Facts about John Chrysostom

"Poor human reason, when it trusts in itself, substitutes the strangest absurdities for the highest divine concepts"

"Nothing is more fallacious than wealth. It is a hostile comrade, a domestic enemy"

"Hell is paved with priests' skulls"

"The highest point of philosophy is to be both wise and simple; this is the angelic life"

"Men have the power of thinking that they may avoid sin"

"I know my own soul, how feeble and puny it is: I know the magnitude of this ministry, and the great difficulty of the work; for more stormy billows vex the soul of the priest than the gales which disturb the sea"

"When one is required to preside over the Church, and be entrusted with the care of so many souls, the whole female sex must retire before the magnitude of the task, and the majority of men also"

"The divine law indeed has excluded women from this ministry, but they endeavour to thrust themselves into it; and since they can effect nothing of themselves, they do all through the agency of others"

"A comprehended god is no god"

"Slander is worse than cannibalism"

"Riches are not forbidden, but the pride of them is"

"No one can harm the man who does himself no wrong"

"And all men are ready to pass judgement on the priest as if he was not a being clothed with flesh, or one who inherited a human nature"