Hilary of Poitiers Quotes

The Church is the Ship outside which it is impossible to understand the Divine Word, for Jesus spoke from the boat to the people gathered on the shore.

The perfection of learning is to know God in such a way that, though you realize he is knowable, yet you know him as indescribable.

No matter how sinful one may have been, if he has devotion to Mary, it is impossible that he be lost.

The chief service I owe you, O God, is that every thought and word of mine should speak of you.

Wages cannot be considered as a gift, because they are due to work, but God has given free grace to all men by the justification of faith.

The utter folly of our time is lamentable, that men should think to assist God with human help and to protect the Church of Christ by worldly ambition.

For there have risen many who have given to the plain words of Holy Writ some arbitrary interpretation of their own, instead of its true and only sense, and this in defiance of the clear meaning of words. Heresy lies in the sense assigned, not in the word written; the guilt is that of the expositor, not of the text.

When we are overcome by some evil will, should we not tremble before the presence of the choirs of angels that surround us?

However great a sinner may have been, if he shows himself devout to Mary he will never perish.

Jews are a perverse people, accursed by God forever.

In this we see the wondrous virtue of the Lord: that the power dwelling in His body should communicate to perishable things the efficacy to heal, and that the divine activity should issue forth even from the hem of His garment. For God is not perceptible by the senses, to be enclosed within a body. The assumption of a body did not limit the nature of His power; but for our redemption His power took upon it the frailty of our body.

[Judaism is] ever... mighty in wickedness... when it cursed Moses; when it hated God; when it vowed its sons to demons; when it killed the prophets, and finally when it betrayed to the Praetor and crucified our God Himself and Lord... And so glorying through all its existence in iniquity.