Top 100 Bernard Of Clairvaux Sayings
#1. What we love we grow to resemble." - Bernard of Clairvaux
Ruth Harvey
#2. For I have learnt for a fact that nothing so effectively obtains, retains and regains grace, as that we should always be found not high-minded before God, but filled with holy fear.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#3. What of the souls already released from their bodies? We believe that they are overwhelmed in that vast sea of eternal light and of luminous eternity
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#6. There are people who go clad in tunics and have nothing to do with furs, who nevertheless are lacking in humility. Surely humility in furs is better than pride in tunics.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#8. Spiritual life is like living water that springs up from the very depths of our own spiritual experience. In spiritual life everyone has to drink from his or her own well.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#9. The rivers of Grace cannot flow uphill, up the steep cliff of the proud man's heart.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#10. Grace is necessary to salvation, free will equally so - but grace in order to give salvation, free will in order to receive it.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#15. If anyone makes himself his own master in the spiritual life, he makes himself scholar to a fool.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#17. There are four degrees of love: 1) Love of self for self's sake. 2) Love of God for self's sake. 3) Love of God for God's own sake. 4) Love of self for God's sake.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#18. When God forgives a sinner who humbly confesses his sin, the devil loses his dominion over the heart he had taken.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#19. Wherever ... thou shalt be, pray secretly within thyself. If thou shalt be far from a house of prayer, give not thyself trouble to seek for one, for thou thyself art a sanctuary designed for prayer. If thou shalt be in bed, or in any other place, pray there; thy temple is there.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#20. Rest is in Him alone. Man knows no peace in the world; but he has no disturbance when he is with God.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#23. Inordinate love for the flesh is cruelty, because under the appearance of pleasing the body, we kill the soul.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#24. The Eucharist is that love which surpasses all loves in Heaven and on earth
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#25. True penance consists in regretting without ceasing the faults of the past, and in firmly resolving to never again commit that which is so deplorable.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#26. Love is alone sufficient by itself, it pleases by itself and for it's own sake. It is itself a merit, and itself it's own recompense. It seeks neither cause, nor consequences beyond itself. It is its own fruit, its own object and usefulness. I love because I love you, I love that I may love.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#27. You wish me to tell you why and how God should be loved. My answer is that God himself is the reason he is to be loved.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#28. Vines and trees will teach you that which you will never learn from masters.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#29. So far from being able to answer for my sins, I cannot even answer for my righteousness!
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#30. A truly obedient man does not discriminate between one thing and another, since his only aim is to execute faithfully whatever may be assigned to him.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#31. He gives Himself as prize and reward: He is the refreshment of holy soul, the ransom of those in captivity.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#32. The spiteful tongue strikes a deadly blow at charity in all who hear him speak and, so far as it can, destroys root and branch, not only in the immediate hearers but also in all others to whom the slander, flying from lip to lip, is afterwards repeated.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#33. What I know of the divine
science and holy scripture,
I learnt in the woods and fields.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#34. What I know of the divine sciences and the Holy Scriptures, I have learned in woods and fields. I have no other masters than the beeches and the oaks.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#35. It was love that motivated His self-emptying, that led Him to become a little lower than angels, to be subject to parents, to bow His head beneath the Baptist's hands, to endure the weakness of the flesh, and to submit to death even upon the cross
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#36. Thus understanding and love, that is, the knowledge of and delight in the truth, are, as it were, the two arms of the soul, with which it embraces and comprehends with all the saints the length and breath, the height and depth, that is the eternity, the love, the goodness, and the wisdom of God.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#37. Always that damned discipline that you wear like chain mail ... You would have got on well with Bernard de Clairvaux and his gang of Knights Templar. If you'd been captured by Saladin, I'm sure you'd rather have had your throat cut than renounce your faith. But not from devotion, from pride.
Arturo Perez-Reverte
#38. If you would know whether you have made a good confession, ask yourself I you have resolved to abandon your sins.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#39. Slander is a poison which kills charity, both in the slanderer and the one who listens.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#40. Have death always before your eyes as a salutary means of returning to God.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#41. Love of Mary and devotion to her are a sure sign of obtaining eternal salvation.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#43. Believe one who knows: you will find something greater in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters. Saint Bernard de Clairvaux
Claire Dunn
#44. You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#45. Pride only, the chief of all iniquities, can make us treat gifts as if they were rightful attributes of our nature, and, while receiving benefits, rob our Benefactor of His due glory.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#46. There are three distinct comings of the Lord of which I know: His coming to men, His coming into men, and His coming against men.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#47. God has aroused the spirit of kings and princes to root up from the earth the enemies of the Christian name. Therefore gird yourselves manfully and take up joyful arms for the name of Christ.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#49. Do what Jesus says, ... what he commands through his ministers who are in the Church [see 1 Cor 6:4]. Be subject to his vicars, your leaders, not only those who are gentle and kind, but even those who are overbearing [see 1 Pt 2:18].
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#50. It's not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice - with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#51. We are to love God for Himself, because of a twofold reason; nothing is more reasonable, nothing more profitable.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#53. They wear themselves out in vain travail, without reaching their blessed consummation, because they delight in creatures, not in the Creator.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#54. Theirs is an endless road, a hopeless maze, who seek for goods before they seek for God.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#55. Let us then cast ourselves at the feet of this good Mother, and embracing them let us not depart until she blesses us, and accepts us for her children.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#56. A saint is not someone who never sins, but one who sins less and less frequently and gets up more and more quickly.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#58. To shame our sins He blushed in blood;
He closed His eyes to show us God;
Let all the world fall down and know
That none but God such love can show
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#59. Let no one believe that he has received the divine kiss, if he knows the truth without loving it or loves it without understanding it. But blessed is that kiss whereby not only is God recognized but also the Father is loved; for there is never full knowledge without perfect love.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#61. I was made a sinner by deriving my being from Adam; I am made just by being washed in the blood of Christ and not by Christ's 'words and example.'
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#62. Let us affectionately love His angels as counselors and defenders appointed by the Father and placed over us. They are faithful; they are prudent; they are powerful; Let us only follow them, let us remain close to them, and in the protection of the God of heaven let us abide.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#65. Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love in order that I may love.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#67. As patience leads to peace, and study to science, so are humiliations the path that leads to humility.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#70. Your actions in passing, pass not away, for every good work is a grain of seed for eternal life.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#71. Among us on the earth there is His memory; but in the Kingdom of heaven His very Presence. That Presence is the joy of those who have already attained to beatitude; the memory is the comfort of us who are still wayfarers, journeying towards the Fatherland.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#72. It is in the perfect union of two hearts that complete and total marriage consists.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#73. Action and contemplation are very close companions; they live together in one house on equal terms. Martha and Mary are sisters.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#74. There are those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge; that is Curiosity.
There are those who seek knowledge to be known by others; that is Vanity.
There are those who seek knowledge in order to serve; that is Love.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#75. 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.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#76. In his greediness, he counts all that he has clutched as nothing in comparison with what is beyond his grasp, and loses all pleasure in his actual possessions by longing after what he has not, yet covets.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#77. Believe one who has tried, you shall find a fuller satisfaction in the woods than in the books. The trees and the rocks will teach you that which you cannot hear from the masters.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#78. 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...
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#80. It is a fault, not a virtue, to wish your humility recognized and applauded.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#81. Jesus the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#82. If you concentrate hard on the state you are in, it would be suprising if you have time for anything else.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#83. I know by myself how incomprehensible God is, seeing I cannot comprehend the parts of my own being.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#85. Therefore gird yourselves manfully and take up joyful arms for the name of God.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#86. Let your prayer for temporal blessings be strictly limited to things absolutely necessary.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#88. It is no great thing to be humble when you are brought low; but to be humble when you are praised is a great and rare attainment.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#89. I have ascended to the highest in me, and look, the Word is towering above that. I have descended to explore my lowest depths, and I found Him deeper still.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#91. It is so that these impious ones wander in a circle, longing after something to gratify their yearnings, yet madly rejecting that which alone can bring them to their desired end, not by exhaustion but by attainment.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#92. The heart of Christ can be seen through the openings of his wounds. For what can prove to me so clearly as your wounds that you, O Lord Jesus, are sweet & mild & plenteous in mercy.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#93. What does God hate or punish except self-will? Let self-will cease, and there will be no hell. On what does that fire feed except on self-will?
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#95. We find rest in those we love, and we provide a resting place in ourselves for those who love us.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#97. Let us not imagine that we obscure the glory of the Son by the great praise we lavish on the Mother; for the more she is honored, the greater is the glory of her Son. There can be no doubt that whatever we say in praise of the Mother gives equal praise to the Son.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
