St. Jerome Quotations

Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best.

The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.

True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.

A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept.

Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you.

Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.

Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price.

Marriage is good for those who are afraid to sleep alone at night.

What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way.

Catch, then, O catch the transient hour; Improve each moment as it flies!

Why do you not practice what you preach.

The scars of others should teach us caution.

Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied.

The friendship that can cease has never been real.

Keep doing some kind of work, that the devil may always find you employed.

Let your daughter have first of all the book of Psalms for holiness of heart, and be instructed in the Proverbs of Solomon for her godly life.

They talk like angels but they live like men.

Having experienced the vexation of marriage, why should she be like the dog who returns to his own vomit,

When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us.

It is our part to seek, His to grant what we ask; ours to make a beginning, His to bring it to completion; ours to offer what we can, His to finish what we cannot.

The Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for theologians to swim in without ever reaching the bottom.

There are things in life that are bigger than ourselves. Life is short, live it well.

Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.

Make knowledge of the Scripture your love ... Live with them, meditate on them, make them the sole object of your knowledge and inquiries.

Without doubt, the Lord grants all favors which are asked of Him in Mass, provided they be fitting for us.

We must love Christ and always seek Christ's embraces. Then everything difficult will seem easy.

If Christ did not want to dismiss the Jews without food in the desert for fear that they would collapse on the way, it was to teach us that it is dangerous to try to get to heaven without the Bread of Heaven.

A false interpretation of Scripture causes that the gospel of the Lord becomes the gospel of man, or, which is worse, of the devil.

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

Woman is the gate of the devil, the road to iniquity, the sting of the scorpion, in a word, a dangerous species.

The Church was founded upon Peter: although elsewhere the same is attributed to all the Apostles, and they all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the strength of the Church depends upon them all alike, yet one among the twelve is chosen so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.

The tired ox treads with a firmer step.

Music to me is a voice, my voice, it's my way of expressing what colours can I bring in, what emotions, what feel. What ideas can I bring out from these instruments that would make this song come alive.

Whosoever you are who introduce new doctrines, I beseech you to spare the ears of Romans! Spare that faith which was commended by the voice of an Apostle. Why should you attempt to teach us, at the end of hundreds of years, that which we never heard before? Why bring forward what Peter and Paul did not will to make known? Until this day, the world was Christian without your doctrine. Thus, I hold as an old man onto that faith wherein I was regenerated as a boy.

Seek to learn on earth those truths which will remain ever valid in Heaven

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.

Instead of speaking saintly words we must act them.

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.

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?

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.

So valuable to heaven is the dignity of the human soul that every member of the human race has a guardian angel from the moment the person begins to be.

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.

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

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.

The best advice that I can give you is this: Church-traditions- especially when they do not run counter to the faith- are to be observed in the form in which previous generations have handed them down... The traditions which have been handed down should be regarded as apostolic laws.

Thank God I am deemed worthy to be hated by the world.

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

If then you remain constant in faith in the face of trial, the Lord will give you peace and rest for a time in this world, and forever in the next.

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.

Woman is the root of all evil.

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.

Endeavor to have always in your hand a pious book, that with this shield you may defend yourself against bad thoughts.

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

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

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.

Shun, as you would the plague, a cleric who from being poor has become wealthy, or who, from being nobody has become a celebrity.

The Church of Christ has been founded by shedding its own blood, not that of others; by enduring outrage, not by inflicting it. Persecutions have made it grow; martyrdoms have crowned 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.

A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts.

Begin now what you will be hereafter.

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

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

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

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.

No one cares to speak to an unwilling listener. An arrow never lodges in a stone: often it recoils upon the sender of it.

To saints their very slumber is a prayer.

Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business.

Athletes as a rule are stronger than their backers; yet the weaker presses the stronger to put forth all his efforts.

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.

While truth is always bitter, pleasantness waits upon evildoing.

Honest speech does not seek secret places.

They please the world most, who please Christ least.

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

To ignore Scripture is to ignore Christ.

Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal.

He is rich enough who does not want bread.

The Roman world is in collapse but we do not bend our neck.

Martyrdom does not consist only in dying for one's faith. Martyrdom also consists in serving God with love and purity of heart every day of one's life

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

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

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.

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

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

Whoever eats the Lamb outside this House is profane.

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

Keep always busy so that the devil will find you always engaged.

Failure is the inspiration of tomorrow's entrepreneurs.

To read without writing is to sleep.

Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most.

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

It is idle to play the lyre for an ass.

Even brute beasts and wandering birds do not fall into the same traps or nets twice.

That rain is the best which falls steadily on the earth. A sudden and excessive downpour ruins the fields.

What cannot be changed cannot be blamed.

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

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.

Do not marvel at the novelty of the thing, if a Virgin gives birth to God.