Origen Quotes

#1. The 'words' of Augustine, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, St. John of Damascus, St. Thomas Aquinas, et al, may not have carried the weight of Canon, however they were neither paper-like nor mere 'pellets'."

~R. Alan Woods [2012]

R. Alan Woods

#2. For hardly any of the ecclesiastical writers have handled the Divine Scriptures more ineptly and absurdly than Origen and Jerome.

Martin Luther

#3. The human heart is no small thing, for it can embrace so much.

Origen

#4. The physical voice we use in prayer need not be great nor startling; even should we not lift up any great cry or shout, God will yet hear us.

Origen

#5. As the eye naturally seeks the light and vision, and our body naturally desires food and drink, so our mind is possessed with a becoming and natural desire to become acquainted with the truth of God and the causes of things.

Origen

#6. It is in our power to stretch out our arms and, by doing good in our actions, to seize life and set it in our soul.

Origen

#7. You yourself are even another little world and have within you the sun and the moon and also the stars.

Origen

#8. We are obliged, therefore, to say that whoever speaks that which is foreign to religion is using many words, while he who speaks the words of truth, even should he go over the whole field and omit nothing, is always speaking the one word.

Origen

#9. Free will is the power of choosing good and evil.

Origen

#10. The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all.

Origen

#11. The soul has neither beginning nor end [They] come into this world strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of their previous lives

Origen

#12. To him who, though by no means near the end, is yet advancing, He is the way; to him who has put off all that is dead He is the life.

Origen

#13. But Paul, in his preaching of the Gospel, is a debtor to deliver the word not to Barbarians only, but also to Greeks, and not only to the unwise, who would easily agree with him, but also to the wise.

Origen

#14. For whatever be the knowledge which we are able to obtain of God, either by perception or reflection, we must of necessity believe that He is by many degrees far better than what we perceive Him to be.

Origen

#15. Those who believe the Author of Nature to be also the Author of Scripture must expect to find in Scripture the same sorts of difficulties that they find in Nature.

Origen

#16. God puts Christ's enemies as a footstool beneath His feet, for their salvation as well as their destruction.

Origen

#17. The discussion of prayer is so great that it requires the Father to reveal it, His firstborn Word to teach it, and the Spirit to enable us to think and speak rightly of so great a subject.

Origen

#18. Conscience is the chamber of justice.

Origen

#19. What each one honors before all else, what before all things he admires and loves, this for him is God.

Origen

#20. He makes Himself known to those who, after doing all that their powers will allow, confess that they need help from Him.

Origen

#21. When a house is being built which is to be made as strong as possible, the building takes place in fine weather and in calm, so that nothing may hinder the structure from acquiring the needed solidity.

Origen

#22. Then, in the next place, we must know that every being which is endowed with reason, and transgresses its statutes and limitations, is undoubtedly involved in sin by swerving from rectitude and justice.

Origen

#23. The Word of God is like a lamp to guide us.

Origen

#24. When Jesus then is with the multitudes, He is not in His house, for the multitudes are outside of the house, and it is an act which springs from His love of men to leave the house and to go away to those who are not able to come to Him.

Origen

#25. We have become sons of peace for the sake of Jesus, who is our leader.

Origen

#26. Ask, and it shall be given you.

Origen

#27. The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants. The apostles, to whom were committed the secrets of the divine sacraments, knew there are in everyone innate strains of [original] sin, which must be washed away through water and the Spirit

Origen

#28. What good does it do me if Christ was born in Bethlehem once if he is not born again in my heart through faith?

Origen

#29. We must believe what is good and true about the prophets, that they were sages, that they did understand what proceeded from their mouths, and that they bore prudence on their lips.

Origen

#30. One who prays ceaselessly is one who combines prayer with work and work with prayer.

Origen

#31. Now our whole activity is devoted to God, and our whole life, since we are bent on progress in divine things.

Origen

#32. You cannot demand military service of Christians any more than you can of priests. We do not go forth as soldiers with the Emperor even if he demands this.

Origen

#33. This also is a part of the teaching of the Church, that there are certain angels of God, and certain good influences, which are His servants in accomplishing the salvation of men.

Origen

#34. Now the true soldiers of Christ must always be prepared to do battle for the truth, and must never, so far as lies with them, allow false convictions to creep in.

Origen

#35. Where there is division, there is sin.

Origen

#36. When anyone prays, the angels that minister to God and watch over mankind gather round about him and join with him in prayer.

Origen

#37. This opinion, however, is held by most, that the devil was an angel, and that, having become an apostate, he induced as many of the angels as possible to fall away with himself, and these up to the present time are called his angels.

Origen

#38. If all things were made through Him, clearly so must the splendid revelations have been which were made to the fathers and prophets, and became to them the symbols of the sacred mysteries of religion.

Origen

#39. What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second and third days, in which the evening and morning were named, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise, in Eden, Like a Husbandman?

Origen

#40. For if the mystery concealed of old is made manifest to the Apostles through the prophetic writings, and if the prophets, being wise men, understood what proceeded from their own mouths, then the prophets knew what was made manifest to the Apostles.

Origen

#41. This also is a part of the Church's teaching, that the world was made and took its beginning at a certain time, and is to be destroyed on account of its wickedness.

Origen

#42. Having refuted, then, as well as we could, every notion which might suggest that we were to think of God as in any degree corporeal, we go on to say that, according to strict truth, God is incomprehensible, and incapable of being measured.

Origen

#43. But the Wisdom of God, which is His only-begotten Son, being in all respects incapable of change or alteration, and every good quality in Him being essential, and such as cannot be changed and converted, His glory is therefore declared to be pure and sincere.

Origen

#44. Although Christ was God, he took flesh; and having been made man, he remained what he was, God.

Origen

#45. But God, who is the beginning of all things, is not to be regarded as a composite being, lest perchance there should be found to exist elements prior to the beginning itself, out of which everything is composed, whatever that be which is called composite.

Origen