Saint Ambrose Quotations

God, who preferred the correction rather than the death of a sinner, did not desire that a homicide be punished by the exaction of another act of homicide.

No one is good but God alone. What is good is therefore divine, what is divine is therefore good.

Where a man's heart is, there is his treasure also.

It is not from your own goods that you give to the beggar; it is a portion of his own that you are restoring to him. The Earth belongs to all. So you are paying back a debt and think you are making a gift to which you are not bound.

Many a sin has sullied me in body and in soul because I did not restrain my thoughts nor guard my lips: nevertheless it is to Thee, O God of majesty and love, that I turn in my extremity, for Thou art the fount of mercy; to Thee, as quickly as I may, I speed: for Thou alone canst heal me; I take refuge under Thy protection.

One of the duties of fortitude is to keep the weak from receiving injury; another, to check the wrong motions of our own souls; a third, both to disregard humiliations, and to do what is right with an even mind. All these clearly ought to be fulfilled by all Christians, and especially by the clergy.

Bind up thy words that they run not riot, and grow wanton, and gather up sins for themselves in too much talking. Let them be rather confined, and held back within their own banks. An overflowing river quickly gathers mud.

A duty is to be chosen from what is virtuous, and from what is useful, and also from the comparison of the two, one with the other; but nothing is recognized by Christians as virtuous or useful which is not helpful to the future life.

God created the universe in such a manner that all in common might derive their food from it, and that the Earth should also be a property common to all.

The best way to use the gold of the Redeemer is for the redemption of those in peril.

O most merciful Father, put far from me all my iniquities and all my offences; so that, by Thee made whole in body and in soul, I may be accounted worthy to approach the Holy of holies.

Nothing graces the Christian soul so much as mercy; mercy as shown chiefly towards the poor, that thou mayest treat them as sharers in common with thee in the produce of nature, which brings forth the fruits of the earth for use to all.

Forget not, O Lord, that I am one of those whom Thou hast created, and with Thine own blood hast redeemed. I repent me of my sins: I will strive to amend my ways.

Take away the contests of the martyrs, and you have taken away their crowns.

The emperor is in the Church, not above the Church.

Let there be a door to thy mouth, that it may be shut when need arises, and let it be carefully barred, that none may rouse thy voice to anger, and thou pay back abuse with abuse.

Nothing escapes God's knowledge. This is proved by the witness of the Scriptures and the analogy of the sun, which, although created, yet by its light or heat enters into all things.

Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.