Thomas Aquinas Love Quotations

The things that we love tell us what we are.

How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God.

That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.

Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.

All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.

A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.

Love is a binding force, by which another is joined to me and cherished by myself.

Love works in a circle, for the beloved moves the lover by stamping a likeness, and the lover then goes out to hold the beloved inreality. Who first was the beginning now becomes the end of motion.

One aspect of neighbourly love is that we must not merely will our neighbours good, but actually work to bring it about.

Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.

The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Love; It signifies Love, It produces love. The Eucharist is the consummation of the whole spiritual life.

To love is to will the good of the other.

In the realm of evil thoughts none induces to sin as much as do thoughts that concern the pleasure of the flesh.

Well-ordered self-love is right and natural.

Charity is love; not all love is charity.

Pain itself can be pleasurable accidentally in so far as it is accompanied by wonder, as in stage-plays; or in so far as it recalls a beloved object to one's memory, and makes one feel one's love for the thing, whose absence gives us pain. Consequently, since love is pleasant, both pain and whatever else results from love, in so far as they remind us of our love, are pleasant.

For loving draws us more to things than knowing does, since good is found by going to the thing, whereas the true is found when the thing comes to us.

An act of love always tends towards two things; to the good that one wills, and to the person for whom one wills it.