Saint Thomas Aquinas by G.K. Chesterton
- He starts with a comparison of Aquinas and Francis, emphasizing how while they are entirely different in style, the are both doing and seeking the same thing. This points to the beauty of catholic unity
- Aquinas always wanted to be just a friar, not an abbot or monk or anything else, just a lowly, simple, humble friar
- “falsehood is never so false as when it is very nearly true.” (103)
- "A saint may be any kind of man, with an additional quality that is at once unique and universal. We might even say that the one thing which separates a saint from ordinary men is his readiness to be one with ordinary men...A saint is long past any desire for distinction; he is the only sort of superior man who has never been a superior person" (142)
- “we must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours” 108
- "The theology of a saint is simply the theism of a saint; or rather the theism of all saints. It is less individual, but it is much more intense" (166)
- ..........."and that there should in that sense less difference between them in theology than in philosophy" (167)
- Generalism: “…that this labeling of Aquinas as a specialist was an obscure depreciation of him as a universalist. For that is a very common trick for the belittling of literary or scientific men.” (202)
- Anyone who thinks deeply will see that motion has about it an essential incompleteness…” —> this makes me think about resting with God, and how our inability to do so demonstrates our incompleteness
- From 002- Becoming Saints in Our Time - The Burrowshire Podcast: "Each generation seeks its saint by instinct; and he is not what the people want, but rather what the people need… It is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most."
Created: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2022-03-14-Mon