Quotes from St. Thomas Aquinas

There would not be a perfect likeness of God in the universe if all things were of one grade of being.

to make peace either in oneself or among others, shows a man to be a follower of God,

The truth can be perceived only through thinking, as is proven by Augustine.

The splendor of a soul in grace is so seductive that it surpasses the beauty of all created things.

Temperance is simply a disposition of the mind which set bounds to the passions

our manner of knowing is so weak that no philosopher could perfectly investigate the nature of even one little fly.

It is absurd and a detestable shame, that we should suffer those traditions to be changed which we have received from the fathers of old.

Even though the natural light of the human mind is inadequate to make known what is revealed by faith, nevertheless what is divinely taught to us by faith cannot be contrary to what we are endowed with by nature. One or the other would have to be false, and since we have both of them from God, he would be the cause of our error, which is impossible.

Of all human pursuits, the pursuit of wisdom is the most perfect, the most sublime, the most useful, and the most agreeable.

justice without mercy is cruelty; mercy without justice is dissolution.

Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.

The world tempts us either by attaching us to it in prosperity, or by filling us with fear of adversity. But faith overcomes this in that we believe in a life to come better than this one, and hence we despise the riches of this world and we are not terrified in the face of adversity.