Let this list of 69 quotations by the Italian theologian Thomas Aquinas lead you to an inspirational day. Recharge yourself with motivational reason, mind, love sayings, and satisfy your hunger for a better life.
What are the best Thomas Aquinas quotes?
We've made this hand-picked collection of quotes to show you what is Thomas Aquinas truly willing to say and leave for generations. Whether an inspirational quote or a motivational message about giving your best, we can all benefit from the wisdom, captured within these words.
There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.
Well-ordered self-love is right and natural.
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 things that we love tell us what we are.
Beware of the person of one book.
Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.
By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.
How is it they live in such harmony the billions of stars - when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds about someone they know.
Temperance is simply a disposition of the mind which binds the passion.
Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man's own will.
To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them.
Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures.
A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.
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.
To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.
Human salvation demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason.
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.
Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good.
Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients.
Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.
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.
We can't have full knowledge all at once.
We must start by believing; then afterwards we may be led on to master the evidence for ourselves.
How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God.
Because we cannot know what God is, but only what He is not, we cannot consider how He is but only how He is not.
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.
Give, expecting nothing there of.
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.
It is a sin directly against one's neighbour, since one man cannot over-abound in external riches, without another man lacking them.
There is nothing in your mind which wasn't experienced before hand.
The truth of the Christian faith surpasses the capacity of reason.
The soul is perfected by knowledge and virtue.
For creation is not a change, but that dependence of the created existence on the principle from which it is instituted, and thus is of the genus of relation; whence nothing prohibits it
being in the created as in the subject. Creation is thus said to be a kind of change, according to the way of understanding, insofar as our intellect accepts one and the same thing as not
existing before and afterwards existing.
For although the will cannot be inwardly moved by any creature, yet it can be moved inwardly by God.
Love is a binding force, by which another is joined to me and cherished by myself.
Devotion is a certain act of the will by which man gives himself promptly to divine service.
Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.
Three conditions are necessary for Penance: contrition, which is sorrow for sin, together with a purpose of amendment; confession of sins without any omission; and satisfaction by means of good works.
God answered the prayers of animals.
Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice.
Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.
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.
The greatest kindness one can render to any man consists in leading him from error to truth.
A scrap of knowledge about sublime things is worth more than any amount about trivialities.
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.
Nothing created has ever been able to fill the heart of man. God alone can fill it infinitely.
The theologian considers sin mainly as an offence against God;
the moral philosopher as contrary to reasonableness.
Law; an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community.
If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.
