79+ Best St. Jerome Quotes: Exclusive Selection

Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, commonly known as St. Jerome, was a Latin Catholic priest, biblical translator and monastic leader, traditionally regarded as the most learned of the Latin Fathers. Famous Saint Jerome quotes will help you understand what a christian life is all about and make you discover new things about yourself, your life and your world.

If you’re searching for inspiring quotes from famous Christians that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes from Vance Havner, powerful Francis of Assisi quotes and famous Francis Chan quotes.

Famous St. Jerome Quotes

When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us. St. Jerome

The Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for a theologians to swim in without ever touching the bottom. St. Jerome

Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. St. Jerome

The friendship that can cease has never been real. Saint 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

The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart. Saint 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

Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness? Saint Jerome

Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you. St. Jerome

Begin now to be what you will be hereafter. St. Jerome

There are things in life that are bigger than ourselves. Life is short, live it well. St. Jerome

Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Til your good is better and your better is best. 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

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance. Saint Jerome

Instead of speaking saintly words we must act them. St. Jerome

Jerome then speaks of the unity of the sacred books. Whatever,  he asserts,  we read in the Old Testament we find also in the Gospel; and what we read in the Gospel is deduced from the Old Testament. There is no discord between them, no disagreement. 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

When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us. St. Jerome

Begin now what you will be hereafter. St. Jerome

The best advice I can give you is this. Church tradition 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. Jerome

They please the world most, who please Christ least. St. Jerome

The battering ram of natural affection which so often shatters faith must recoil powerless from the wall of the Gospel. Jerome

Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied. St. Jerome

It is no small merit in God’s eyes to bring up children well. 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

Read often, learn all that you can. Let sleep overcome you, the roll still in your hands; when your head falls, let it be on the sacred page. Jerome

The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart. St. Jerome

What, pray, can be more sacred than this sacred mystery? What can be more delightful than the pleasure found therein? What food, what honey can be sweeter than to learn of God’s wise plan, to enter into His sanctuary and gaze on the mind of the Creator, and to rehearse the words of your Lord, which, though derided by the wise of this world, are really full of spiritual wisdom! Let the others, if they will, have their wealth, and drink from jewelled cups, be clad in silk, and bask in popular applause, as if they could not exhaust their riches in all kinds of pleasures. Our delight shall be to meditate on the Law of the Lord day and night, to knock at His door when it is not open, to receive the bread of the Trinity, and, with our Lord going before us, to walk on the billows of the world. St. Jerome

We must love Christ and always seek Christ’s embraces. Then everything difficult will seem easy. 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

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance. St. Jerome

You should never boast of what your friends think of you. That is true testimony which comes from the lips of foes. On the contrary, if a friend speaks in your behalf he will be considered not as a witness but a judge or a partisan. 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

The one unbeliever is sanctified by his holy and believing family. For, when a man is surrounded by a believing crowd of children and grandchildren, he is as good as a candidate for the faith. Jerome

Seek to learn on earth those truths which will remain ever valid in Heaven. St. Jerome

All that the saints say is a prayer to God; their whole prayer and supplication a strong wrestling for the pity of God, so that we, who by our own strength and zeal cannot be saved, may be preserved by His mercy. Jerome

A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept. St. Jerome

Knowledge, when it is of the right kind, is the handmaid to love, for without love knowledge puffs up. Jerome

Endeavor to have always in your hand a pious book, that with this shield you may defend yourself against bad thoughts. St. Jerome

On one side self indulgence presses me hard; on another covetousness strives to make an inroad; my belly wishes to be a God to me, in place of Christ. 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

To will and to run are mine, but they will cease to be mine unless God brings me His continual aid. Jerome

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting. St. Jerome

Overcome as much as you can nay even more than you can the sensitiveness of your mind and check the copious flow of your tears. Else your deep affection for your nephew may be construed by unbelievers as indicating despair of God. You must regretim not as dead but as absent. You must seem to be looking for him rather than have lost him. Jerome

Honest speech does not seek secret places. St. Jerome

For it is eloquence all the same whether few things are said in many words, or many things in few words. 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

Good, better, best, never let it rest ’til the good is the better, and the better is the best. 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

When you believe you are excusing yourself, you are accusing yourself. St. Jerome

The friendship that can cease has never been real. St. Jerome

I do not ask for grace of style, I look for purity of soul for with Christians it is the greatest of solecisms and of vices of style to introduce anything base either in word or action. 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

A mind willing to learn deserves commendation even when it has no teacher. What is of importance to me is not what you find but what you seek to find. Wax is soft and easy to mould even where the hands of craftsman and modeller are wanting to work it. Jerome

Without doubt, the Lord grants all favors which are asked of Him in Mass, provided they be fitting for us. St. Jerome

It is easier to guard against one who professes hostility than to make head against an enemy who lurks under the guise of a friend. Jerome

Thank God I am deemed worthy to be hated by the world. St. Jerome

Oh, unheard of compassion of the apostle! In seeking to make the Jews Christians, he himself became a Jew! For he could not have persuaded the luxurious to become temperate if he had not himself become luxurious like them. 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

A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept. Let those who will, allow gold to dazzle them and be borne along in splendor, their very baggage glittering with gold and silver. Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price. The friendship which can cease has never been real. 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

Heliodorus, tells me that there are many parts of the Scriptures which you seek and cannot find. But even if you have them all, affection is sure to assert its rights and to seek for itself more than it already has. 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

You know yourselves how slippery is the path of youth a path on which I have myself fallen, and which you are now traversing not without fear. Jerome

It is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin. St. Jerome

Let us go back a little farther and read on until we come to these words, for we must not seek to learn the whole meaning of the section, from the concluding parts of it, or, if I may so say, from the tail of the chapter. Jerome

Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business. St. Jerome

We must cast away by any contrivance, and cut out by fire and sword and contrivances of all kinds, disease from the body, ignorance from the soul, luxury from the belly, sedition from the state, discord from the family, excess from all things alike. 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

The belief which has not been accorded to conviction may come to be extorted by very shame. 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

For as we admire the Creator not only as the framer of heaven and earth, of sun and ocean, of elephants, camels, horses, oxen, pards, bears, and lions; but also as the maker of the most tiny creatures, ants, gnats, flies, worms, and the like, whose shapes we know better than their names, and as in all alike we revere the same creative skill; so the mind that is given to Christ shows the same earnestness in things of small as of great importance, knowing that it must render an account of every idle word. Jerome

Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal. St. Jerome

What Saint has ever won his crown without first contending for it? 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

God be thanked that you are well and that the fire of faith glows in you even when you are in the midst of the devil’s wiles. My greatest joy is to hear that my spiritual sons are fighting in the cause of Christ. Jerome

Woman is the root of all evil. St. Jerome

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