Tertullian Quotes
-
Prevention of birth is premature murder, and it makes no difference whether it is a life already born that one snatches away or a life that is coming to birth.
→ -
When we are going to enter the water ... in the presence of the congregation and under the hand of the president, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil, his pomp, and his angels. After this we are immersed three times, making a somewhat larger pledge than the Lord appointed in the Gospel. Then we are taken up [a reference to the Roman tradition of recognizing a newborn baby as a member of the family]. We first taste a mixture of milk and honey and from that day we refrain from the daily bath for a whole week.
→ -
The more you mow us down, the more numerous we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.
→ -
I believe BECAUSE it's impossible.
→ -
Custom without truth is error grown old.
→ -
Keep always in mind the rule of faith which I profess and by which I bear witness that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are inseparable from each other, and then you will understand what is meant by it. Observe now that I say the Father is other [distinct], the Son is other, and the Spirit is other. This statement is wrongly understood by every uneducated or perversely disposed individual, as if it meant diversity and implied by that diversity a separation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
→ -
A man becomes a Christian, he is not born one.
→ -
For those women sin against God when they rub their skin with ointments, stain their cheeks with rouge, and make their eyes prominent with antimony. To them, I suppose, the artistic skill of God is displeasing!
→ -
In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God's sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil's gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die... Woman, you are the gate to hell.
→ -
The state of faith allows no mention of impossibility.
→ -
It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions. One man's religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion, to which free will and not force should lead us.
→ -
How many men of rank (to say nothing of common people) have been delivered from devils, and healed of diseases!
→ -
The Lord challenges us to suffer persecutions and to confess Him. He wants thiose who belong to him to be brave and fearless. He himself shows how weakness of the flesh is overcome by courage of the Spirit....A christian is fearless.
→ -
Where our joy is, there should our work be.
→ -
Hope is patience with the lamp lit.
→ -
The first reaction to truth is hatred.
→ -
A holy woman may be beautiful by the gift of nature, but she must not give occasion to lust. If beauty be hers, so far from setting it off she ought rather to obscure it.
→ -
Indeed it is better to postpone, lest either we complete too little by hurrying, or wander too long in completing it.
→ -
The whole fruit is already present in the seed.
→ -
Let the emperor make war on heaven; let him lead heaven captive in his triumph; let him put guards on heaven; let him impose taxes on heaven! He cannot. . . . He gets his sceptre where he first got his humanity; his power where he got the breath of life.
→ -
It is certain because it is impossible. -Certum est quia impossibile
→ -
What is nobler than to tread under foot the gods of the nations, to exorcise evil spirits, to perform cures, to seek divine revelations, and to live to God? These are the pleasures - these are the spectacles - that befit Christian men.
→ -
Nature is schoolmistress, the soul the pupil; and whatever one has taught or the other has learned has come from God - the Teacher of the teacher.
→ -
Away with the one who is always seeking, for he never finds anything; for he is seeking where nothing can be found. Away with the one who is always knocking, for he knocks where there is no one to open; away with the one who is always asking, for he asks of one who does not hear.
→ -
It is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving kindness, that brands us in the eyes of those who oppose us.
→ -
Divorce these days is a religious vow, as if the proper offspring of marriage.
→ -
How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sages philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then ever before from applause.
→ -
[Hermogenes] despises God's law in his painting, maintains repeated marriages [almost certainly a reference to remarrying after divorce or perhaps even widowhood, which Tertullian, who became a Montanist, opposed], alleges the law of God in defense of lust [likely same reference], and yet despises it in respect of his art.
→ -
Prayer is the one thing that can conquer God
→ -
If the Tiber rises too high, or the Nile too low, the remedy is always feeding Christians to the lions.
→
Related Authors
-
-
Tacitus Historian -
Ambrose Saint -
Cyprian Bishop -
Irenaeus of Lyons Saint -
Athanasius of Alexandria Saint -
Hippolytus of Rome Theologian -
Eusebius Historian -
St. Jerome Saint -
Thomas Aquinas Priest -
Anselm of Canterbury Saint -
Saint John Chrysostom Author -
Lactantius Author -
-
Clement of Alexandria Theologian -
Origen Scholar -
Cyril of Alexandria Doctor -
Saint Augustine Saint -
Polycarp Martyr -
