Robert Bellarmine Quotes

#1. Political rule is so natural and necessary to the human race that it cannot be withdrawn without destroying nature itself; for the nature of man is such that he is a social animal.

Robert Bellarmine

#2. When we appeal to the throne of grace we do so through Mary, honoring God by honoring His Mother, imitating Him by exalting her, touching the most responsive chord in the sacred heart of Christ with the sweet name of Mary.

Robert Bellarmine

#3. The second ceremony, are the musical instruments, which began to be used in the service of the church, in the time of Pope Vitalian, about the year 600 as Platina relates out of the Pontifical; or as Aimonius rather thinks in book iv. chapter 114, after the year 820, in the time of Lewis the Pious.

Robert Bellarmine

#4. Freedom of belief is pernicious, it is nothing but the freedom to be wrong.

Robert Bellarmine

#5. Peace and union are the most necessary of all things for men who live in common, and nothing serves so well to establish and maintain these as the forbearing charity whereby we put up with one another's defects.

Robert Bellarmine

#6. It is not difficult for one seal to make many impressions exactly alike, but to vary shapes almost infinitely, which is what God has done in creation, this is in truth a divine work.

Robert Bellarmine

#7. Flee idleness ... for no one is more exposed to such temptations than he who has nothing to do.

Robert Bellarmine

#8. There is no one who is without faults, and who is not in some way a burden to others, whether he is a superior or a subject, an old man or a young one, a scholar or a dunce.

Robert Bellarmine

#9. On the last day, when the general examination takes place, there will be no question at all on the text of Aristotle, the aphorisms of Hippocrates, or the paragraphs of Justinian. Charity will be the whole syllabus.

Robert Bellarmine

#10. God has implanted a natural tendency to the monarchial form of government not only in the hearts of men but in practically all things.

Robert Bellarmine

#11. It seems unbelievable that a man should perish in whose favor Christ said to His Mother: 'Behold thy son', provided that he has not turned a deaf ear to the words, which Christ addressed to him: 'Behold thy Mother.'

Robert Bellarmine

#12. Charity is that with which no man is lost, and without which no man is saved.

Robert Bellarmine

#13. The centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without going from east to west, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures.

Robert Bellarmine

#14. To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.

Robert Bellarmine