Top 140 Quotes & Sayings by St. Jerome - Page 2

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.

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

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 one cares to speak to an unwilling listener. An arrow never lodges in a stone: often it recoils upon the shooter of it.

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

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

Others drink for sterility and commit murder on the human not yet sown. Some when they sense that they have conceived by sin, consider the poisons for abortion, and frequently die themselves along with it, and go to Hell guilty of three crimes: murdering themselves, committing adultery against Christ, and murder against their unborn child.

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

To ignore Scripture is to ignore Christ.

When I could not see the light with my blind eyes, I blamed not my eyes, but the sun.

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

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

Woman is the root of all evil.

For it is good to cleave to God, and to put our hopes in the Lord, so that, when we have exchanged this poor life for the kingdom of heaven, we may cry aloud: 'Whom have I in heaven but thee? There is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.' Assuredly, when we have found such wealth in heaven, we may well grieve to have sought after poor passing pleasures here on earth.

Love knows nothing of order.

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

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

To read without writing is to sleep.

Failure is the inspiration of tomorrow's entrepreneurs.

Malice swallows the greatest part of its own venom.

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

Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, "Why do you not practice what you preach?

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.

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.

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

Marriage fills the Earth, virginity Heaven.

To perceive is to categorize, to conceptualize is to categorize, to learn is to form categories, to make decisions is to categorize.

No created mind, no created heart, no human force is capable of knowing how much love the Heart of Mary had for the Lord.

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.

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

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

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.

Whoever eats the Lamb outside this House is profane.

He is rich enough who does not want bread.

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

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

Why do you not practise what you preach.

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

The most base of men can be civilized through suffering.

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

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

If it is good not to touch a woman, then it is bad to touch a woman always and in every case.

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

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

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

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

To saints their very slumber is a prayer.

While truth is always bitter, pleasantness waits upon evildoing.

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.

The line, often adopted by strong men in controversy, of justifying the means by the end.

The charges we bring against others often come home to ourselves; we inveigh against faults which are as much ours as theirs; and so our eloquence ends by telling against ourselves.

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

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.

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

The tired ox treads with a firmer step.

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.

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

Who would have believed that the daughters of that mighty city would one day be wandering as servants and slaves on the shores of Egypt and Africa, or that Bethlehem would daily receive noble Romans, distinguished ladies, brought up in wealth and now reduced to beggary? I cannot help them all, but I grieve and weep with them, and am completely absorbed in the duties which charity imposes on me. I have put aside my commentary on Ezekiel and almost all study. For today we must translate the precepts of the Scriptures into deeds; instead of speaking saintly words, we must act them.

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.

The fact is that my native land is a prey to barbarism, that in it men's only God is their belly, that they live only for the present, and that the richer a man is the holier he is held to be.