Peter Kreeft Quotes

79 Sourced Quotes

No emotion, merely as an emotion, is a sin, because we cannot directly control the arising of an emotion in our soul.

Peter Kreeft
Of course the more you love the sinner the more you hate and make war on the sin, just as the more you love the person, the more you hate and kill the cancer cells that are killing the person. Compassion for cancer cells does not come from compassion for persons; it comes precisely from lack of compassion for persons.

Peter Kreeft
If we rely on anything else besides faith to maintain the practice of the presence of God, we will certainly fail, whether this is our feelings, or experiences, or sincerity, or good intentions, or reasonings, or plans. The reason these things will fail while faith will not fail is that all these things depend on us, while faith depends on God. It is a gift of God.

Peter Kreeft
Remembering the facts of death and Heaven gives us an even more pressing reason to learn to pray: We do not have an infinite amount of time. We are one day nearer Home today than we ever were before. I guarantee you that after you die you will not say 'I spent too much time praying; I wish I had watched more TV instead.'

Peter Kreeft
Love is faith's flower, hope is its stem. Grace comes into us by faith, like water through the roots of a tree. It rises in us by hope, like sap rising through the trunk of a tree. And it matures in us by [love] as fruit matures on a tree's branches, fruit for the neighbor's eating.

Peter Kreeft
The key to faith is love. We believe only if we love. Trust is the middle term; only if we love, do we trust; and only if we trust, do we believe.

Peter Kreeft
I find my data first in myself, not first in the poets. For if I did not find it in myself, I would not be able to find it in the poets.

Peter Kreeft
Every gift requires two freedoms: the giver's and the receiver's.

Peter Kreeft
The self is like a baseball. Throw it back to the divine pitcher who pitched it to you in the first place, and the game of love goes on. Hold it, and the game is over. That is the difference between Heaven and Hell.

Peter Kreeft
The modern mind always tends to reduce the greater to the lesser rather than seeing the lesser as reflecting the greater.

Peter Kreeft
Envy, though not the greatest sin, is the only one that gives the sinner no pleasure at all, not even fake and temporary satisfaction.

Peter Kreeft
If you didn't believe in objective truth, arguments would be just toys, or games, or jokes.

Peter Kreeft
Faith is not like bottled water but like rain. Its destiny is not just to be kept and held but to make something visible grow.

Peter Kreeft
Scripture starts with the particular and then universalizes it. You are called to love your concrete individual neighbor and then to realize that every individual is your neighbor. The point is not to destroy concrete neighborhood in a fit of universalism but to expand the local neighborhood and embrace the universal neighborhood.

Peter Kreeft
Not all Tolkien haters are Orcs, but all Orcs are Tolkien haters.

Peter Kreeft
We can and should investigate and learn from the wisdom in other religions.

Peter Kreeft
A man walking through a wall is a miracle. A man both walking and not walking through a wall at the same time and in the same respect is a contradiction. God can perform miracles but not contradictions - not because his power is limited, but because contradictions are meaningless.

Peter Kreeft
You see, God just will not let us flunk out of His school of love. He insists on remedial lessons until we get it right. For this whole world is a school set up by Love Himself to teach us to love.

Peter Kreeft
Christ transforms the meaning and value of suffering from something to be feared or at best endured into something redemptive [and transformative].

Peter Kreeft
Abortion is the insurance against that fate worse than death which is called a family.

Peter Kreeft
We modern egalitarians are tempted to the primal sin of pride in the opposite way from the ancients. The old, aristocratic form of pride was the desire to be better than others. The new, democratic form is the desire not to have anyone better than yourself. It is just as spiritually deadly and does not even carry with it the false pleasure of gloating superiority.

Peter Kreeft
Our destiny is to be so intimately united with God that, as the mystics say, we not only see God's face but also see with God's face.

Peter Kreeft
We are insane. That is what sin is. Sanctity is identitical with sanity. It means living the truth, living in reality. Sin always substitutes unreality for reality.

Peter Kreeft
If there is a God, there is a map. If God has a map, his map is the true map.

Peter Kreeft
To God each one of us is His favorite. God's love comes to all, but it comes to all as each, not to all as some anonymous aggregate.

Peter Kreeft
In this deed is my hope, not in the mere timeless fact that God is love. I am saved not by the beautiful Trinitarian life of God but by the gory death of God. I am saved not by the touching of the three Persons in Heaven but by the touching of this love on the Cross to my life.

Peter Kreeft
This is the reason why it is crucial to distinguish anger from hatred. There is a kind of anger (nonsinful kind) which...is in God himself, while hate is not in God but is in Satan. If we do not clearly distinguish anger from hatred, then we do not clearly distinguish God from Satan!

Peter Kreeft
Humility is the marriage bond of Heaven. Pride is the frigidity of Hell.

Peter Kreeft
Nothing but prayer can make saints because nothing but God can make saints, and we meet God in prayer. Prayer is the hospital for souls where we meet Doctor God.

Peter Kreeft
Christ is the Word of God in person. The Bible is the Word of God in writing. Both are the Word of God in the words of men. Both have a human nature and a divine nature.

Peter Kreeft