Top 127 Quotes & Sayings by Tertullian

Hope is patience with the lamp lit.

He is a man, who is to be a man, the fruit is always present in the seed.

The more you mow us down, the more numerous we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.

The usual complaint is, 'I have no other way of earning a living.' The harsh reply can be, 'Do you have to live?'

Truth engenders hatred of truth. As soon as it appears, it is the enemy.

See how these Christians love one another.

Nothing that is God's is obtainable by money.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race.

You cannot parcel out freedom in pieces because freedom is all or nothing.

He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies.

Two kinds of blindness are easily combined so that those who do not see really appear to see what is not.

Divorce these days is a religious vow, as if the proper offspring of marriage.

The nature of rumor is known to all.

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

It is certain because it is impossible.

The first reaction to truth is hatred.

Nature soaks every evil with either fear or shame.

Prevention of birth is a precipitation of murder.

Arguments about Scripture achieve nothing but a stomachache and a headache.

Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy.

Indeed it is better to postpone, lest either we complete too little by hurrying, or wander too long in completing it.

Christians are made, not born.

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

The pleasure of those who injure you lies in your pain. Therefore they will suffer if you take away their pleasure by not feeling pain.

You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine.

Fear is the foundation of safety.

It is certain because it is possible.

He who flees will fight again.

It is not consistent with truth that a man should sacrifice half of his stomach only to God-that he should be sober in drinking, but intemperate in eating. Your belly is your God, your liver is your temple, your paunch is your altar, the cook is your priest, and the fat steam is your Holy Spirit; the seasonings and the sauces are your chrisms, and your belchings are your prophesizing...[such] a grossly- feeding Christian is akin to lions and wolves rather than God. Our Lord Jesus called Himself Truth and not habit.

The pleasure of those who injure you lies in your pain. Therefore they will suffer if you take away their pleasure by not feeling pain

Patience is God's nature.

Now we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.

Prayer cleanses from sin, drives away temptations, stamps out persecutions, comforts the fainthearted, gives new strength to the courageous, brings travellers safely home, calms the waves, confounds robbers, feeds the poor, overrules the rich, lifts up the fallen, supports those who are falling, sustains those who stand firm.

For those women sin against God when they rub their skin with ointments, stain their cheeks with rouge, and make their eyes prominent with antimony. To them, I suppose, the artistic skill of God is displeasing!

In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God's sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil's gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die... Woman, you are the gate to hell.

God the Father's a deep root; the Son's the shoot that breaks into the world; the Spirit spreads the beauty & fragrance

Custom without truth is error grown old.

The Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed because it is absurd. And he was buried and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible.

Woman is a temple built over a sewer.

A man becomes a Christian, he is not born one.

The Lord challenges us to suffer persecutions and to confess Him. He wants thiose who belong to him to be brave and fearless. He himself shows how weakness of the flesh is overcome by courage of the Spirit....A christian is fearless.

It is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving kindness, that brands us in the eyes of those who oppose us.

We worship unity in trinity, and trinity in unity; neither confounding the person nor dividing the substance. There is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost; but the Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.

I believe because it is absurd.

The Law found more than it lost when Christ said, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven’ (Matthew 5:44-45). This most important commandment summarizes in a word the universal discipline of patience, since it does not allow us to do evil even to people who deserve it.

Where our work is, there let our joy be.

Woman, thou shouldst ever be clothed in rags and in mourning, appearing only as a penitent, drowned in tears, and expiating thus the sin of having caused the fall of the human race. Woman thou art the gate of the devil. It is thou who hast corrupted those whom Satan dare not attack face to face.

Every soul, then, by reason of its birth, has its nature in Adam until it is born again in Christ; moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains without this regeneration; and because unclean, it is actively sinful, and suffuses even the flesh (by reason of their conjunction) with its own shame.

The whole fruit is already present in the seed.

Men remain in ignorance as long as they hate, and they hate unjustly as long as they remain in ignorance.

Nothing that is God's is obtainable by money

In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the foetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier mankilling; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in the seed.

It is not permitted for a woman to speak in the church, nor is it permitted for her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer [the eucharist], nor to claim for herself a share in any masculine function- not to mention any priestly office.

Prevention of birth is premature murder, and it makes no difference whether it is a life already born that one snatches away or a life that is coming to birth.

Let women paint their eyes with tints of chastity, insert into their ears the word of God, tie the yoke of Christ around their necks, and adorn their whole persons with the silk of sanctity and the damask of devotion.

Do you not know that you are Eve? The judgment of God upon this sex lives on in this age; therefore, necessarily the guilt should live on also. You are the gateway of the devil; you are the one who unseals the curse of that tree, and you are the first one to turn your back on the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the devil was not capable of corrupting; you easily destroyed the image of God, Adam. Because of what you deserve, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die.

You can't undo anything you've already done, but you can face up to it. You can tell the truth. You can seek forgiveness. And then let God do the rest.

If the Tiber rises too high, or the Nile too low, the remedy is always feeding Christians to the lions.

The state of faith allows no mention of impossibility.