Francis Xavier's Quotes

Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterwards.

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

No human being will ever know the Truth, for even if they happen to say it by chance, they would not even known they had done so.

It takes a wise man to recognize a wise man.

God is one, greatest of gods and men, not like mortals in body or thought.

But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or were able to draw with their hands and do the work that men can do, horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves.

It isn't right to judge strength as better than good wisdom.

Men create the gods in their own image.

There is one God - supreme among gods and men - who is like mortals in neither body nor mind.

If cattle and horses, or lions, had hands, or were able to draw with their feet and produce the works which men do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make the gods' bodies the same shape as their own.

The sweetest of all sounds is praise.

Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.

For what the horse does under compulsion, as Simon also observes, is done without understanding; and there is no beauty in it either, any more than if one should whip and spur a dancer.

The true test of a leader is whether his followers will adhere to his cause from their own volition, enduring the most arduous hardships without being forced to do so, and remaining steadfast in the moments of greatest peril.

There is small risk a general will be regarded with contempt by those he leads, if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows himself best able to perform.

A horse is a thing of beauty... none will tire of looking at him as long as he displays himself in his splendor.

He who eats with most pleasure is he who least requires sauce.

For drink, there was beer which was very strong when not mingled with water, but was agreeable to those who were used to it. They drank this with a reed, out of the vessel that held the beer, upon which they saw the barley swim.

Wherever magistrates were appointed from among those who complied with the injunctions of the laws, Socrates considered the government to be an aristocracy.