude of this ministry, and the great difficulty of the work; for more stormy billows vex the soul of the priest than the gales which disturb the sea.

Men have the power of thinking that they may avoid sin.

When one is required to preside over the Church, and be entrusted with the care of so many souls, the whole female sex must retire before the magnitude of the task, and the majority of men also.

The highest point of philosophy is to be both wise and simple; this is the angelic life.

No one can harm the man who does himself no wrong.

The divine law indeed has excluded women from this ministry, but they endeavour to thrust themselves into it; and since they can effect nothing of themselves, they do all through the agency of others.

Riches are not forbidden, but the pride of them is.

And all men are ready to pass judgement on the priest as if he was not a being clothed with flesh, or one who inherited a human nature.

Poor human reason, when it trusts in itself, substitutes the strangest absurdities for the highest divine concepts.