Lactantius Quotes

#1. But some one will say that this supreme Being, who made all things, and those also who conferred on men particular benefits, are entitled to their respective worship.

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#2. Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be.

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#3. The first point of wisdom is to discern that which is false; the second, to know that which is true.

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#4. For if God is a title of the highest power, He must be incorruptible, perfect, incapable of suffering, and subject to no other being; therefore they are not gods whom necessity compels to obey the one greatest God.

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#5. It is possible that Mount Olympus may have supplied the poets with the hint for saying that Jupiter obtained the kingdom of heaven, because Olympus is the common name both of the mountain and of heaven.

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#6. The prophets, who were very many, proclaim and declare the one God; for, being filled with the inspiration of the one God, they predicted things to come, with agreeing and harmonious voice.

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#7. Let those who are famished come that they may lay aside perpetual hunger and be filled with heavenly food.

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#8. Homer was able to give us no information relating to the truth, for he wrote of human rather than divine things.

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#9. For if the honour paid to Him is shared by others, He altogether ceases to be worshipped, since His religion requires us to believe that He is the one and only God.

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#10. There is no one, who possesses intelligence and uses reflection, who does not understand that it is one Being who both created all things and governs them with the same energy by which He created them.

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#11. Therefore, if the gods are immortal and eternal, what need is there of the other sex, when they themselves do not require succession, since they are always about to exist?

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#12. Modesty in human beings is praised because it is not a matter of nature, but of will.

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#13. For they, the philosophers, were considered teachers of right living, which is far more excellent, since to speak well belongs only to a few, but to live well belongs to all.

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#14. When their city was occupied by the Gauls, and the Romans, who were besieged in the Capitol, had made military engines from the hair of the women, they dedicated a temple to the Bald Venus.

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#15. Therefore God is one, if that which admits of so great power can be nothing else: and yet those who deem that there are many gods, say that they have divided their functions among themselves; but we will discuss all these matters at their proper places.

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#16. Let it be known that this is the true Church, in which there is confession and penance and which takes a health-promoting care of the sins and wounds to which the weak flesh is subject.

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#17. But God, who is the Eternal Mind, is undoubtedly of excellence, complete and perfect in every part.

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#18. Memory tempers prosperity, mitigates adversity, controls youth, and delights old age.

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#19. Mars, when guilty of homicide, and set free from the charge of murder by the Athenians through favour, lest he should appear to be too fierce and savage, committed adultery with Venus.

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#20. Cicero, in his treatise concerning the Nature of the Gods, having said that three Jupiters were enumerated by theologians, adds that the third was of Crete, the son of Saturn, and that his tomb is shown in that island.

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#21. But God, who is immortal, has no need of difference of sex, nor of succession.

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#22. Nobody is poor unless he stand in need of justice.

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#23. The poets, therefore, however much they adorned the gods in their poems, and amplified their exploits with the highest praises, yet very frequently confess that all things are held together and governed by one spirit or mind.

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#24. Therefore let men withdraw themselves from errors; and laying aside corrupt superstitions, let them acknowledge their Father and Lord, whose excellence cannot be estimated, nor His greatness perceived, nor His beginning comprehended.

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#25. The whole point of justice consists precisely in our providing for others through humanity what we provide for our own family through affection.

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#26. Let us come to the philosophers, whose authority is of greater weight, and their judgment more to be relied on, because they are believed to have paid attention, not to matters of fiction, but to the investigation of the truth.

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#27. Devils so work that things which are not, appear to men as if they were real.

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