We can open our hearts to God, but only with Divine help.
Charity, by which God and neighbor are loved, is the most perfect friendship.
We ought to cherish the body. Our body’s substance is not from an evil principle, as the Manicheans imagine, but from God. And therefore, we ought to cherish the body by the friendship of love, by which we love God.
The highest perfection of human life consists in the mind of man being detached from care, for the sake of God.
Beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: so that “good” means that which simply pleases the appetite; while the “beautiful” is something pleasant to apprehend.
Down in adoration falling, Lo! the sacred Host we hail; Lo! o’er ancient forms departing, Newer rites of grace prevail; Faith for all defects supplying, Where the feeble senses fail.
A man does not always choose what his guardian angel intends.
To be united to God in unity of person was not fitting to human flesh, according to its natural endowments, since it was above his dignity; nevertheless, it was fitting that God, by reason of his infinite goodness, should unite it to himself for human salvation.
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.
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.
It is a sin to regard the fact that God cannot do the impossible as a limitation on his powers.
The soul is perfected by knowledge and virtue.
Faith does not quench desire, but inflames it.
There is no leisure about politics.
For loving draws us more to things than knowing does, since good is found by going to the thing, whereas the true is found when the thing comes to us.
The splendor of a soul in grace is so seductive that it surpasses the beauty of all created things.
In the end, we know God as unknown.
It would seem that zeal is not an effect of love. For zeal is a beginning of contention.
He who is dying of hunger must be fed rather than taught.
No man truly has joy unless he lives in love.