St. Jerome

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.

Thank God I am deemed worthy to be hated by the world.

The Church was founded upon Peter: although elsewhere the same is attributed to all the Apostles, and they all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the strength of the Church depends upon them all alike, yet one among the twelve is chosen so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.

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.

Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most.

To ignore Scripture is to ignore Christ.

Those who persevere in sin are those who are held in abhorrence by God, but those who abandon the ways of sin are loved by the Lord.

Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.

Someone may ask, 'How is justice greater than all the other virtues?' The other virtues gratify the one who possesses them; justice does not give pleasure to the one possessing it, but instead pleases others.

I am that prodigal son who wasted all the portion entrusted to me by my father. But I have not yet fallen at my father's knees. I have not yet begun to put away from me the enticements of my former riotous living.

For it is good to cleave to God, and to put our hopes in the Lord, so that, when we have exchanged this poor life for the kingdom of heaven, we may cry aloud: 'Whom have I in heaven but thee? There is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.' Assuredly, when we have found such wealth in heaven, we may well grieve to have sought after poor passing pleasures here on earth.

The eating of meat was unknown up to the big flood, but since the flood they have put the strings and stinking juices of animal meat into our mouths, just as they threw in front of the grumbling sensual people in the desert. Jesus Christ, who appeared when the time had been fulfilled, has again joined the end with the beginning, so that it is no longer allowed for us to eat animal meat.

Without doubt, the Lord grants all favors which are asked of Him in Mass, provided they be fitting for us.

The Church of Christ has been founded by shedding its own blood, not that of others; by enduring outrage, not by inflicting it. Persecutions have made it grow; martyrdoms have crowned it.

The best advice that I can give you is this. Church-traditions — especially when they do not run counter to the faith — are to be observed in the form in which previous generations have handed them down; and the use of one church is not to be annulled because it is contrary to that of another.

If a soul is not clothed with the teachings of the Church he cannot merit to have Jesus seated in him.

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.

What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way.

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