Words matter. These are the best Thomas Aquinas Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Law; an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community.
Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him.
As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power.
Wonder is the desire for knowledge.
Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.
Human salvation demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason.
Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need.
Reason in man is rather like God in the world.
Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man’s own will.
Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice.
Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.
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.
God should not be called an individual substance, since the principal of individuation is matter.
It is clear that he does not pray, who, far from uplifting himself to God, requires that God shall lower Himself to him, and who resorts to prayer not to stir the man in us to will what God wills, but only to persuade God to will what the man in us wills.
Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.
A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.
To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them.
Law is nothing other than a certain ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by the person who has the care of the community.
By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.
It is possible to demonstrate God’s existence, although not a priori, yet a posteriori from some work of His more surely known to us.
Love is a binding force, by which another is joined to me and cherished by myself.
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.
It is necessary to posit something which is necessary of itself, and has no cause of its necessity outside of itself but is the cause of necessity in other things. And all people call this thing God.
Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.
Well-ordered self-love is right and natural.
Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.
The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work, but in the excellence of the work he produces.
Pray thee, spare, thyself at times: for it becomes a wise man sometimes to relax the high pressure of his attention to work.
The things that we love tell us what we are.
All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.
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.
The knowledge of God is the cause of things. For the knowledge of God is to all creatures what the knowledge of the artificer is to things made by his art.
Distinctions drawn by the mind are not necessarily equivalent to distinctions in reality.
Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.
There is but one Church in which men find salvation, just as outside the ark of Noah it was not possible for anyone to be saved.
Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.
The principal act of courage is to endure and withstand dangers doggedly rather than to attack them.
Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.
The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.
If forgers and malefactors are put to death by the secular power, there is much more reason for excommunicating and even putting to death one convicted of heresy.
