Cyprian quotes

No one is strong in his own strength, but he is safe by the grace and mercy of God. (Cyprian)
Be constantly committed to prayer or to reading [Scripture]; by praying, you speak to God, in reading, God speaks to you. View quote
Cyprian
This supernatural bread and this consecrated chalice are for the health and salvation of mankind. View quote
Cyprian
Men imitate the gods whom they adore, and to such miserable beings their crimes become their religion. View quote
Cyprian
There is no salvation outside the Church. View quote
Cyprian
The world is going mad in mutual extermination, and murder, considered as a crime when committed individually, becomes a virtue when it is committed by large numbers. It is the multiplication of the frenzy that assures impunity to the assassins. View quote
Cyprian
Whatever a man prefers to God, that he makes a god to himself. View quote
Cyprian
Peter, in showing that the Church is one and that only those who are in the Church can be saved, said: "In the Ark of Noah certain persons, numbering only eight, were saved by water, which Baptism effects in like manner for you" (1 Peter 3:20). He proves and demonstrates that the solitary Ark of Noah was the figure of the One Church. If, at the time of this Baptism of the world anyone could have been saved without having been in the Ark of Noah, then he who is outside the Church could now be brought to life by Baptism. View quote
Cyprian
No one can have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother. View quote
Cyprian
None of us offers resistance when he is seized, or avenges himself for your unjust violence, although our people are numerous and plentiful...it is not lawful for us to hate, and so we please God more when we render no requital for injury...we repay your hatred with kindness. View quote
Cyprian
Think not that you are thus maintaining the Gospel of Christ when you separate yourselves from the flock of Christ. (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. View quote
Cyprian
The Lord withdraws when He is denied, and what is taken by the undeserving does not avail them unto salvation, since the saving grace is turned into ashes and holiness departs. View quote
Cyprian
"If any man thirst, let him come and drink from the rivers of living water" (cf. John 7:38). Where shall he who thirsts come? To heretics where the fountain and river of water is in no way life-giving? Or to the Church, which is One? View quote
Cyprian
If He prayed who was without sin, how much more it becometh a sinner to pray! View quote
Cyprian
For the helmsman is recognized in the tempest; in the warfare the soldier is proved. View quote
Cyprian
In proportion to the size of the vessel of faith, brought by us to the Lord, is the measure we draw out of His overflowing grace. View quote
Cyprian
The frame wearied with labours lies prostrate on the ground, but it is no penalty to lie down with Christ. Your limbs unbathed, are foul and disfigured with filth and dirt; but within they are spiritually cleansed, although without the flesh is defiled. View quote
Cyprian
Custom is often only the antiquity of error. View quote
Cyprian
Custom, though never so ancient, without truth, is but an old error. View quote
Cyprian
If, in the case of the worst sinners and those who formerly sinned much against God, when afterwards they believe, the remission of their sins is granted and no one is held back from baptism and grace, how much more, then, should an infant not be held back, who, having but recently been born, has done no sin, except that, born of the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of that old death from his first being born. For this very reason does he [an infant] approach more easily to receive the remission of sins: because the sins forgiven him are not his own but those of another. (Cyprian)
Their property held them in chains...chains which shackled their courage and choked their faith and hampered their judgment and throttled their soul...If they stored up their treasure in heaven, they would not now have an enemy and a thief within their own household...They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned: enslaved as they are to their own property, they are not the masters of their money but its slaves. View quote
Cyprian
The wretched bodies of the condemned shall simmer and blaze in those living fires. View quote
Cyprian
Hence turn your looks to the abominations, not less to be deplored, of another kind of spectacle. In the theatres also you will behold what may well cause you grief and shame. It is the tragic buskin which relates in verse the crimes of ancient days. The old horrors of parricide and incest are unfolded in action calculated to express the image of the truth, so that, as the ages pass by, any crime that was formerly committed may not be forgotten. Each generation is reminded by what it hears, that whatever has once been done may be done again. Crimes never die out by the lapse of ages; wickedness is never abolished by process of time; impiety is never buried in oblivion. Things which have now ceased to be actual deeds of vice become examples. View quote
Cyprian