Jerome: Trending quotes

“Let your daughter have first of all the book of Psalms for holiness of heart, and be instructed in the Proverbs of Solomon for her godly life.”

Jerome

“A dreadful rumor reached us from the West. We heard that Rome was besieged, that the citizens were buying their safety with gold, and that when they had been thus despoiled they were again beleaguered, so as to lose not only their substance but their lives. …The speaker's voice failed and sobs interrupted his utterance. The city which had taken the whole world was itself taken; nay, it fell by famine before it fell by the sword, and there were but few to be found to be made prisoner.”

Jerome

“Neither Britain, a province fertile in tyrants, nor the people of Ireland, knew Moses and the prophets.”

Jerome

“Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness?”
Difficulter eraditur, quod rudes animi praebiberunt. Lanarum conchylia quis in pristinum colorem revocet?

Jerome

“Athletes as a rule are stronger than their backers; yet the weaker presses the stronger to put forth all his efforts.”

Jerome

“At [Nero's] hands [Peter] received the crown of martyrdom being nailed to the cross with his head towards the ground and his feet raised on high, asserting that he was unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord.”
A quo et affixus cruci, martyrio coronatus est, capite ad terram verso, et in sublime pedibus elevatis: asserens se indignum qui sic crucifigeretur ut Dominus suus.

Jerome book De Viris Illustribus

“The charges we bring against others often come home to ourselves; we inveigh against faults which are as much ours as theirs; and so our eloquence ends by telling against ourselves.”

Jerome

“Sweet it is to lay aside the weight of the body and to soar into the pure bright ether. Do you dread poverty? Christ calls the poor blessed. (Luke 6:20) Does toil frighten you? No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow. Are you anxious as regards food? Faith fears no famine. Do you dread the bare ground for limbs wasted with fasting? The Lord lies there beside you. Do you recoil from an unwashed head and uncombed hair? Christ is your true head. Does the boundless solitude of the desert terrify you? In the spirit you may walk always in paradise. Do but turn your thoughts there and you will be no more in the desert.”
Libet, sarcina corporis abiecta, ad purum aetheris evolare fulgorem. Paupertatem times? sed beatos Christus pauperes appellat. Labore terreris? at nemo athleta sine sudore coronatur. De cibo cogitas? sed fides famem non timet. Super nudam metuis humum exesa ieiuniis membra collidere? sed Dominus tecum iacet. Squalidi capitis horret inculta caesaries? sed caput tuum Christus est. Infinita eremi vastitas te terret? sed tu paradisum mente deambula. Quotiescumque illuc cogitatione conscenderis, toties in eremo non eris.

Jerome

“When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.”
Plenus venter facile de ieiuniis disputat.

Jerome

“Yet such is the order of nature. While truth is always bitter, pleasantness waits upon evildoing.”
Ita se natura habet, ut amara sit veritas, blanda vitia existimentur.

Jerome

“The privileges of a few do not make common law.”
Privilegia paucorum non faciunt legem.

Jerome

“We are always ready to imitate what is evil; and faults are quickly copied where virtues appear inattainable.”
Proclivis est enim malorum aemulatio, et quorum virtutes assequi nequeas, cito imitaris vitia.

Jerome

“Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal.”
Quotidie morimur, quotidie commutamur, et tamen aternos nos esse credimus.

Jerome

“They fill their houses through the plunder and losses of others, so that the saying of the philosophers may be fulfilled, 'Every rich man is unjust or the heir of an unjust one.' (Omnis dives aut iniquis aut iniqui haeres.)”

Jerome

“Just as divorce according to the Saviour's word was not permitted from the beginning, but on account of the hardness of our heart was a concession of Moses to the human race, so too the eating of flesh was unknown until the deluge. But after the deluge, like the quails given in the desert to the murmuring people, the poison of flesh-meat was offered to our teeth. … At the beginning of the human race we neither ate flesh, nor gave bills of divorce, nor suffered circumcision for a sign. Thus we reached the deluge. But after the deluge, together with the giving of the law which no one could fulfil, flesh was given for food, and divorce was allowed to hard-hearted men, and the knife of circumcision was applied, as though the hand of God had fashioned us with something superfluous. But once Christ has come in the end of time, and Omega passed into Alpha and turned the end into the beginning, we are no longer allowed divorce, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat flesh.”

Jerome

“That clergyman soon becomes an object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to go.”
Facile contemnitur clericus, qui saepe vocatus ad prandium, ire non recusat.

Jerome

“And had I taken the line -so often adopted by strong men in controversy- of justifying the means by the result.”
Et sicut viri fortes in controversiis solent facere, culpam praemio redimerem.

Jerome

“Everything must have in it a sharp seasoning of truth.”
Nisi quod in se habet mordacis aliquid veritatis.

Jerome

“If there is but little water in the stream, it is the fault, not of the channel, but of the source.”
Si rivus tenuiter fluit, non est alvei culpa, sed fontis.

Jerome