Zitate von Hieronymus

„Ich habe immer eine Verehrung empfunden, nicht für wortreiche Weitschweifigkeit, sondern für heilige Einfachheit!“

—  Hieronymus

Epistulae 57,12 - Hieronymus bezeichnete damit die schlichte Sprache der Jünger im Neuen Testament
Original lat.: "Venerationi mihi semper fuit non verbosa rusticitas, sed sancta simplicitas."

„Geirrt zu haben ist menschlich, und einen Irrtum einzugestehen ist Kennzeichen eines Weisen.“

—  Hieronymus

Briefe
Original lat.: "Erravisse humanum est, et confiteri errorem prudentis."

„Unerfahrenheit führt zu Selbstvertrauen, Bildung zu Scheu.“

—  Hieronymus

Original: Imperitia confidentiam, eruditio timorem creat.
Quelle: Epistulae 73,10

„Ein voller Bauch diskutiert leicht über das Fasten.“

—  Hieronymus

Epistulae 58,2
Original lat.: "Plenus venter facile disputat de ieiuniis"

„Einem einzigen Zeugen glaubt man nicht, selbst wenn es Cato wäre.“

—  Hieronymus

Adversus Rufinum 2,24
Original lat.: "Unique testi nec Catoni creditum est"

„Der Reiche ist entweder ein Schelm oder eines Schelmen Erbe.“

—  Hieronymus

Briefe

„Ein fetter Bauch bringt keine zarten Empfindungen hervor.“

—  Hieronymus

Briefe

„Paul then, in the fourteenth year of Nero on the same day with Peter, was beheaded at Rome for Christ's sake and was buried in the Ostian way, the twenty-seventh year after our Lord's passion.“

—  Jerome, buch De Viris Illustribus

Original: (la) Hic ergo quarto decimo Neronis anno, eodem die quo Petrus Romae, pro Christo capite truncatur, sepultusque est in via Ostiensi, anno post passionem Domini tricesimo septimo.
Quelle: De Viris Illustribus, Chapter 5

„Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best.“

—  Jerome

„True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.“

—  Jerome

„I am told that your mother is a religious woman, a widow of many years' standing; and that when you were a child she reared and taught you herself. Afterwards when you had spent some time in the flourishing schools of Gaul she sent you to Rome, sparing no expense and consoling herself for your absence by the thought of the future that lay before you. She hoped to see the exuberance and glitter of your Gallic eloquence toned down by Roman sobriety, for she saw that you required the rein more than the spur. So we are told of the greatest orators of Greece that they seasoned the bombast of Asia with the salt of Athens and pruned their vines when they grew too fast. For they wished to fill the wine-press of eloquence not with the tendrils of mere words but with the rich grape-juice of good sense.“

—  Jerome

Letter 125 (Ad Rusticum Monachum)
Letters
Original: (la) Audio religiosam habere te matrem, multorum annorum viduam, quae aluit, quae erudivit infantem et post studia Galliarum, quae vel florentissima sunt, misit Romam non parcens sumptibus et absentiam filii spe sustinens futurorum, ut ubertatem Gallici nitoremque sermonis gravitas Romana condiret nec calcaribus in te sed frenis uteretur, quod et in disertissimis viris Graeciae legimus, qui Asianum tumorem Attico siccabat sale et luxuriantes flagellis vineas falcibus reprimebant, ut eloquentiae toreularia non verborum pampinis, sed sensuum quasi uvarum expressionibus redundarent.

„Xenocrates the philosopher writes that at Athens out of all the laws of Triptolemus only three precepts remain in the temple of Ceres: respect to parents, reverence for the gods, and abstinence from flesh. Orpheus in his song utterly denounces the eating of flesh. I might speak of the frugality of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Antisthenes to our confusion: but it would be tedious, and would require a work to itself. At all events this is the Antisthenes who, after teaching rhetoric with renown, on hearing Socrates, is related to have said to his disciples, «Go, and seek a master, for I have now found one.» He immediately, sold what he had, divided the proceeds among the people, and kept nothing for himself but a small cloak. … His most famous follower was the great Diogenes, who was mightier than King Alexander in that he conquered human nature.“

—  Jerome

Book II, 14
Adversus Jovinianum

„Just as divorce according to the Saviour's word was not permitted from the beginning, but on account of the hardness of our heart was a concession of Moses to the human race, so too the eating of flesh was unknown until the deluge. But after the deluge, like the quails given in the desert to the murmuring people, the poison of flesh-meat was offered to our teeth. … At the beginning of the human race we neither ate flesh, nor gave bills of divorce, nor suffered circumcision for a sign. Thus we reached the deluge. But after the deluge, together with the giving of the law which no one could fulfil, flesh was given for food, and divorce was allowed to hard-hearted men, and the knife of circumcision was applied, as though the hand of God had fashioned us with something superfluous. But once Christ has come in the end of time, and Omega passed into Alpha and turned the end into the beginning, we are no longer allowed divorce, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat flesh.“

—  Jerome

Book I, 18
Adversus Jovinianum

„Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, "Why do you not practice what you preach?"“

—  Jerome

Letter 52
Letters
Original: (la) Non confundant opera tua sermonem tuum: ne cum in Ecclesia loqueris, tacitus quilibet respondeat, cur ergo haec quae dicis, ipse non facis?

„Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness?“

—  Jerome

Letter 107
Letters
Original: (la) Difficulter eraditur, quod rudes animi praebiberunt. Lanarum conchylia quis in pristinum colorem revocet?

„A dreadful rumor reached us from the West. We heard that Rome was besieged, that the citizens were buying their safety with gold, and that when they had been thus despoiled they were again beleaguered, so as to lose not only their substance but their lives. …The speaker's voice failed and sobs interrupted his utterance. The city which had taken the whole world was itself taken; nay, it fell by famine before it fell by the sword, and there were but few to be found to be made prisoner.“

—  Jerome

Letter to Lady Principia (412) bewailing the sack of Rome by the Visigoths on August 24, 410; as quoted by John Freely in Before Galileo: The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (2012)
Letters

„Sweet it is to lay aside the weight of the body and to soar into the pure bright ether. Do you dread poverty? Christ calls the poor blessed. (Luke 6:20) Does toil frighten you? No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow. Are you anxious as regards food? Faith fears no famine. Do you dread the bare ground for limbs wasted with fasting? The Lord lies there beside you. Do you recoil from an unwashed head and uncombed hair? Christ is your true head. Does the boundless solitude of the desert terrify you? In the spirit you may walk always in paradise. Do but turn your thoughts there and you will be no more in the desert.“

—  Jerome

Letter 14, 10; Translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001.htm
Letters
Original: (la) Libet, sarcina corporis abiecta, ad purum aetheris evolare fulgorem. Paupertatem times? sed beatos Christus pauperes appellat. Labore terreris? at nemo athleta sine sudore coronatur. De cibo cogitas? sed fides famem non timet. Super nudam metuis humum exesa ieiuniis membra collidere? sed Dominus tecum iacet. Squalidi capitis horret inculta caesaries? sed caput tuum Christus est. Infinita eremi vastitas te terret? sed tu paradisum mente deambula. Quotiescumque illuc cogitatione conscenderis, toties in eremo non eris.

„Diogenes maintains that tyrants do not bring about revolutions in cities, and foment wars civil or foreign for the sake of a simple diet of vegetables and fruits, but for costly meats and the delicacies of the table. And, strange to say, Epicurus, the defender of pleasure, in all his books speaks of nothing but vegetables and fruits; and he says that we ought to live on cheap food because the preparation of sumptuous banquets of flesh involves great care and suffering, and greater pains attend the search for such delicacies than pleasures the consumption of them. … Persons who feed on flesh want also gratifications not found in flesh. But they who adopt a simple diet do not look for flesh. … The soul greatly exults when you are content with little: you have the world beneath your feet, and can exchange all its power, its feasts, and its lusts, the objects for which men rake money together, for common food, and make up for them all with a sack-cloth shirt.“

—  Jerome

Book II, 11
Adversus Jovinianum

„Yet such is the order of nature. While truth is always bitter, pleasantness waits upon evildoing.“

—  Jerome

Letter 40
Letters
Original: (la) Ita se natura habet, ut amara sit veritas, blanda vitia existimentur.