Cyprian > Quotes

“It is a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and good people who have learned the great secret of life. They have found a joy and wisdom which is a thousand times better than any of the pleasures of our sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are Christians. . . and I am one of them.”
― Cyprian

“No one can have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.”
― Saint Cyprian of Carthage, The Complete Works of Saint Cyprian of Carthage

“They are blind guides,' He says, 'of the blind. But if a blind man guide a blind man, both shall fall into a pit.' 4 Such a one is to be turned away from, and whoever has separated himself from the Church is to be shunned. Such a man is perverted and sins and is condemned by his very self. Does he seem to himself to be with Christ, who acts contrary to the priests of Christ, who separates himself from association with His clergy and His people? That man bears arms against the Church; he fights against God's plan. An enemy of the altar, a rebel against the sacrifice of Christ, for the faith faithless, for religion sacrilegious, a disobedient servant, an impious son, a hostile brother, despising the bishops and abandoning the priests of God, he dares to set up another altar, to compose another prayer with unauthorized words, to profane the truth of the Lord's offering by false sacrifices, and not to know that he who struggles against God's plan on account of his rash daring is punished by divine censure.”
― Cyprian

“It is a persistent evil to persecute a man who belongs to the grace of God. It is a calamity without remedy to hate the happy.”
― Saint Cyprian of Carthage, The Complete Works of Saint Cyprian of Carthage

“A good purpose, which has known God, cannot be changed.”
― Cyprian, The Complete Works of Saint Cyprian of Carthage

“wars scattered everywhere with the bloody horror of camps. The world is wet with mutual blood(shed): and homicide is a crime when individuals commit it, (but) it is called a virtue, when it is carried on publicly. Not the reason of innocence, but the magnitude of savagery, demands impunity for crimes.”
― Cyprian

“Men imitate the gods whom they adore, and to such miserable beings their crimes become their religion.”
― Cyprian, The Complete Works of Saint Cyprian of Carthage

“Adultery, fraud, homicide is mortal sin (mortale crimen) … after celebrating the eucharist, the hand is not (i.e. ought not to be) spotted with (the use of) the sword and with blood.”
― Cyprian

“[Christians] are not allowed to kill, but they must be ready to be put to death themselves… it is not permitted the guiltless to put even the guilty to death.” “God wished iron to be used for the cultivation of the earth, and therefore it should not be used to take human life.”
― Cyprian