(Updated July 9, 2025)
This Quote Archive collects pertinent quotes from the Church Father, St. Cyprian of Carthage.
Next to each quote are the topic-based Quote Archives in which they are included.
This Quote Archive is being continuously updated as research continues.
Treatises
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise 2: On the Apparel of Virgins
QUOTE ARCHIVES | Patriarchy, Feminism, and the Roles of Men and Women
(§14) For God neither made the sheep scarlet or purple, nor taught the juices of herbs and shell-fish to dye and color wool, nor arranged necklaces with stones set in gold, and with pearls distributed in a woven series or numerous cluster, wherewith you would hide the neck which He made; that what God formed in man may be covered, and that may be seen upon it which the devil has invented in addition. Has God willed that wounds should be made in the ears, wherewith infancy, as yet innocent, and unconscious of worldly evil, may be put to pain, that subsequently from the scars and holes of the ears precious beads may hang, heavy, if not by their weight, still by the amount of their cost? All which things sinning and apostate angels put forth by their arts, when, lowered to the contagious of earth, they forsook their heavenly vigor. They taught them also to paint the eyes with blackness drawn round them in a circle, and to stain the cheeks with a deceitful red, and to change the hair with false colors, and to drive out all truth, both of face and head, by the assault of their own corruption.
(§15) And indeed in that very matter, for the sake of the fear which faith suggests to me, for the sake of the love which brotherhood requires, I think that not virgins only and widows, but married women also, and all of the sex alike, should be admonished, that the work of God and His fashioning and formation ought in no manner to be adulterated, either with the application of yellow color, or with black dust or rouge, or with any kind of medicament which can corrupt the native lineaments. God says, “Let us make man in our image and likeness” (Gen. 1:26), and does any one dare to alter and to change what God has made? They are laying hands on God when they try to re-form that which He formed, and to transfigure it, not knowing that everything which comes into being is God’s work, everything that is changed is the devil’s. If any artist, in painting, were to delineate in envious coloring the countenance and likeness and bodily appearance of any one; and the likeness being now painted and completed, another person were to lay hands on it, as if, when it was already formed and already painted, he, being more skilled, could amend it, a serious wrong and a just cause of indignation would seem natural to the former artist. And do you think yourself likely with impunity to commit a boldness of such wicked temerity, an offence to God the artificer? For although you may not be immodest among men, and are not unchaste with your seducing dyes, yet when those things which belong to God are corrupted and violated, you are engaged in a worse adultery. That you think yourself to be adorned, that you think your hair to be dressed, is an assault upon the divine work, is a prevarication of the truth.
(§16) The voice of the warning apostle is, “Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened; for even Christ our Passover is sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:7). But are sincerity and truth preserved, when what is sincere is polluted by adulterous colors, and what is true is changed into a lie by the deceitful dyes of medicaments? Your Lord says, “Thou canst not make one hair white or black” (Matt. 5:36); and you, in order to overcome the word of your Lord, will be more mighty than He, and stain your hair with a daring endeavor and with profane contempt. With evil presage of the future, you make a beginning to yourself already of flame-colored hair; and sin (oh, wickedness!) with your head—that is, with the nobler part of your body! And although it is written of the Lord, “His head and His hair were white like wool or snow” (Apoc. 1:14), you curse that whiteness and hate that hoariness which is like to the Lord’s head.
(§17) Are you not afraid, I entreat you, being such as you are, that when the day of resurrection comes, your Maker may not recognize you again, and may turn you away when you come to His rewards and promises, and may exclude you, rebuking you with the vigor of a Censor and Judge, and say: “This is not my work, nor is this our image. You have polluted your skin with a false medicament, you have changed your hair with an adulterous color, your face is violently taken possession of by a lie, your figure is corrupted, your countenance is another’s. You cannot see God, since your eyes are not those which God made, but those which the devil has spoiled. You have followed him, you have imitated the red and painted eyes of the serpent. As you are adorned in the fashion of your enemy, with him also you shall burn by and by.” Are not these, I beg, matters to be reflected on by God’s servants? Are they not always to be dreaded day and night? Let married women see to it, in what respect they are flattering themselves concerning the solace of their husbands with the desire of pleasing them, and while they put them forward indeed as their excuse, they make them partners in the association of guilty consent. Virgins, assuredly, to whom this address is intended to appeal, who have adorned themselves with arts of this kind, I should think ought not to be counted among virgins, but, like infected sheep and diseased cattle, to be driven from the holy and pure flock of virginity, lest by living together they should pollute the rest with their contagion; lest they ruin others even as they have perished themselves.
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise 3: On the Lapsed (251)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist | The Sacrament of Confession | Mortal Sin: Christians Can Lose Their Salvation
(§15) …Also, the apostle testifies, and says, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; you cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table and of the table of devils” (1 Cor. 10:21). He threatens, moreover, the stubborn and unworthy, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord [1 Cor. 11:27].
(§16) All these warnings being scorned and contemned—before their sin is expiated, before confession has been made of their crime, before their conscience has been purged by sacrifice and by the hand of the priest, before the offense of an angry and threatening Lord has been appeased, violence is done to His body and blood; and they sin now against their Lord more with their hand and mouth than when they denied their Lord…
(§28) Moreover, how much are they both greater in faith and better in their fear, who, although bound by no crime of sacrifice to idols or of certificate, yet, since they have even thought of such things, with grief and simplicity confess this very thing to God’s priests, and make the conscientious avowal, put off from them the load of their minds, and seek out the salutary medicine even for slight and moderate wounds, knowing that it is written, “God is not mocked” (Gal. 6:7). God cannot be mocked, nor deceived, nor deluded by any deceptive cunning. Yea, he sins the more, who, thinking that God is like man, believes that he evades the penalty of his crime if he has not openly admitted his crime…
(§29) I entreat you, beloved brethren, that each one should confess his own sin, while he who has sinned is still in this world, while his confession may be received, while the satisfaction and remission made by the priests are pleasing to the Lord. Let us turn to the Lord with our whole heart, and, expressing our repentance for our sin with true grief, let us entreat God’s mercy. Let our soul lie low before Him. Let our mourning atone to Him. Let all our hope lean upon Him. He Himself tells us in what manner we ought to ask. “Turn to me,” He says, “with all your heart, and at the same time with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts, and not your garments” (Joel 2:12). Let us return to the Lord with our whole heart. Let us appease His wrath and indignation with fastings, with weeping, with mourning, as He Himself admonishes us.
St. Cyprian, Treatise 4: On the Lord’s Prayer (c. 251/252)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist
And we ask that this bread [“our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer] should be given to us daily, that we who are in Christ, and daily receive the Eucharist for the food of salvation, may not by the interposition of some heinous sin be separated from Christ’s body by being withheld from communicating and prevented from partaking of the heavenly bread…
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Testimonies Concerning the Jews (248)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Canon of Scripture
In Genesis [it says]: “And God, tempted Abraham, and said to him, Take thy only son whom thou lovest, Isaac, and go into the high land, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell thee” (Gen. 22:1-2). Of this same thing in Deuteronomy: “The Lord your God proves you, that He may know if ye love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul” (Deut. 13:3). Of this same thing in the Wisdom of Solomon: “Although in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality; and having been in few things distressed, yet in many things they shall be happily ordered, because God tried them, and found them worthy of Himself. As gold in the furnace He proved them, and as a burnt-offering He received them. And in their time there shall be respect of them; they shall judge the nations, and shall rule over the people; and their Lord shall reign forever” (Wis. 3:4-8). Of this same thing in the Maccabees: “Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness?” (1 Mac. 2:52).
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise on Re-Baptism (c. 257)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Sacrament of Confirmation
(§1) I observe that it has been asked among the brethren what course ought specially to be adopted towards the person of those who…baptized in heresy…and subsequently departing from their heresy, and fleeing as supplicants to the Church of God, should repent with their whole hearts, and only now perceiving the condemnation of their error, implore from the Church the help of salvation…[A]ccording to the most ancient custom and ecclesiastical tradition, it would suffice, after that baptism that they have received outside the Church…that only hands should be laid upon them by the bishop for their reception of the Holy Spirit, and this imposition of hands would afford them the renewed and perfected seal of faith…
(§3) …[B]y imposition of the bishop’s hands the Holy Spirit is given to everyone who believes, as in the case of the Samaritans, after Philip’s baptism, the apostles did to them by laying on of hands [Acts 8:14-17]; in this same way they conferred on them the Holy Spirit. And that this might be the case, they themselves prayed for them, for as yet the Holy Spirit had not descended upon any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Moreover, our Lord after His resurrection, when He had breathed upon His apostles, and had said to them, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost” (John 20:22), thus and thus only bestowed upon them the Spirit.
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise (Attributed): Of the Discipline and Advantage of Chastity
QUOTE ARCHIVES | Patriarchy, Feminism, and the Roles of Men and Women
She is not a modest woman who strives to stir up the fancy of another, even although her bodily chastity be preserved. Away with such as do not adorn, but prostitute their beauty. For anxiety about beauty is not only the wisdom of an evil mind, but belongs to deformity. Let the bodily nature be free, nor let any sort of force be intruded upon God’s works. She is always wretched who is not satisfied to be such as she is. Wherefore is the color of hair changed? Why are the edges of the eyes darkened? Why is the face molded by art into a different form? Finally, why is the looking-glass consulted, unless from fear lest a woman should be herself? Moreover, the dress of a modest woman should be modest; a believer should not be conscious of adultery even in the mixture of colors. To wear gold in one’s garments is as if it were desirable to corrupt one’s garments. What do rigid metals do among the delicate threads of the woven textures, except to press upon the enervated shoulders, and unhappily to show the extravagance of a boastful soul? Why are the necks oppressed and hidden by outlandish stones, the prices of which, without workmanship, exceed the entire fortune of many a one? It is not the woman that is adorned, but the woman’s vices that are manifested. What, when the fingers laden with so much gold can neither close nor open, is there any advantage sought for, or is it merely to show the empty parade of one’s estate? It is a marvelous thing that women, tender in all things else, in bearing the burden of their vices are stronger than men.
St. Cyprian of Carthage (attributed), Treatise On the Glory of Martyrdom
QUOTE ARCHIVES | Purgatory
You read that it is written, that we must pay even the uttermost farthing. But the martyrs alone are relieved of this obligation; because they who trust to their desires for eternal salvation, and have overcome their longings for this life, have been made by the Lord’s precepts free from the universal suffering. Therefore from this especially, beloved brethren, we shall be able to set forth what great things the virtue of martyrdom is able to fulfill.
Letters
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 1: To Donatus (246)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | Homosexual and Gender-Confusing Behavior
(§8) Hence turn your looks to the abominations, not less to be deplored, of another kind of spectacle…Men are emasculated, and all the pride and vigor of their sex is effeminated in the disgrace of their enervated body; and he is most pleasing there who has most completely broken down the man into the woman. He grows into praise by virtue of his crime; and the more he is degraded, the more skillful he is considered to be. Such a one is looked upon—oh shame! and looked upon with pleasure…[N]or is there wanting authority for the enticing abomination, that the mischief may creep upon people with a less perceptible approach. They picture Venus immodest, Mars adulterous; and that Jupiter of theirs not more supreme in dominion than in vice, inflamed with earthly love in the midst of his own thunders, now growing white in the feathers of a swan, now pouring down in a golden shower, now breaking forth by the help of birds to violate the purity of boys. And now put the question: can he who looks upon such things be healthy-minded or modest? Men imitate the gods whom they adore, and to such miserable beings their crimes become their religion.
(§9) Oh, if placed on that lofty watch-tower you could gaze into the secret places—if you could open the closed doors of sleeping chambers, and recall their dark recesses to the perception of sight—you would behold things done by immodest persons which no chaste eye could look upon; you would see what even to see is a crime; you would see what people embruted [to degrade to the level of a brute] with the madness of vice deny that they have done, and yet hasten to do—men with frenzied lusts rushing upon men, doing things which afford no gratification even to those who do them.
Roman Clergy, Letter to the Carthaginian Clergy (from St. Cyprian, Letter 2)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Sacrament of Holy Orders, and the Authority of the Priesthood
We have been informed by Crementius the sub-deacon, who came to us from you, that the blessed father Cyprian has for a certain reason withdrawn…
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 6: To Rogatianus the Presbyter, and the Other Confessors (250)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | Mortal Sin: Christians Can Lose Their Salvation
Yet I exhort you by our common faith, by the true and simple love of my heart towards you, that, having overcome the adversary in this first encounter, you should hold fast your glory with a brave and persevering virtue. We are still in the world; we are still placed in the battlefield; we fight daily for our lives. Care must be taken, that after such beginnings as these there should also come an increase, and that what you have begun to be with such a blessed commencement should be consummated in you. It is a slight thing to have been able to attain anything; it is more to be able to keep what you have attained; even as faith itself and saving birth makes alive, not by being received, but by being preserved. Nor is it actually the attainment, but the perfecting, that keeps a man for God. The Lord taught this in His instruction when He said, “Behold, you are made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto you” (John 5:14). Conceive of Him as saying this also to His confessor, “Lo you are made a confessor; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto you.” Solomon also, and Saul, and many others, so long as they walked in the Lord’s ways, were able to keep the grace given to them. When the discipline of the Lord was forsaken by them, grace also forsook them.
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 9: To the Presbyters and Deacons (250)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Sacrament of Confession
For although in smaller sins sinners may do penance for a set time, and according to the rules of discipline come to public confession, and by imposition of the hand of the bishop and clergy receive the right of communion: now with their time still unfulfilled, while persecution is still raging, while the peace of the Church itself is not yet restored, they are admitted to communion, and their name is presented; and while the penitence is not yet performed, confession is not yet made, the hands Of the bishop and clergy are not yet laid upon them, the eucharist is given to them; although it is written, “Whosoever shall eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27).
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 48: Answer to St. Pope Cornelius, Concerning the Crimes of Novatus (251)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | Abortion
The womb of his wife was smitten by a blow of his heel; and in the miscarriage that soon followed, the offspring was brought forth, the fruit of a father’s murder. And now does he dare to condemn the hands of those who sacrifice, when he himself is more guilty in his feet, by which the son, who was about to be born, was slain?
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 51: To Antonianus About Cornelius and Novatian (252)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Sacrament of Confession | Purgatory
(§20) And do not think, dearest brother, that either the courage of the brethren will be lessened, or that martyrdoms will fail for this cause, that repentance is relaxed to the lapsed, and that the hope of peace is offered to the penitent. The strength of the truly believing remains unshaken; and with those who fear and love God with their whole heart, their integrity continues steady and strong. For to adulterers even a time of repentance is granted by us, and peace is given. Yet virginity is not therefore deficient in the Church, nor does the glorious design of continence languish through the sins of others. The Church, crowned with so many virgins, flourishes; and chastity and modesty preserve the tenor of their glory. Nor is the vigor of continence broken down because repentance and pardon are facilitated to the adulterer. It is one thing to stand for pardon, another thing to attain to glory: it is one thing, when cast into prison, not to go out thence until one has paid the uttermost farthing; another thing at once to receive the wages of faith and courage. It is one thing, tortured by long suffering for sins, to be cleansed and long purged by fire; another to have purged all sins by suffering. It is one thing, in fine, to be in suspense till the sentence of God at the day of judgment; another to be at once crowned by the Lord.
(§22) But I wonder that some are so obstinate as to think that repentance is not to be granted to the lapsed, or to suppose that pardon is to be denied to the penitent, when it is written, “Remember whence you are fallen, and repent, and do the first works” (Apoc. 2:5), which certainly is said to him who evidently has fallen, and whom the Lord exhorts to rise up again by his works, because it is written, “Alms do deliver from death” (Tob. 4:10), and not, assuredly, from that death which once the blood of Christ extinguished, and from which the saving grace of baptism and of our Redeemer has delivered us, but from that which subsequently creeps in through sins…
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 55: To the People of Thibaris, Exhorting to Martyrdom (c. 253)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Canon of Scripture
So Daniel, too, when he was required to worship the idol Bel, which the people and the king then worshiped, in asserting the honor of his God, broke forth with full faith and freedom, saying, “I worship nothing but the Lord my God, who created the heaven and the earth” (Dan. 14:5; from a portion of Daniel not contained in the protestant canon, the story of Bel and the Dragon).
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 56: To St. Pope Cornelius (252)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Communion of Saints: Intercession and Relics
Let us remember one another in concord and unanimity. Let us on both sides always pray for one another. Let us relieve burdens and afflictions by mutual love, that if any one of us, by the swiftness of divine condescension, shall go hence the first, our love may continue in the presence of the Lord, and our prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease in the presence of the Father’s mercy…
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 62: To Caecilius, on the Sacrament of the Cup of the Lord (253)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist
But if we may not break even the least of the Lord’s commandments, how much rather is it forbidden to infringe such important ones, so great, so pertaining to the very sacrament of our Lord’s passion and our own redemption, or to change it by human tradition into anything else than what was divinely appointed! For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, is Himself the chief priest of God the Father, and has first offered Himself a sacrifice to the Father, and has commanded this to be done in commemoration of Himself, certainly that priest truly discharges the office of Christ, who imitates that which Christ did; and he then offers a true and full sacrifice in the Church to God the Father, when he proceeds to offer it according to what he sees Christ Himself to have offered.
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 69: To Januarius and Other Numidian Bishops, on Baptizing Heretics (255)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Sacrament of Confirmation
It is also necessary that he should be anointed who is baptized; so that, having received the chrism, that is, the anointing, he may be anointed of God, and have in him the grace of Christ. Further, it is the Eucharist whence the baptized are anointed with the oil sanctified on the altar. But he cannot sanctify the creature of oil, who has neither an altar nor a church; whence also there can be no spiritual anointing among heretics, since it is manifest that the oil cannot be sanctified nor the Eucharist celebrated at all among them.
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 72: To Jubaianus, Concerning the Baptism of Heretics (c. 255)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Sacrament of Confirmation
But in respect of the assertion of some concerning those who had been baptized in Samaria, that when the Apostles Peter and John came, only hands were imposed on them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost, yet that they were not re-baptized; we see that that place does not, dearest brother, touch the present case. For they who had believed in Samaria had believed with a true faith; and within, in the Church, which is one, and to which alone it is granted to bestow the grace of baptism and to remit sins, had been baptized by Philip the deacon, whom the same apostles had sent. And therefore, because they had obtained a legitimate and ecclesiastical baptism, there was no need that they should be baptized any more, but only that which was needed was performed by Peter and John; viz., that prayer being made for them, and hands being imposed, the Holy Spirit should be invoked and poured out upon them, which now too is done among us, so that they who are baptized in the Church are brought to the prelates of the Church, and by our prayers and by the imposition of hands obtain the Holy Spirit, and are perfected with the Lord’s seal.
St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 73: To Pompey, Against the Epistle of Stephen About the Baptism of Heretics (253)
QUOTE ARCHIVES | The Sacrament of Confirmation
(§5) …[I]n the name of the same Christ, are not hands laid upon the baptized persons among them, for the reception of the Holy Spirit? Why does not the same majesty of the same name avail in the imposition of hands, which, they contend, availed in the sanctification of baptism? For if anyone born out of the Church can become God’s temple, why cannot the Holy Spirit also be poured out upon the temple? For he who has been sanctified, his sins being put away in baptism, and has been spiritually reformed into a new man, has become fitted for receiving the Holy Spirit; since the apostle says, “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27)…
(§7) But further, one is not born by the imposition of hands when he receives the Holy Ghost, but in baptism, that so, being already born, he may receive the Holy Spirit, even as it happened in the first man Adam. For first God formed him, and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. For the Spirit cannot be received, unless he who receives first have an existence. But as the birth of Christians is in baptism, while the generation and sanctification of baptism are with the spouse of Christ alone, who is able spiritually to conceive and to bear sons to God, where and of whom and to whom is he born, who is not a son of the Church, so as that he should have God as his Father, before he has had the Church for his Mother?…
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