St. Jerome, Latin in full Eusebius Hieronymus, pseudonym Sophronius, biblical translator and monastic leader, traditionally regarded as the most learned of the Latin Fathers. He lived for a time as a hermit, became a priest, served as secretary to Pope Damasus I, and about 389 established a monastery at Bethlehem. His numerous biblical, ascetical, monastic, and theological works profoundly influenced the early Middle Ages. He is known particularly for his Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, and is considered a doctor of the church. These St Jerome quotes will motivate you.
Best St Jerome Quotes
- “When we pray we speak to God;
but when we read, God speaks to us.” ~ St. Jerome - “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” ~ St. Jerome
- “It is our part to seek,
His to grant what we ask;
ours to make a beginning,
His to bring it to completion;
ours to offer what we can,
His to finish what we cannot.” ~ St. Jerome - “The Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for theologians to swim in without ever reaching the bottom.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Make knowledge of the Scripture your love … Live with them, meditate on them, make them the sole object of your knowledge and inquiries.” ~ St. Jerome
- “A false interpretation of Scripture causes that the gospel of the Lord becomes the gospel of man, or, which is worse, of the devil.” ~ St. Jerome
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“Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you.” ~ St. Jerome
- “There are things in life that are bigger than ourselves. Life is short, live it well.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Woman is the gate of the devil, the road to iniquity, the sting of the scorpion, in a word, a dangerous species.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Instead of speaking saintly words we must act them.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Martyrdom does not consist only in dying for one’s faith. Martyrdom also consists in serving God with love and purity of heart every day of one’s life” ~ St. Jerome
- “Begin now what you will be hereafter.” ~ St. Jerome
- “They please the world most, who please Christ least.” ~ St. Jerome
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“Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied.” ~ St. Jerome
- “If then you remain constant in faith in the face of trial, the Lord will give you peace and rest for a time in this world, and forever in the next.” ~ St. Jerome
- “The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.” ~ St. Jerome
- “We must love Christ and always seek Christ’s embraces. Then everything difficult will seem easy.” ~ St. Jerome
- “It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.” ~ St. Jerome
- “So valuable to heaven is the dignity of the human soul that every member of the human race has a guardian angel from the moment the person begins to be.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Seek to learn on earth those truths which will remain ever valid in Heaven” ~ St. Jerome
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“A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Endeavor to have always in your hand a pious book, that with this shield you may defend yourself against bad thoughts.” ~ St. Jerome
- “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.” ~ St. Jerome
- “When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Honest speech does not seek secret places.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Music to me is a voice, my voice, it’s my way of expressing what colors can I bring in, what emotions, what feel. What ideas can I bring out from these instruments that would make this song come alive.” ~ St. Jerome
- “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.” ~ St. Jerome
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“The friendship that can cease has never been real.” ~ St. Jerome
- “If Christ did not want to dismiss the Jews without food in the desert for fear that they would collapse on the way, it was to teach us that it is dangerous to try to get to heaven without the Bread of Heaven.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Without doubt, the Lord grants all favors which are asked of Him in Mass, provided they be fitting for us.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Thank God I am deemed worthy to be hated by the world.” ~ St. Jerome
- “No one cares to speak to an unwilling listener. An arrow never lodges in a stone: often it recoils upon the shooter of it.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Shun, as you would the plague, a cleric who from being poor has become wealthy, or who, from being nobody has become a celebrity.” ~ St. Jerome
- “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.” ~ St. Jerome
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“It is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business.” ~ St. Jerome
- “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.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Whosoever you are who introduce new doctrines, I beseech you to spare the ears of Romans! Spare that faith which was commended by the voice of an Apostle. Why should you attempt to teach us, at the end of hundreds of years, that which we never heard before? Why bring forward what Peter and Paul did not will to make known? Until this day, the world was Christian without your doctrine. Thus, I hold as an old man onto that faith wherein I was regenerated as a boy.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, “Why do you not practice what you preach?” ~ St. Jerome
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“Woman is the root of all evil.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Love knows nothing of order.” ~ St. Jerome
- “To read without writing is to sleep.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Let us learn upon earth those things which can call us to heaven.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price.” ~ St. Jerome
- “A man who is well grounded in the testimonies of the Scripture is the bulwark of the Church.” ~ St. Jerome
- “And as regards Adam and Eve we must maintain that before the fall they were virgins in Paradise: but after they sinned, and were cast out of Paradise, they were immediately married.” ~ St. Jerome
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“To ignore Scripture is to ignore Christ.” ~ St. Jerome
- “To perceive is to categorize, to conceptualize is to categorize, to learn is to form categories, to make decisions is to categorize.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Even while living in the world, the heart of Mary was so filled with motherly tenderness and compassion for men that no-one ever suffered so much for their own pains, as Mary suffered for the pains of her children.” ~ St. Jerome
- “When I could not see the light with my blind eyes, I blamed not my eyes, but the sun.” ~ St Jerome Quotes
- “For the preservation of chastity, an empty and rumbling stomach and fevered lungs are indispensable.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.” ~ St. Jerome
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“A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts.” ~ St. Jerome
- “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.” ~ St. Jerome
- “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.” ~ St. Jerome
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“Failure is the inspiration of tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Keep doing some kind of work, that the devil may always find you employed.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Others drink for sterility and commit murder on the human not yet sown. Some when they sense that they have conceived by sin, consider the poisons for abortion, and frequently die themselves along with it, and go to Hell guilty of three crimes: murdering themselves, committing adultery against Christ, and murder against their unborn child.” ~ St. Jerome
- “No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow.” ~ St. Jerome
- “If you call [the synagogue] a brothel, a den of vice, the devil’s refuge, Satan’s fortress, a place to deprave the soul, an abyss of every conceivable disaster or whatever else you will, you are still saying less than it deserves.” ~ St. Jerome
- “Virginity can be lost by a thought.” ~ St. Jerome
- “The fact is that my native land is a prey to barbarism, that in it men’s only God is their belly, that they live only for the present, and that the richer a man is the holier he is held to be.” ~ St. Jerome
- “We need more music that is passionate and meaningful and honest.” ~ St. Jerome
