Quotes

I made this page because I often vaguely remember a quote, and then have trouble finding/remembering it, so I put them in this one place on the internet. And since they’re good to collect, they’re good enough to share. Enjoy

‘In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.’
A. J. Muste

‘Wherever there is great property there is great inequality.’
Adam Smith

‘Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.’
Adam Smith

‘The appropriation of herds and flocks which introduced an inequality of fortune was that which first gave rise to regular government. Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor’
Adam Smith

‘I know of only one duty, and that is to love.’
Albert Camus

‘The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.’
Albert Camus

‘Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.’
Albert Camus

‘This world has a higher meaning that transcends its worries or nothing is true but those worries.’
Albert Camus

‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’
Albert Einstein

‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.’
Albert Einstein

‘There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.’
Albert Einstein

‘Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.’
Albert Einstein

‘He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.’
Albert Einstein

‘You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.’
St. Ambrose of Milan

‘This bread which you store belongs to the hungry, these clothes which you hide away belong to the poorly clad, this money which you bury in the earth is for the ransom and freedom of afflicted people.’
St. Ambrose of Milan

‘Justice renders to each one what is his, and claims not another’s property; it disregards its own profit in order to preserve the common equity.’
St. Ambrose of Milan

‘The rose is without “why”; it blooms simply because it blooms. It pays no attention to itself, nor does it ask whether anyone sees it.’
Angelus Silesius

‘Remove grace, and you have nothing whereby to be saved. Remove free will and you have nothing that could be saved.’
St. Anselm of Canterbury

‘Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s Son, nothing could be redeemed.’
St. Anselm of Canterbury

Peace is not the absence of violence, but the process of justice.
Aram I, (b. 1947) Catolicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church, 2001

‘The soul is in some way all things.’
Aristotle

‘If love ruled on Earth, there would be no need for laws.’
Aristotle

‘The weak are always anxious for justice and equality. The strong pay no heed to either.’
Aristotle

‘The Son of God became man so that we might become God.’
St. Athanasius

‘What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘Don’t you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘Love, and do what you like.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘In man’s deception, poison was served him through a woman; in his redemption, salvation is presented him through a woman.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘It seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘God is best known in not knowing him.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘For these four virtues (would that all felt their influence in their minds as they have their names in their mouths!), I should have no hesitation in defining them: that temperance is love giving itself entirely to that which is loved; fortitude is love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object; justice is love serving only the loved object, and therefore ruling rightly; prudence is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it.’
St. Augustine of Hippo

‘small gang of thieves?
we call em thugs and liars

big gang of thieves?
we call em glorious empires’
St. Augustine of Hiphop (@hiphopaugustine on twitter)

‘Never am I less alone than when alone.’
St. Bernard

‘Love is a going forth of the soul, not a contract; it is not the result of a convention, and is not to be acquired by agreement; it is spontaneous in its impulses, and likens us to itself; also true love is its own satisfaction. Its recompense lies in the object of its love; for whatever be that which we seem to love, if our real object be something else, it is really that something which we love, and not that by which our heart strives to attain it.’
St. Bernard

‘Selfishness becomes benevolence by taking a wider range.’
St Bernard

‘You must know that when you “hail” Mary, she immediately greets you! Don’t think that she is one of those rude women of whom there are so many—on the contrary, she is utterly courteous and pleasant. If you greet her, she will answer you right away and converse with you!’
St. Bernardine of Siena

‘There are as many ways to heaven as there are people.’
Pope Benedict XVI

‘I did once say that to me art and the saints are the greatest apologetics for our faith.’
Pope Benedict XVI

‘Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.’
Pope Benedict XVI

‘Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.’
Blaise Pascal

‘Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.’
Blaise Pascal

‘The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.’
Blaise Pascal

‘There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.’
Blaise Pascal

‘Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.’
Blaise Pascal

‘It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.’
Blaise Pascal

‘People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.’
Bob Dylan

‘He not busy being born is busy dying.’
Bob Dylan

‘If you learn everything except Christ, you learn nothing. If you learn nothing except Christ, you learn everything.’
St. Bonaventure

‘The absolute is a sphere whose center is nowhere and whose circumference is everywhere.’
St. Bonaventure

‘We believe that Mary opens the abyss of God’s mercy to whomsoever she wills, when she wills, and as she wills; so that there is no sinner however great who is lost if Mary protects him.’
St. Bonaventure

‘Creation is a song that God freely desires to sing into the vast spaces of the universe.’
St. Bonaventure

‘Let us behave like the drunkard who doesn’t think of himself but only of the wine he has drunk and of the wine that remains to be drunk.’
St. Catherine of Siena

‘I can’t imagine really enjoying a book and reading it only once.’
C.S. Lewis

‘We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.’
Che Guevara

‘Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel!’
Che Guevara

‘The more laws, the less justice.’
Cicero

‘Love God, serve God; everything is in that.’
St. Clare of Assisi

‘If you have anything, through your hands you shall give ransom for your sins. Do not hesitate to give, nor complain when you give; for you shall know who is the good repayer of the hire. Do not turn away from him who is in want; rather, share all things with your brother, and do not say that they are your own.’
The Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles)

‘When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.’
Dom Hélder Camara

‘Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.’
Epictetus

‘Suffering is a great grace; through suffering the soul becomes like the saviour; in suffering love become crystallized; the greater the suffering, the purer the love.’
St. Faustina

‘The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.’
Pope Francis (Laudato Si n. 11)

‘the present world system is certainly unsustainable from a number of points of view, for we have stopped thinking about the goals of human activity.’
Pope Francis (Laudato Si n. 61)

‘This paradigm leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume. But those really free are the minority who wield economic and financial power.’
Pope Francis (Laudato Si n. 203)

‘We must not think that these efforts are not going to change the world. They benefit society, often unbeknown to us, for they call forth a goodness which, albeit unseen, inevitably tends to spread. Furthermore, such actions can restore our sense of self-esteem; they can enable us to live more fully and to feel that life on earth is worthwhile.’
Pope Francis (Laudato Si n. 212)

‘Faith in Christ brings salvation because in him our lives become radically open to a love that precedes us, a love that transforms us from within, acting in us and through us.’
Pope Francis (Lumen Fidei)

‘Faith knows because it is tied to love, because love itself brings enlightenment. Faith’s understanding is born when we receive the immense love of God which transforms us inwardly and enables us to see reality with new eyes.’
Pope Francis (Lumen Fidei)

‘Now is the time to say to Jesus: “Lord, I have let myself be deceived; in a thousand ways I have shunned your love, yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord, take me once more into your redeeming embrace”‘
Pope Francis (Evangelii Gaudium n. 3)

‘To be attracted by power, by grandeur, by appearances, is tragically human. It is a great temptation that tries to insinuate itself everywhere. But to give oneself to others, eliminating distances, dwelling in littleness and living the reality of one’s everyday life: this is exquisitely divine.’
Pope Francis

‘In this day and age unless Christians are revolutionaries they are not Christians.’
Pope Francis

‘To become saints only one thing is necessary: to accept the grace which the Father gives us in Jesus Christ.’
Pope Francis

‘Mercy is the prophecy of a new world, in which the goods of the earth and of work are equally distributed and no one lacks the necessary, because solidarity and sharing are the concrete result of fraternity.’
Pope Francis

‘I prefer a church that is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out in the streets rather that a church that is unhealthy from being confined and clinging to its own security.’
Pope Francis

‘It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.’
St. Francis of Assisi

‘While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.’
St. Francis of Assisi

‘It would be considered a theft on our part if we didn’t give to someone in greater need than we are.’
St. Francis of Assisi

‘To God’s servants, brother, money is nothing but a devil and a poisonous snake.’
St. Francis of Assisi

‘You know, brothers, that poverty is the special way to salvation, as the stimulus of humility and the root of perfection, whose fruit is many, but hidden. For this is the hidden treasure of the Gospel field; to buy it, everything must be sold, and, in comparison, everything that cannot be sold must be spurned.’
St. Francis of Assisi

‘You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working, and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.’
St. Francis de Sales

‘God has placed you in this world not because he needs you in any way–you are altogether useless to him–but only to exercise his goodness in you by giving you his grace and glory.’
St. Francis de Sales

‘If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don’t bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man.’
Fyodor Dostoevsky

‘One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.’
Fyodor Dostoevsky

‘The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant.’
G.K. Chesterton

‘He may even go mad; but he is going mad for the love of sanity. But the modern student of ethics, even if he remains sane, remains sane from an insane dread of insanity.’
G.K. Chesterton

‘Christianity has not failed–it has been found difficult and left untried.’
G.K. Chesterton

‘It is just as easy to think in continents as to think in cobble-stones. The difficulty comes in when we seek to know the substance of either of them.’
G.K. Chesterton

‘Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained.’
G.K. Chesterton

‘Give something, however small, to the one in need. For it is not small to one who has nothing. Neither is it small to God, if we have given what we could.’
St. Gregory Nazianzen

‘There is no other way of knowing God than by living in him.’
St. Gregory of Nazianzus

‘There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first possible and then impossible, even Jesus Christ our Lord.’
St. Ignatius of Antioch

‘Nothing is more precious than peace, by which all war, both in heaven and earth, is brought to an end.’
St. Ignatius of Antioch

‘It would be too tedious, in a work like this, to go through the succession lists of all the Churches. We shall, therefore, take just one, the greatest, most ancient Church, the Church known to all, the Church founded and established in Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul. By showing that the tradition which she received from the apostles, the faith which she proclaims to men, has come down to us through the succession of bishops, we confute all those who, in whatever manner, . . . set up conventicles. With this Church, because of its more excellent origin, every Church (in other words, the faithful everywhere) must agree.’
St. Irenaeus

‘And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.’
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Return of the King)

‘Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you.’
St. Jerome

‘I repeat: to know how to say the Our Father, and to know how to put it into practice, this is the perfection of the Christian life.’
Pope John XXIII

‘For Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the stumblings of sinners by force…it is necessary to make a man better not by force but by persuasion. We neither have authority granted us by law to restrain sinners, nor, if it were, should we know how to use it, since God gives the crown to those who are kept from evil, not by force, but by choice.’
St. John Chrysostom

‘Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb with cold. He who said, “This is my body,” and made it so by his word, is the same that said, “You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.” Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.’
St. John Chrysostom

‘Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.’
St. John Chrysostom

‘As long as this attachment remains, it is impossible to make progress in perfection, even though the imperfection be very small. It makes little difference whether a bird is tied by a thin thread or by a cord. Even if it is tied by a thread, the bird will be held bound… it will be impeded from flying as long as it does not break the thread.’
St. John of the Cross

‘Mine are the heavens and mine is the earth. Mine are the nations, the just are mine, and mine the sinners. The angels are mine, and the Mother of God, and all things are mine; and God himself is mine and for me, because Christ is mine and all for me. What do you ask, then, and seek, my soul? Yours is all of this, and all is for you. Do not engage yourself in anything less or pay heed to the crumbs that fall from your Father’s table. Go forth and exult in your Glory! Hide yourself in it and rejoice, and you will obtain the supplications of your heart.’
St. John of the Cross

‘With what procrastinations do you wait,
since from this very moment you can love God in your heart?’
St. John of the Cross

‘Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.’
St. John Paul II

‘Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.’
St. John Paul II

‘Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.’
St. John Paul II

‘From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate policy that humanity can survive.’
St. John Paul II

‘To claim the right to abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others.’
St. John Paul II (Evangelium Vitae n. 20)

‘There is no delight in owning anything unshared.’
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

‘Crosses, contempt, sorrows and afflictions are the real treasures of the lovers of Jesus Christ crucified.’
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

‘I was to cling to nothing, to empty and despoil myself of everything, to love nothing but Him, in Him and for the love of Him, to see in all things naught but Him and the interests of His glory in complete forgetfulness of self.’
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

‘Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did.’
St. Maximilian Kolbe

‘Alms-giving heals the soul’s incensive power; fasting withers sensual desire; prayer purifies the intellect and prepares it for the contemplation of created beings. For the Lord has given us commandments which correspond to the powers of the soul.’
St. Maximus the Confessor (400 Texts on Love n.79, from the Philokalia)

‘A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.’
Neils Bohr

‘Any trial whatever that comes to you can be conquered by silence.’
Abbot Pastor (Desert Father)

‘Property is theft.’
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

‘I was born poor, I have lived poor, and I wish to die poor.’
St. Pius X

‘The reason is that this is our original natural state and we used to be whole creatures: “love” is the name for the desire and pursuit of wholeness.’
Plato (The Symposium)

‘Remember that every government service, every offer of government-financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom. Whenever a voice is raised telling you to let the government do it, analyze very carefully to see whether the suggested service is worth the personal freedom which you must forgo in return for such service.’
Ronald Reagan

‘You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.’
Rumi

‘The wound is the place where the light enters you.’
Rumi

‘Love is the bridge between you and everything.’
Rumi

‘This is a subtle truth. Whatever you love, you are.’
Rumi

‘Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.’
St. Teresa of Avila

‘The day on which God has unrestricted power over our hearts we shall also have unrestricted power over his.’
St. Teresa Benedicta of the cross (Edith Stein)

‘The deepest essence of love is self-giving.’
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

‘Work without love is slavery.’
St. (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta

‘There is much suffering in the world — very much. And this material suffering is suffering from hunger, suffering from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases, but I still think the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, just having no one.’
St. (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta

‘Many people are talking about the poor, but very few people talk to the poor.’
St. (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta

‘For me prayer is a surge of the heart, it is a simple look towards Heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.’
St. Therese of Lisieux

‘One evening, not knowing how to tell Jesus how much I loved Him and longed for Him to be served and honoured everywhere, I thought with sadness that not a single act of love ever ascended from the gulfs of hell. I cried that I would gladly be plunged into that realm of blasphemy and pain so that even there He could be loved forever. Of course that could not glorify Him, for all He wants is our happiness, yet when one’s in love one says a thousand silly things. This didn’t mean that I did not want to be in heaven, but for me heaven meant love and, in my ardour, I felt that nothing could separate me from Him who had captivated me.’
St. Therese of Lisieux (Story of a Soul, chapter 5)

‘He has forgotten your infidelities long ago. Only your desires for perfection remain to make His heart rejoice. I implore you, don’t drag yourself to His feet ever again. Follow that “first impulse which draws you into His arms.”’
St. Therese of Lisieux

‘For those who love Him, and after each fault come to ask pardon by throwing themselves into His arms, Jesus trembles with joy.’
St. Therese of Lisieux

‘Ah! my brother, how the goodness of Jesus, His merciful love, are so little known! It is true that to enjoy these riches we must be humbled and recognise our nothingness, and that is what so many are not willing to do.’
St. Therese of Lisieux

‘Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.’
Theodore Roosevelt

‘Forsake all and you shall find all. Renounce desire and you will find peace.’
Thomas À Kempis

‘Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.’
St. Thomas Aquinas

‘All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.’
St. Thomas Aquinas

‘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.’
St. Thomas Aquinas

‘Goodness and being are really the same, and differ only in idea.’
St. Thomas Aquinas

‘Love is delight in what is good; the proper object of love is the good. To love is to wish good to someone.’
St. Thomas Aquinas

‘What does it take to become a saint? Will it.’
St Thomas Aquinas