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there are four degrees of love: 1) Love of self for self's sake. 2) Love of God for self's sake. 3) Love of God for God's own sake. 4) Love of self for God's sake.

Bernard of Clairvaux

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Bernard of Clairvaux
Abbot
Hymnwriter
Mystic
Philosopher
Religious
Theologian
Writer
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
Saint Bernard
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
St. Bernard
Bernhard
Self
Heart
Mind
Love
Degrees
Sake
Four
Soul

More quotes by Bernard of Clairvaux

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Theirs is an endless road, a hopeless maze, who seek for goods before they seek for God.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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There are three distinct comings of the Lord of which I know: His coming to men, His coming into men, and His coming against men.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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Among us on the earth there is His memory but in the Kingdom of heaven His very Presence. That Presence is the joy of those who have already attained to beatitude the memory is the comfort of us who are still wayfarers, journeying towards the Fatherland.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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Your actions in passing, pass not away, for every good work is a grain of seed for eternal life.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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Death is the gate of life. Ingratitude is the soul's enemy... Ingratitude is a burning wind that dries up the source of love, the dew of mercy, the streams of grace. You will find something far greater in the woods than you will find in books. Stones and trees will teach you that which you will never learn from masters.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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The more I contemplate God, the more God looks on me. The more I pray to him, the more he thinks of me too.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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God will either give us what we ask, or what He knows to be better for us.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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Nothing can work me damage except myself. The harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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If anyone makes himself his own master in the spiritual life, he makes himself scholar to a fool.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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It is a fault, not a virtue, to wish your humility recognized and applauded.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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From the best bliss that earth imparts, we turn unfilled to Thee again.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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We are to love God for Himself, because of a twofold reason nothing is more reasonable, nothing more profitable.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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Who loves me will love my dog also.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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He won me over entirely by giving Himself entirely to me.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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We find rest in those we love, and we provide a resting place in ourselves for those who love us.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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If then you are wise, you will show yourself rather as a reservoir than as a canal. For a canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, but a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, and thus communicates, without loss to itself, its superabundant water. In the Church at the present day, we have many canals, few reservoirs.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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When God forgives a sinner who humbly confesses his sin, the devil loses his dominion over the heart he had taken.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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The true measure of loving God is to love him without measure.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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It's not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice - with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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My burden is light, said the blessed Redeemer, a light burden indeed, which carries him that bears it. I have looked through all nature for a resemblance of this, and seem to find a shadow of it in the wings of a bird, which are indeed borne by the creature, and yet support her flight towards heaven.
Bernard of Clairvaux