Thomas à Kempis Quotes

“A book has but one voice, but it does not instruct everyone alike.”

“A life without a purpose is a languid, drifting thing. Every day we ought to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let us make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is nought.”

“Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.”

“First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.”

“For a small reward, a man will hurry away on a long journey; while for eternal life, many will hardly take a single step.”

“Grant me prudently to avoid him that flatters me, and to endure patiently him that contradicts me.”

“Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or endeavoring something for the public good.”

“We would be well on the way to perfection if we could weed out one vice from ourselves each year.”

“Whoever loves much, does much...”

“A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.”

“All men desire peace, but very few desire those things that make for peace.”

“At the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done.”

“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”

“Fight like a man. Habit is overcome by habit.”

“If God were our one and only desire we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.”

“It is not really a small thing when in small things we resist self.”

“Let temporal things be in the use, eternal things in the desire.”

“Many things there are to know which profiteth little or nothing to the soul.”

“Nothing will hinder you more than thinking only about yourself.”

“Wherever you go, there you are.”