St. Jerome Quotes - Page 4

The fact is that my native land is a prey to barbarism, that in it men's only God is their belly, that they live only for the present, and that the richer a man is the holier he is held to be.

Nothing gives us a greater idea of our soul, than that God has given us, at the moment of our birth, an angel to take care of it.

The most base of men can be civilized through suffering.

When I could not see the light with my blind eyes, I blamed not my eyes, but the sun.

Preferring to store her money in the stomachs of the needy rather than hide it in a purse.

Virginity can be lost by a thought.

Let your daughter have first of all the book of Psalms for holiness of heart, and be instructed in the Proverbs of Solomon for her godly life.

Catch, then, O catch the transient hour; Improve each moment as it flies!

No one loves to tell of scandal except to him who loves to hear it. Learn, then, to rebuke and check the detracting tongue by showing that you do not listen to it with pleasure.

He is rich enough who does not want bread.

For the preservation of chastity, an empty and rumbling stomach and fevered lungs are indispensable.

Nothing is hard for lovers, no labor is difficult for those who wish it.

Out of one hundred thousand sinners who continue in sin until death, scarcely one will be saved.

The charges we bring against others often come home to ourselves; we inveigh against faults which are as much ours as theirs; and so our eloquence ends by telling against ourselves.

Haste is of the Devil.

Strictly speaking, one should not even rightly compare virginity to marriage because you cannot make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil.

Keep always busy so that the devil will find you always engaged.

Time would fail me were I to try to lay before you in order all the passages in the Holy Scriptures which relate to the efficacy of baptism or to explain the mysterious doctrine of that second birth which though it is our second is yet our first in Christ.

Everything must have in it a sharp seasoning of truth.

While truth is always bitter, pleasantness waits upon evildoing.

Matrimony is always a vice, all that can be done is to excuse it and sanctify it; therefore it was made a religious sacrament.

Either we must speak as we dress, or dress as we speak. Why do we profess one thing and display another? The tongue talks of chastity, but the whole body reveals impurity.

Even brute beasts and wandering birds do not fall into the same traps or nets twice.

Why do you not practise what you preach.

[O]pulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessors.