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Wednesday, June 7, 2017

St. Jerome Quotes

Quotable Quotes from St. Jerome.


September 30 is the feast day of Saint Jerome, priest and Doctor of the Church. Most widely known for his translation of the Bible into the form of Latin most commonly read at the time (the Vulgate), Jerome started out his priestly ministry as a hermit leading a life of asceticism outside of Antioch.
Jerome later traveled to Constantinople, where he developed a friendship with St. Gregory of Nazianzus, with whom he studied sacred scripture. After a few years in Constantinople, Jerome lived in Rome and was asked by Pope Damasus I to translate the Bible from a collection of Old Latin texts.
He is also “well-known as one of our crankier saints,” speaking his mind freely and making many enemies wherever he went. Jerome’s asceticism was what saved him, as one bishop said about him while looking at a painting that had Jerome striking his breast with a stone, “You do well to carry that stone, for without it the Church would never have canonized you” (Butler’s Lives of the Saints).
Here are 10 quotes from Saint Jerome to help us appreciate the life of the man who gave us the Vulgate:

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

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

3. It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

4.  The friendship that can cease has never been real.

5. Why do you not practice what you preach.

6. True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.

7. “Begin now to be what you will be hereafter.”

8. The scars of others should teach us caution.

9. Instead of speaking saintly words we must act them.

10. Marriage is good for those who are afraid to sleep alone at night.