Great Throughts Treasury

"The world is drenched in mutual slaughter… Held to be a crime when committed by individuals, homicide is called a virtue when committed by the state."

"He does not see, poor wretch, that his life is but a gilded torture, that he is bound fast by his wealth, and that his money owns him rather than he owns it."

"[Abel and Cain:] God did not look upon their gifts but upon their hearts."

"Custom, though never so ancient, without truth, is but an old error."

"He cannot have God for his father who has not the church for his mother."

"Does he not punish himself when he sees the success and welfare of others? Does he not draw down upon himself tortures from which there is no respite? Are not his thoughts, his mind, constantly on the rack?"

"Envy is as prolific as it is hurtful; it is the root of all evil, the source of endless disorder and misery, the cause of most sins that are committed. Envy gives birth to hatred and animosity. From it avarice is begotten, for it sees with an evil eye honors and emoluments heaped upon a stranger, and thinks that such honors should have been, by right, bestowed upon himself. From envy comes contempt of God, and of the salutary precepts of our Savior."

"He whom you would punish through the malice of your envy, may probably escape, but you will never be able to fly from yourselves. Wherever you may be your adversary is with you, your sin rankles within. It must be a self-willed evil to persecute a person whom God has taken under the protection of His grace; it becomes an irremedial sin to hate a man whom God wishes to make happy."

"He pitilessly punishes himself, and, in his heart, performs the same cruel office which Divine Justice reserves for the chastisement of the greatest criminal."

"If He prayed who was without sin, how much more it becometh a sinner to pray!"

"No one is safe by his own strength, but he is safe by the grace and mercy of God."

"Just suppose members of our churches were voted on, like the members of certain civic clubs. Suppose three unexcused absences required that the individual's name be automatically dropped from the roll, and he could be reinstated only by special vote of the body. Suppose absences from services had to be made up by attending services in some other place, or by carrying out some special project. Suppose church members had to be re-elected to membership each year, and that their attendance and participation in the program of activities determined how the vote went. Oh, well -- just supposeLike [0]"

"The world is going mad in mutual bloodshed. And murder, which is considered a crime when people commit it singly, is transformed into a virtue when they do it en masse. The offenders acquire impunity by increasing their ravaging."

"The Church is one, and as she is one, cannot be both within and without. For if she is with [the heretic] Novatian, she was not with [Pope] Cornelius. But if she was with Cornelius, who succeeded the bishop [of Rome], Fabian, by lawful ordination, and whom, beside the honor of the priesthood the Lord glorified also with martyrdom, Novatian is not in the Church; nor can he be reckoned as a bishop, who, succeeding to no one, and despising the evangelical and apostolic tradition, sprang from himself."

"There is no salvation outside the church."

"What happiness can such a man enjoy in this world? To be envious or jealous of another, because such a one is virtuous and happy, is to hate in him the graces and blessings God has showered down upon him."

"The envious man is cruel, proud, unfaithful, impatient, and quarrelsome; and, what is strange, when this vice gains the mastery, he is no longer master of himself, and he is unable to correct his many faults. If the bond of peace is broken, if the rights of fraternal charity are violated, if truth is altered or disguised, it is often envy that hurries him on to crime."

"When we pray to God with entire assurance, it is Himself who has given us the spirit of prayer."

"You who are envious, let me tell you that however often you may seek for the opportunity of injuring him whom you hate, you will never be able to do him so much harm as you do harm to yourselves."