28 Quotes by Saint Bernard

Christian, learn from Christ how you ought to love Christ. Learn a love that is tender, wise, strong; love with tenderness, not passion, wisdom, not foolishness, and strength, lest you become weary and turn away from the love of the Lord.

The animal kingdom is destined by nature to serve, and that service is fulfilled in alleviating the temporal and physical needs of man; the animal spirit or soul is limited by time - it dies with the body.

A man who prides himself on being better than his fellow-men thinks it a disgrace if he does not do something more than they do, whereby his superiority may be apparent.

The impudence of the sinner displeases God as much as the modesty of the penitent gives him pleasure.

For every benefit conferred, God is to be praised in his gifts. Otherwise when the time of judgment comes, that man will be punished as an ingrate who cannot say to God: 'Your statutes were my song in the land of exile.'

Even the holy men who lived before the coming of Christ understood that God had in mind plans of peace for the human race.

Learn the lesson that, if you are to do the work of a prophet, what you want is not a sceptre, but a hoe. The prophet does not rise to reign, but to root out the weeds.

Humility is a good estate; founded thereon, the whole spiritual edifice grows into a holy temple in the Lord. Through humility, some have even possessed the gates of their enemies. For which of the virtues is so mighty to subdue the pride of demons and the tyranny of men?

That heart alone is hard which does not shudder at itself for not feeling its hardness.