A while ago, I started reading through all the works of St. Gregory Nazianzen, and as I went, I kept track of all the quotes that I really appreciated. I stopped reading after a while (need to pick it back up), but I accumulated a whole bunch of quotes. Sometimes I picked a quote because it was just a cool turn of phrase I appreciated. Sometimes I picked a quote because it was particularly deep. Most of these are short one-liners. Anything longer I just highlighted or recorded elsewhere.
Gregory Nazianzen (or G-Nasty as I call him for short) is one of my favorite saints, and definitely my favorite Father of the Church. There are so many quotes here, I haven't even read them all a second time. Enjoy:
Oration I
"Let us forgive all offenses for the Resurrection's sake." - Oration I.1
"Let us give back to the Image what is made after the Image. Let us recognize our Dignity." - Oration I.4
"One can give nothing like oneself." - Oration I.5
Oration II
"I have been defeated, and own my defeat." - Oration II.1
"to provide the soul with wings" - Oration II.22
"the emptied Godhead" - Oration II.23
"the novel union between God and man" - Oration II.23
"tree is set over against tree" - Oration II.25
"the lifting up to atone for the fall" - Oration II.25
"give up the clay to the spirit" - Oration II.28
"self-respect: the source of persuasiveness (lit. 'the medicine of persuasion')" - Oration II.32
"aiding them readily to conceive a hope of better things" Oration II.32
"The pure alone can grasp Him Who is pure." - Oration II.39 (useful in talking about Purgatory)
"Some need to be fed with the milk of the most simple and elementary doctrines, vis., those who are in habit babes…" - Oration II.45
Speaking of Paul: "…he handles mysteries" - Oration II.54
"the miry clay in which we have been fixed" - Oration II.91
"before my eyes had been accustomed to gaze safely upon created things, with wonder only for the Creator, and without injury to the creature" Oration II.95
After a long list of names of Christ: "these names so pregnant with reality" - Oration VII.98
"the magnitude of success, the utter ruin of failure" - Oration VII.99
"It is better to be honorably overcome than to win a dangerous and lawless victory." - Oration VII.103
"the yoke of ministry…I know not whether to call it light or heavy" - Oration VII.109
Oration III
"my Citadel Solitude" - Oration III.1
"So easily is anything despised which is easily conquered." - Oration III.2
"Believe that listening is always less dangerous than talking." - Oration III.7
"worship a little in words, but more by your actions, and rather by keeping the Law than by admiring the Lawgiver." - Oration III.7
"May the Word in you never be smothered with cares of this life" - Oration III.8
Oration VII
"while their bodies are bent beneath the burden of their years, their souls renew their youth in God." - Oration VII.2
"Our hope is greater than our desert." - Oration VII.23
"If only we could be what we hope to be" - Oration VII.24
"He asks so little and gives so much" - Oration VII.24
Oration XII
"Amalek was warred down by the Cross" - Oration XII.2
"So, help me, each of you who can, and stretch out a hand to me who am pressed down and torn asunder by regret and enthusiasm." - Oration XII.4
"be helped by helping others" - Oration XII.4
"publish the Divine light" - Oration XII.4
"His image [be] cleansed in many souls." - Oration XII.4
Oration XVI
"Fluent speech is not more profitable than wise." - Oration XVI.1
"For 'a good understanding,' he saith, 'have all they that do thereafter,' not they who proclaim it." - Oration XVI.3, quoting Ps 111:10
("To fear the Lord is the first stage of wisdom. All who do so prove themselves wise.")
[Hell is above and before all other torments] "the being outcast from God, and the shame of conscience which has no limit." - Oration XVI.9
"Let us be assured that to do no wrong is really superhuman, and belongs to God alone. - Oration XVI.15
"Let us not wait to be convicted by others, let us be our own examiners." Oration XVI.17
Oration XVIII
"Our home is better than our pilgrimage." - Oration XVIII.3
"that which is unattainable comes, through envy, to be thought not even credible." - Oration XVIII.9
[The small things] "are in my eyes most honorable, since they were the discoveries of her faith and the undertakings of her spiritual fervor." - Oration XVIII.9
"the gift of faith" Oration XVIII.13
"allowing no interval between assault and forgiveness" Oration XVIII.24
"Indeed, I am almost inclined to believe that the civil government is more orderly than ours, to which divine grace is attributed" Oration XVIII.35
"studiously ridicule our affairs" Oration XVIII.35
"he felt that it would be a terrible thing, after really gaining the victory, to be vanquished by the tongue." Oration XVIII.36
"superior to his robe of flesh" Oration XVIII.37
Oration XXI
"In praising Athanasius, I shall be praising virtue." Oration XXI.1
"For God is to intelligible things what the sun is to the things of sense." Oration XXI.1 [This and the following are real evidence of G. Naz.'s Platonic background.]
[A Paraphrase: Be not ignorant of matters you are determined to despise. Oration XXI.6]
"using life as the guide of contemplation, contemplation as the seal of life" Oration XXI.6
"[Athanasius:] him who made himself all things to all men that he might gain almost, if not quite, all." Oration XXI.10
"The great sufferings of God for us" Oration XXI.24
First Theological Oration (Oration XXVII)
"I am to speak against persons who pride themselves on their eloquence." Oration XXVII.I
Paul: "the disciple and teacher of the Fishermen" Oration XXVII.I
"Our Great Mystery is in danger of being made a thing of little moment." Oration XXVII.II
"It is necessary to be truly at leisure to know God." Oration XXVII.III
"We ought to think of God even more often than we draw our breath." Oration XXVII.V
"by this recollection we are to be moulded to purity." Oration XVII.V
"That which is good ceases to be good if it be not done in a good way." Oration XXVII.V
"I will still call you Brethren, though you do not behave like brothers." Oration XXVII.V
"Why have we tied our hands and armed our tongues?" Oration XXVII.VII
"Must your tongue rule at any cost, and can you not restrain the birthing of your speech?" Oration XXVII.IX
Second Theological Oration (Oration XXVIII)
"It is one thing to be persuaded of the existence of a thing, an quite another to know what it is." OrationX XVIII.V
"But a man who states what God is not without going on to say what He is, acts much in the same way as one would who when asked how many twice five make, should answer, 'Not two, nor three, nor four, nor five, nor twenty, nor any multiple of ten;' but would not answer 'ten,' nor settle the mind of his questioner upon the firm ground of the answer." Oration XXVIII.IX
"Why have I gone into all this, perhaps too minutely for most people to listen to?" Oration XXVIII.XI
"For it is utterly sophistical and foreign to the character…of any good man, who has any right ideas about himself, to seek his own supremacy by throwing a hindrance in the way of another." Oration XXVIII.XI
"People cling tightly to that which they acquire with labor; but that which they acquire easily they quickly throw away, because it can be easily recovered." Oration XXVIII.XII
"This is perhaps what is meant by 'He made darkness His secret place,' (Ps 18:11) namely our dullness, through which few can see even a little." Oration XXVIII.XII
"Our dullness, through which few can see even a little." Oration XXVIII.XII
"For every rational nature longs for God and for the First Cause, but is unable to grasp Him, for the reasons I have mentioned. Faint therefore with the desire, and as it were restive and impatient of the disability, it tries a second course, either to look at visible things, and out of some of them to make a god." Oration XXVIII.XIII
Idolatry: "a poor contrivance, for in what respect and to what extent can that which is seen be higher and more godlike than that which sees, that this should worship that?" Oration XXVIII.XIII
"our desire for God" … "our sense of the impossibility of being without a leader and guide" Oration XXVIII.XVI
Isaac, offered by Abraham: "a strange victim, the type of the Great Sacrifice" Oration XXVIII.XVIII
"He [Abraham] saw not God as God, but gave Him food as a man." Oration XXVIII.XVIII
"no halting place in the ascent" Oration XXVIII.XXI
"this little world called Man" Oration XXVIII.XXII
Of songbirds: "What is the reason of their melody, and from whom came it?" Oration XXVIII.XXIII
Of spider webs and beehives: "What Euclid ever imitated these, while pursuing philosophical enquiries with lines that have no real existence, and wearying himself with demonstrations?" Oration XXVIII.XXV
"really endeavoring to measure the sea with a wineglass" Oration XXVIII.XXVII
"He who cannot lie is not forgetful of His own covenant" Oration XXVIII.XXVIII
Oration XXXI
"for it seems to be absolutely necessary for them to have some object on which to give expression to their impiety, or life would appear to them no longer worth living." Oration XXXI.II
Letter CI, To Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius
"We do not sever the Man from the Godhead." Letter CI
"That which He has not assumed He has not healed." Letter CI
"Let them not, then, begrudge us our complete salvation" Letter CI
"the stars which illumine the night are hidden by the Sun, so much that you could not even know of their existence by daylight." Letter CI
Letter CII, Against Apollinarius; the Second Letter to Cledonius
"It is through want of mind that they mutilate his mind." Letter CII
Letter CXXV, To Olympius
"injuring the Church by my untimely philosophy" Letter CXXV
Letter CXXX, To Procopium
"To tell the truth, I am convinced that every assembly of bishops is to be avoided, for I have never experienced a happy ending to any council; not even the abolition of abuses …, but only ambition or wrangling about what was taking place." Letter CXXX, quoted in Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 368.
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