Pope Gregory VII Quotes

I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.

Who does not know that kings and rulers sprang from men who were ignorant of God, who assumed because of blind greed and intolerable presumption to make themselves masters of other men, their equals, by means of pride, violence, bad faith, murder, and almost every other kind of crime? Surely the devil drove them on.

That it has pleased God to make Holy Scripture obscure in certain places lest, if it were perfectly clear to all, it might be vulgarized and subjected to disrespect or be so misunderstood by people of limited intelligence as to lead them into error.

I have loved justice and hated inequity; and therefore I die in exile. [Lat., Dilexi justitiam et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio.]

It is the custom of the Roman Church which I unworthily serve with the help of God, to tolerate some things, to turn a blind eye to some, following the spirit of discretion rather than the rigid letter of the law.

For if we are bidden to honor carnal fathers and mothers, how much more the spiritual? ... If this virtue of charity has been overlooked, a man will lose any fruit of salvation in any good he may do.