Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Lactantius, fully Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius NULL

Latin Christian Apologist

"The first point of wisdom is to discern that which is false; the second, to know that which is true."

"Memory tempers prosperity, mitigates adversity, controls youth, and delights old age."

"The mind is guilty of adultery even if it merely pictures to itself a vision of carnal pleasure."

"Wisdom precedes, religion follows; for the knowledge of God comes first, His worship is the result of knowledge."

"There is no one, who possesses intelligence and uses reflection, who does not understand that it is one Being who both created all things and governs them with the same energy by which He created them."

"For if God is a title of the highest power, He must be incorruptible, perfect, incapable of suffering, and subject to no other being; therefore they are not gods whom necessity compels to obey the one greatest God."

"The poets, therefore, however much they adorned the gods in their poems, and amplified their exploits with the highest praises, yet very frequently confess that all things are held together and governed by one spirit or mind."

"Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be."

"But if destruction is far removed from God, because He is incorruptible and eternal, it follows that the divine power is incapable of division."