Tertullian Quotes

You can't undo anything you've already done, but you can face up to it. You can tell the truth. You can seek forgiveness. And then let God do the rest.

Hope is patience with the lamp lit.

Men remain in ignorance as long as they hate, and they hate unjustly as long as they remain in ignorance.

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

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

Custom without truth is error grown old.

Where our work is, there let our joy be.

A man becomes a Christian, he is not born one.

You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine.

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

You cannot parcel out freedom in pieces because freedom is all or nothing.

I believe because it is absurd.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Prevention of birth is premature murder, and it makes no difference whether it is a life already born that one snatches away or a life that is coming to birth.

See how these Christians love one another.

Indeed it is better to postpone, lest either we complete too little by hurrying, or wander too long in completing it.

Truth engenders hatred of truth. As soon as it appears, it is the enemy.

Truth persuades by teaching, but does not teach by persuading.

The state of faith allows no mention of impossibility.

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem.

The first reaction to truth is hatred.

Nothing that is God's is obtainable by money

The whole fruit is already present in the seed.

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

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

Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy

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

It is absolutely forbidden to repay evil with evil.

I believe BECAUSE it's impossible.

The more you mow us down, the more numerous we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.

Patience is God's nature.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

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.

Prevention of birth is a precipitation of murder.

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

Woman is a temple built over a sewer.

He is a man, who is to be a man; the fruit is always present in the seed.

Christians are made, not born.

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.

To forbid birth is only quicker murder.

Fear is the foundation of safety.

Patience ornaments the woman and proves the man.

Discipline is an index to doctrine.

It is to believed because it is absurd.

It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions.

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