144 Quotes by Bernard of Clairvaux

Humility is, of all graces, the chiefest when it does not know itself to be a grace at all.

A saint is not someone who never sins, but one who sins less and less frequently and gets up more and more quickly.

Many often err and accomplish little or nothing because they try to become learned rather than to live well.

To have a restful or peaceful life in God is good; to bear a life of pain in patience is better; but to have peace in the midst of pain is the best of all.

The reason for loving God is God Himself. As to how He is to be loved, there is only one measure: It is immeasurable!

O wretched slaves of Mammon, you cannot glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ while you trust in treasures laid up on earth: you cannot taste and see how gracious the Lord is, while you are hungering for gold.

Righteousness is the natural and essential food of the soul, which can no more be satisfied by earthly treasures than the hunger of the body can be satisfied by air. If you should see a starving man standing with mouth open to the wind, inhaling draughts of air as if in hope of gratifying his hunger, you would think him lunatic. But it is no less foolish to imagine that the soul can be satisfied with worldly things which only inflate it without feeding it.

To them that long for the presence of the living God, the thought of Him is sweetest itself: but there is no satiety, rather an ever-increasing appetite...

In Him should all our affections center, so that in all things we should seek only to do His will, not to please ourselves.