St. Catherine of Siena Quotes

Nails were not enough to hold God-and-man nailed and fastened on the Cross, had not love held Him there.

O unfathomable depth! O Deity eternal! O deep ocean! What more could You give me than to give me Yourself?

It is impossible to fulfill the law concerning love for Me, God eternal, apart from the law concerning love for your neighbors.

God is closer to us than water is to a fish.

Make two homes for thyself, my daughter. One actual home . . . and the other a spiritual home which thou are to carry with thee always.

You [God] are a fire that takes away the coldness, illuminates the mind with its light, and causes me to know your truth and I know that you are beauty and wisdom itself. The food of angels, you give yourself to man in this fire of your love

O abyss! O eternal Godhead! O deep sea! What more could you have given me than the gift of your very self?

We were enclosed, O eternal Father, within the garden of your breast. You drew us out of your holy mind like a flower petaled with our soul's three powers and into each power you put the whole plant, so that they might bear fruit in your garden, might come back to you with the fruit you gave them. And you would come back to the soul, to fill her with your blessedness. There the soul dwells like the fish in the sea and the sea in the fish.

Love transforms one into what one loves.

... people become like what they love.

all the vices are seasoned with pride just as the virtues are seasoned and enlivened by charity.

Consider God's charity. Where else have we ever seen someone who has been offended voluntarily paying out his life for those who have offended him?

The devil fears hearts on fire with love of God.

Hope comes from love, because people always trust in those they love.

The devil never sleeps.

Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.

He will provide the way and the means, such as you could never have imagined. Leave it all to Him, let go of yourself, lose yourself on the Cross, and you will find yourself entirely.

The soul, as soon as she comes to know Me, reaches out to love her neighbors.

To the servant of God... every place is the right place, and every time is the right time.

There is no sin nor wrong that gives man such a foretaste of Hell in this life as anger and impatience.

You will do very well to refuse offices; for a man seldom fails to give offense in them. It ought to weary you simply to hear them mentioned.

When it seems that God shows us the faults of others, keep on the safer side-it may be that your judgment is false. On your lips let silence abide. And any vice that you may ascribe to others, ascribe at once to them and yourself, in true humility. If that vice really exists in a person, he will correct himself better, seeing himself so gently understood, and will say of his own accord the thing that you would have said to him.

To a brave man, good and bad luck are like his left and right hand. He uses both.

O Trinity, eternal Trinity! Fire, abyss of love... Was it necessary that you should give Even the Holy Trinity as food for souls?... You gave us not only your Word Through the Redemption and in the Eucharist, But you also gave yourself In the fullness of love for your creature.

We trust and believe in what we love.

Do not presume to choose your own way of serving instead of the one I have made for you.

You know Me in you, and from this knowledge you will derive all that is necessary.

And of what should we be afraid? Our captain on this battlefield is Christ Jesus. We have discovered what we have to do. Christ has bound our enemies for us and weakened them that they cannot overcome us unless we so choose to let them. So we must fight courageously and mark ourselves with the sign of the most Holy Cross.

Eternal Trinity... mystery deep as the sea, You could give me no greater gift than the gift of Yourself. For You are a fire ever burning and never consumed, which itself consumes all the selfish love that fills my being.

Consider your possessions loaned to you by God.

Oh, let us lose our milk teeth and cut instead the strong teeth of hate and love.

How many are the pains of those who hunger for revenge! They gnaw away at themselves constantly, and they have killed themselves even before they kill their enemies.

No one should judge that he has greater perfection because he performs great penances and gives himself in excess to the staying of the body than he who does less, inasmuch as neither virtue nor merit consists therein; for otherwise he would be an evil case, who for some legitimate reason was unable to do actual penance. Merit consists in the virtue of love alone, flavored with the light of true discretion without which the soul is worth nothing.

Don't make it necessary for me to complain about you to Christ crucified. (There is no one else I can complain to, since there is no one greater than you on earth.

It is the nature of love to love as much as we feel we are loved and to love whatever the one we love loves.

too great pity is the greatest cruelty.

avarice breeds envy, a worm that is always gnawing, letting the avaricious enjoy neither their own nor anyone else's good.

There is nothing we can desire or want that we do not find in God.

Wherefore, as I have said to you, I, God, have become man, and man has become God by the union of My Divine Nature with your human nature. This greatness is given in general to all rational creatures, but, among these I have especially chosen My ministers for the sake of your salvation, so that, through them, the Blood of the humble and immaculate Lamb, My only-begotten Son, may be administered to you.

It is human to sin, but diabolic to persist in sin.

Christ Jesus left you this sweet key of obedience; for He left His Vicar, whom you are all obliged to obey until death. And whoever is outside his obedience is in a state of damnation.

You, God, made yourself lowly and small to make us great!

Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.

Every step of the way to heaven is heaven.

What father ever gave up his son to death for the sake of his slave!

In your nature, eternal Godhead, I shall come to know my nature. And what is my nature? It is fire, because you are nothing but a fire of love. And you have given humankind a share in this nature, for by the fire of love you created us.

It is a human thing to sin, but perseverance in sin is a thing of the devil.

O You who are mad about Your creature! true God and true Man, You have left Yourself wholly to us, as food, so that we will not fall through weariness during our pilgrimage in this life, but will be fortified by You, celestial nourishment