Thomas Aquinas Quotes

144 Sourced Quotes

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

Thomas Aquinas
It is a sin directly against one's neighbour, since one man cannot over-abound in external riches, without another man lacking them.

Thomas Aquinas
In all such beings chance occurs, not in the sense that everything about them occurs by chance, but that in each of them there is room for chance and this very fact is a sign that they are subject to someone's rule.

Thomas Aquinas
In the life of the body a man is sometimes sick, and unless he takes medicine, he will die. Even so in the spiritual life a man is sick on account of sin. For that reason he needs medicine so that he may be restored to health; and this grace is bestowed in the Sacrament of Penance.

Thomas Aquinas
Miracles are signs not to them that believe, but to them that believe not.

Thomas Aquinas
It is written: "Wizards thou shalt not suffer to live" (Ex. 22:18); and: "In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land" (Ps. 100:8)....

Thomas Aquinas
Good and evil are essential differences of the act of the will. For good and evil pertain essentially to the will; just as truth and falsehood pertain to the reason, the act of which is distinguished essentially by the difference of truth and falsehood (according as we say that an opinion is true or false.) Consequently, good and evil volition are acts differing in species.

Thomas Aquinas
A scrap of knowledge about sublime things is worth more than any amount about trivialities.

Thomas Aquinas
The human race was in need of salvation because of the perversity of sin. For when people who are ill are cured from their illness, they are called "saved." Therefore, the Lord says: "Your faith has saved you.

Thomas Aquinas
Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace.

Thomas Aquinas
It would seem that zeal is not an effect of love. For zeal is a beginning of contention.

Thomas Aquinas
See to whom Jesus is drawing near, three kinds of people: to those who make peace with him, to those who are devoted to God, and to those who are kind to their neighbors.

Thomas Aquinas
Just as a man cannot live in the flesh unless he is born in the flesh, even so a man cannot have the spiritual life of grace unless he is born again spiritually. This regeneration is effected by Baptism: "Unless a man is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (Jn 3:5)

Thomas Aquinas
Gods are called many by the error of some who worshipped many deities, thinking as they did the planets and other stars were gods, and also the separate parts of the world.

Thomas Aquinas
It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.

Thomas Aquinas
Law has the power to compel: indeed, the ability to enforce is a condition of the ability to command.

Thomas Aquinas
There is, therefore, a more perfect intellectual life in the angels. In them the intellect does not proceed to self-knowledge from anything exterior, but knows itself through itself....

Thomas Aquinas
A man should remind himself that an object of faith is not scientifically demonstrable, lest presuming to demonstrate what is of faith, he should produce inconclusive reasons and offer occasion for unbelievers to scoff at a faith based on such ground.

Thomas Aquinas
The meaning of what is said is according to the motive for saying it: because things are not subject to speech, but speech to things. Therefore we should take account of the motive of the lawgiver, rather than of his very words.

Thomas Aquinas
Even as he would be guilty of falsehood who would, in the name of another person, proffer things that are not committed to him, so too does a man incur the guilt of falsehood who, on the part of the Church, gives worship to God contrary to the manner established by the Church or divine authority, and according to ecclesiastical custom.

Thomas Aquinas
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.

Thomas Aquinas
But man is freer than all the animals, on account of his free-will, with which he is endowed above all other animals.

Thomas Aquinas
God's precepts are light to the loving, heavy to the fearful.

Thomas Aquinas
Mistakes are made on two counts: an argument is either based on error or incorrectly developed.

Thomas Aquinas