Love Quote by Thomas Aquinas

Desire is Aquinas's diagnostic tool. In one clean line, he flips identity from something you declare into something you practice: your loves are the receipt. For a medieval theologian steeped in Aristotle, this isn't a Hallmark sentiment about following your bliss; it's moral anatomy. Aquinas assumes the will is always reaching for an apparent good, and what you consistently reach for reveals the shape of your soul more reliably than your self-description ever could.

The subtext is quietly accusatory. People in Aquinas's world (and ours) are fluent in professing creeds, values, politics. Aquinas is interested in the hierarchy underneath the talk. Do you love comfort, status, vengeance, novelty? Then no matter how pious your vocabulary, those loves are already catechizing you. The line works because it relocates the debate about virtue from abstract rules to the gravitational pull of attachment. It's harder to argue with what you keep choosing.

Context matters: Aquinas writes in a Christian tradition where love (caritas) isn't merely emotion but orientation toward an ultimate end. To love rightly is to aim the self toward God and, by extension, toward the genuine good of others. To love wrongly is not just to break a rule but to mis-train the heart, letting lesser goods become ultimate ones. The elegance of the sentence hides its demand: if you want to know who you are, audit your affections. Then reorder them, because for Aquinas, identity isn't discovered; it's disciplined.