Thomas Aquinas Quotes - Page 11

Baptism is the Sacrament of Faith. Now, dead faith does not suffice for salvation .. .Therefore, the Sacrament of Baptism cannot give salvation to a man whose will ... expels the form of faith.

It is due to neither impotence nor ignorance on God’s part that evils occur in the world, but it is owing to the order of his wisdom and to the greatness of his goodness, whence come the many and divers grades of goodness in things, many of which would be lacking were he to allow no evil to exist. Thus there would be no good of patience without the evil of persecution, nor the good of the preservation of its life in a lion, without the evil of the destruction of the animals on which it lives.

The world of pure spirits stretches between the divine nature and the world of human beings; because divine wisdom has ordained that the higher should look after the lower, angels execute the divine plan for human salvation: they are our guardians, who free us when hindered and help to bring us home.

In a false person, sacraments do not produce any effect.

If anyone without the right faith receives Baptism outside the Church, he does not receive it unto salvation ... From the comparison of the Church to Paradise, we learn that men can receive her Baptism even outside her fold, but that out there no one can receive or keep the salvation of the blessed.

Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice.

The theologian considers sin mainly as an offence against God; the moral philosopher as contrary to reasonableness.

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.

Anger and the like are attributed to God on account of a similitude of effect. Thus, because to punish is properly the act of an angry man, God's punishment is metaphorically spoken of as His anger.

Just as in one man there is one soul and one body, yet many members; even so the Catholic Church is one body, having many members. The soul that quickens this body is the Holy Spirit; and therefore in the Creed after confessing our belief in the Holy Spirit, we are bid to believe in the Holy Catholic Church.

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.

Charity is not a potency of the soul, because if it were it would be natural. Nor is it a passion, because it is not in a sensitive potency in which are all passions. Nor is it a habit, because a habit is removed with difficulty; charity, however, is easily lost through one act of mortal sin. Therefore charity is not something created in the soul.

The servants of God...whether provoked by word or work, by keeping themselves tranquil and peaceful, evince a perfect nobleness of soul.

The human mind may perceive truth only through thinking, as is clear from Augustine.

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.

I cannot understand how anyone conscious of mortal sin can laugh or be merry.

Here 'neath veils, my Saviour darkly I behold; To my thirsting spirit all thy light unfold; Face to face in heaven let me come to thee, And the blessed vision of thy glory see.

Jesus Lord, kind Pelican, Cleanse my filth with Thy blood, One drop of which can save The whole world from all its sin

Charity, by which God and neighbor are loved, is the most perfect friendship.

Grace renders us like God and a partaker of the divine nature.

Concerning perfect blessedness which consists in a vision of God.

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

Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God.

All that is true, by whomsoever it has been said has its origin in the Spirit.

Justice is in subjects as well as in rulers.