Tertullian
Major theologian in the early Christian church, known for his powerful denunciations of many influences he considered heretical, including the widespread admiration of pagan philosophers and many Gnostic ideas, yet in later life a Montanist, and thus he himself an embracer of beliefs that came to be declared heretical.
Every word almost was a sentence; every sentence a victory.
Omnia periclitabuntur aliter accipi quam sunt, et amittere quod sunt dum aliter accipiuntur, si aliter quam sunt cognominantur. Fides nominum salus est proprietatum.
Often quoted as "It is so extraordinary that it must be true."
Quippe res dei ratio quia deus omnium conditor nihil non ratione providit disposuit ordinavit, nihil [enim] non ratione tractari intellegique voluit. Igitur ignorantes quique deum rem quoque eius ignorent necesse est quia nullius omnino thesaurus extraneis patet. Itaque universam vitae conversationem sine gubernaculo rationis transfretantes inminentem saeculo procellam evitare non norunt.
Often quoted as ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.’
Veritas autem docendo persuadet non suadendo docet.
Plures efficimur, quoties metumur a vobis; semen est sanguis christianorum.
esterni sumus, & vestra omnia implevimus, Vrbes, Insulas, Castella, Municipia, Conciliabula, Castra ipsa, Tribus, Decurias, palatium, Senatum, Forum, sola vobis relinquimus Templa.
Cum ergo spiritus Dei descendit, indiuidua patientia comitatur eum.
We worship unity in trinity, and trinity in unity; neither confounding the person nor dividing the substance. There is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost; but the Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.
Two lines from De Carne Christi have often become conflated into the statement: "Credo quia impossibile" (I believe it because it is impossible), which can be perceived as a distortion of the actual arguments that Tertullian was making.
A variant on “One is not born wise, but becomes wise” from Seneca On Anger 2.10.6; see: Christian and Pagan in the Roman Empire: the witness of Tertullian, by Tertullian, Robert Dick Sider, p. 38, footnote 79.
Omnium gentium unus homo, uarium nomen est, una anima, uaria uox, unus spiritus, uarius sonus, propria cuique genti loquella, sed loquellae materia communis.
Nec alii obest aut prodest alterius religio.
Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est.
Qui fugiebat, rursus sibi proeliabitur.
Infirma commendatio est quae de alterius destructione fulcitur.
This is said with more spirit than truth.
De calcaria in carbonarium.
As often as we are mown down by you, the more we grow in numbers; the blood of the Christians is the seed.