Top 21 Quotes & Sayings by Philo

Those who give hoping to be rewarded with honor are not giving, they are bargaining.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Households, cities, countries, and nations have enjoyed great happiness when a single individual has taken heed of the Good and Beautiful. Such people not only liberate themselves; they fill those they meet with a free mind.

Remorse for what is done is useless.

Learning is by nature, curiosity.

Every virtuous man is free.

A Judge must bear in mind that when he tries a case he is himself on trial.

He who tries to flee from God takes refuge in himself.

Money, it has been said, is the cause of good things to a good man, of evil things to a bad man.

I know that God exists. I know that I have never invented anything. I have been a medium by which these things were given to the culture as fast as the culture could earn them. I give all the credit to God.

Learning is by nature curiosity... prying into everything, reluctant to leave anything, material or immaterial, unexplained.

Philo of Alexandria introduced in the first century what has been described as the 'Hellenizing of the Old Testament,' or the allegorical method of exegesis. By this, as Erdmann observes, the Bible narrative was found to contain a deeper, and particularly an allegorical interpretation, in addition to its literal interpretation; this was not conscious disingenuousness but a natural mode of amalgamating the Greek philosophic with the Hebraic doctrines.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. by Saint Philo of Alexandria

Emotions become more violent when expression is stifled.

Households, cities, countries and nations have enjoyed great happiness, when a single individual has taken heed of the Good and Beautiful. Such men not only liberate themselves; they fill those they meet with a free mind.

It would be a sign of great simplicity to think that the world was created in six days, or indeed at all in time; [...] Time is a thing posterior to the world. Therefore it would be correctly said that the world was not created in time, but that time had its existence in consequence of the world. For it is the motion of the heaven that has displayed the nature of time.

The body is the soul's house. Shouldn't we therefore take care of our house so that it doesn't fall into ruin?

God welcomes genuine service, and that is the service of a soul that offers the bare and simple sacrifice of truth; but from false service, the mere display of material wealth, He turns away.

What God is to the world, that parents are to their children.

The air is full of souls those who are nearest to earth descending to be tied to mortal bodies return to other bodies, desiring to live in them.

How then, is it natural that the mind of man, being so small as contained in such narrow spaces as a brain or a heart, should have room for all the vastness of sky and Universe?