Gregory of Nazianzus quotes

Gregory of Nazianzus was a prominent early Christian theologian and Archbishop of Constantinople. Renowned for his eloquent sermons and writings, he played a crucial role in shaping the doctrine of the Trinity. He is widely venerated as one of the Cappadocian Fathers and as a saint in both Eastern and Western Christianity. Here are 63 of his quotes:

These three things God requires of all the Baptized: right faith in the heart, truth on the tongue, temperance in the body.

Gregory of Nazianzus

We are not made for ourselves alone, we are made for the good of all our fellow creatures.

Gregory of Nazianzus

All who have lived according to God still live unto God, though they have departed this life. For this reason, God is called the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, since He is the God, not of the dead, but of the living.

Gregory of Nazianzus

Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us. He assumed the worse that He might give us the better; He became poor that we through His poverty might be rich.

Gregory of Nazianzus

If anyone does not believe that Holy Mary is the Mother of God, he is severed from the Godhead. If anyone should assert that He passed through the Virgin as through a channel, and was not at once divinely and humanly formed in her (divinely, because without the intervention of a man; humanly, because in accordance with the laws of gestation), he is in like manner godless.

Gregory of Nazianzus

Remember God more often than you breathe.

Gregory of Nazianzus

He took our flesh and our flesh became God, since it is united with God and forms a single entity with him. For the higher perfection dominated, resulting in my becoming God as fully as he became man.

Gregory of Nazianzus

It is difficult to practice obedience; but it is even more difficult to practice leadership.

Gregory of Nazianzus

If anyone does not believe that Holy Mary is the Mother of God, such a one is a stranger to the Godhead.

Gregory of Nazianzus

Who should listen to discussions of theology? Those for whom it is a serious undertaking, not just another subject like any other for entertaining small-talk, after the races, the theater, songs, food, and sex: for there are people who count chatter on theology and clever deployment of arguments as one of their amusements.

Gregory of Nazianzus

Almost every sin is committed for the sake of sensual pleasure; and sensual pleasure is overcome by hardship and distress arising either voluntarily from repentance, or else involuntarily as a result of some salutary and providential reversal. 'For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged; but when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, so that we should not be condemned with the world.' (1 Cor. 11:31-32).

Gregory of Nazianzus

The Godhead is, to speak concisely, undivided there is one mingling of Light, as it were of three suns joined to each other.

Gregory of Nazianzus

Keep the Feast of the Resurrection. Be a Peter or a John; hasten to the Sepulchre, running together, running against one another, vying in the noble race (cf. Jn. 20:3-4). And even if you be beaten in speed, win the victory of zeal; not looking into the tomb, but going in.

Gregory of Nazianzus

There is One God and One Mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ (cf. I Tim. 2:5). For He still pleads even now as man for my salvation; for He continues to wear the Body which He assumed, until He make me a god by the power of His Incarnation; although He is no longer known after the flesh (cf. II Cor. 5:16) ? I mean, the passions of the flesh, the same, except sin, as ours.

Gregory of Nazianzus

I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendor of the three; nor can I discern the three without being straightway carried back to the one.

Gregory of Nazianzus

That which He has not assumed He has not healed.

Gregory of Nazianzus

Our starting-point must be the fact that God cannot be named... no mind has yet contained or language embraced God's substance in its fullness. No, we use facts connected with Him to outline qualities that correspond with Him, collecting a faint and feeble mental image from various quarters. Our noblest theologian is not one who has discovered the whole - our earthly shackles do not permit us the whole - but one whose mental image is by comparison fuller, who has gathered in his mind a richer picture, outline, or whatever we call it, of the truth.

Gregory of Nazianzus

Can anyone be a father without beginning to be one? Yes, one who did not begin his existence. What begins to exist begins to be a father - God the Father did not begin at all. He is Father in the true sense, because He is not a son as well. Just as the Son is son in the true sense, because He is not a father as well. In our case, the word 'father' cannot be truly appropriate, because we must be fathers and sons.

Gregory of Nazianzus

Marriage is the key of moderation, the harmony of desires, the seal of a deep friendship ... the unique drink from a fountain enclosed, inaccessible to those without. United in the flesh, one in spirit, they urge each other on by their mutual love.

Gregory of Nazianzus

Let us quake before the great Spirit, Who is my God, Who has made me know God, Who is God there above, and Who forms God here: almighty, imparting manifold gifts, Him Whom the holy choir hymns, Who brings life to those in heaven and on earth, and is enthroned on high, coming from the Father, the divine force, self-commandeered; He is not a Child (for there is one worthy Child of the One who is best), nor is He outside the unseen Godhead, but of identical honor.

Gregory of Nazianzus

The Son is 'Life' (Jn. 14:6) because He is 'Light', constituting and giving reality to every thinking being. 'For in Him we live, move and exist' (Acts 17:28) and there is a two-fold sense in which He breathes into us (cf. Gen. 2:7; Jn. 20:22); we are filled, all of us, with His breath, and those who are capable of it, all those who open their mind's mouth wide enough, with His Holy Spirit.

Gregory of Nazianzus

Who gave you the ability to contemplate the beauty of the skies, the course of the sun, the round moon, the millions of stars, the harmony and rhythm that issue from the world as from a lyre, the return of the seasons, the alternation of the months, the demarcation of day and night, the fruits of the earth, the vastness of the air, the ceaseless motion of the waves, the sound of the wind?

Gregory of Nazianzus