Tertullian Quotes

Nature soaks every evil with either fear or shame.

There is strife between God s ways and human ways; damned by you, we are absolved by God.

The nature of rumor is well known to all. It was your own poet who said: 'Rumor, an evil surpassing all evils in speed.'

Christ, in disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier.

Patience is God's nature.

It is not permitted for a woman to speak in the church, nor is it permitted for her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer [the eucharist], nor to claim for herself a share in any masculine function- not to mention any priestly office.

Now then, you dogs, whom the apostle puts outside and who yelp at the God of truth, let us come to your various questions.

The flesh feeds on the Body and Blood of Christ that the soul may be fattened on God

He who flees will fight again.

For what war should we not be fit and eager, even though unequal in numbers, we who are so willing to be slaughtered-if, according to that discipline of ours, it was not more lawful to be slain than to slay?

There are still preserved among Christians traces of that Holy Spirit that appeared in the form of a dove. They expel evil spirits, perform many cures, and foresee certain events.

The pleasure of those who injure you lies in your pain. Therefore they will suffer if you take away their pleasure by not feeling pain

I owe no duty to the forum, the election ground or the senate; I am ... no barking pleader, no judge, no soldier, no king; I have withdrawn from the populace. My only business is with myself. I have no care save not to care. The better life you would more enjoy in seclusion than in publicity. But you will decry me as indolent. ... None is born for another, being destined to die for himself.

It is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving kindness, that brands us in the eyes of those who oppose us.

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

The first reaction to truth is hatred.

A holy woman may be beautiful by the gift of nature, but she must not give occasion to lust. If beauty be hers, so far from setting it off she ought rather to obscure it.

If the Tiber rises too high, or the Nile too low, the remedy is always feeding Christians to the lions.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

Now we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.

Let women paint their eyes with tints of chastity.

Two kinds of blindness are easily combined so that those who do not see really appear to see what is not.

Let the emperor make war on heaven; let him lead heaven captive in his triumph; let him put guards on heaven; let him impose taxes on heaven! He cannot. . . . He gets his sceptre where he first got his humanity; his power where he got the breath of life.

The usual complaint is, 'I have no other way of earning a living.' The harsh reply can be, 'Do you have to live?'

Keep always in mind the rule of faith which I profess and by which I bear witness that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are inseparable from each other, and then you will understand what is meant by it. Observe now that I say the Father is other [distinct], the Son is other, and the Spirit is other. This statement is wrongly understood by every uneducated or perversely disposed individual, as if it meant diversity and implied by that diversity a separation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

If we refuse our homage to statues and frigid images, the very counterpart of their dead originals, with which hawks, and mice, and spiders are so well acquainted, does it not merit praise instead of penalty [Christians were punished for not worshiping Roman gods] that we have rejected what we have come to see is error? We cannot surely be made out to injure those whom we are certain are nonentities. What does not exist is in its nonexistence secure from suffering.

In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God's sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil's gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die... Woman, you are the gate to hell.

The Law found more than it lost when Christ said, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven’ (Matthew 5:44-45). This most important commandment summarizes in a word the universal discipline of patience, since it does not allow us to do evil even to people who deserve it.

The state of faith allows no mention of impossibility.

Discipline is an index to doctrine.

It is absolutely forbidden to repay evil with evil.

To forbid birth is only quicker murder.

Arguments about Scripture achieve nothing but a stomachache and a headache.

Patience ornaments the woman and proves the man.

The blood of Christians is seed.

God the Father's a deep root; the Son's the shoot that breaks into the world; the Spirit spreads the beauty & fragrance

The Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed because it is absurd. And he was buried and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible.

The Lord's Prayer "is truly the summary of the whole gospel." "Since the Lord...after handling over the practice of prayer, said elsewhere, 'Ask and you will receive,' and since everyone has petitions which are peculiar to his circumstances, the regular and appropriate prayer (the Lord's Prayer) is said first, as the foundation of further desires.

For it is really better for us not to know a thing, because [God] has not revealed it to us, than to know it according to man’s wisdom, because he has been bold enough to assume it.

Fear is the foundation of safety.

When we are going to enter the water ... in the presence of the congregation and under the hand of the president, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil, his pomp, and his angels. After this we are immersed three times, making a somewhat larger pledge than the Lord appointed in the Gospel. Then we are taken up [a reference to the Roman tradition of recognizing a newborn baby as a member of the family]. We first taste a mixture of milk and honey and from that day we refrain from the daily bath for a whole week.

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem.

Learn about the incorruptible King, and know his heroes who never inflict slaughter on the peoples.

Prayer is the one thing that can conquer God

He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies.

Prevention of birth is a precipitation of murder.

It is certain because it is impossible. -Certum est quia impossibile

Offerings to propitiate the dead then were regarded as belonging to the class of funeral sacrifices, and these are idolatry. Idolatry, in fact, is a sort of homage to the departed, the one as well as the other is a service to dead men. Moreover, demons dwell in the images of the dead. ... this sort of exhibition has passed from honors of the dead to honors of the living; I mean, to quaestorships [financial overseers]and magistractes, to priestly offices of different kinds. Yet, since idolatry still cleaves to the dignity's name, whatever is done in its name partakes of its impurity.