Great Throughts Treasury

"The art of arts it the art of loving. Nature itself and God, nature’s author, are its teachers. For love itself is given by the creator of nature, and unless its natural purity has been soiled by some adulterous affection, love teaches itself, I say, to its own disciples, to the disciples of God."

"We have an obligation not only to love each other but also in our love to make ourselves as loveable as possible so that it is easy for our sisters and brothers to love us."

"We were created for You by yourself, and towards You our face is set. We acknowledge You, our maker and creator; we adore your wisdom and pray that it may order all our life. We adore your goodness and mercy, and beg them ever to sustain and help us."

"Love illuminates the mind and enables a better and more profound understanding of God and, in God, of people and events. It produces attraction and communion to the point of effecting a transformation, an assimilation, between the lover and the loved."

"A man comes along, who alone was born righteous (Venit homo, qui solus iustus natus est). Yet he who took no delight in sin, did not refuse the punishment of sin. And this righteousness he gave to humanity sold [in sin] and unable by the substance of his nature to redeem himself out from it, in order that on account of his [Christ’s] punishment he might free [humanity] from the certificate of his debt. And this is the righteousness of God, that, through faith clinging to him who died for us, we might have from him that of which we were not capable by ourselves (Et haec iustitia Dei, ut per fidem inhaerentes ei qui pro nobis mortuus est, ex ipso habeamus quod non possumus ex nobis). For that which is conferred on us freely is grace."

"All who are sons of the daylight (1 Thessalonians 5:5) ought always to investigate in the light of the present day what is lacking to them, where they have come from, how far they have progressed, and the degree of progress that they estimate they have gained in each day and hour."