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Ecclesiastes 3:5 (WEB)
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

Fathers and councils · 7

Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius I.25Book I
“It is not in time, but time flows from it; whereas the creation, starting from a manifest beginning, journeys onward to its proper end through spaces of time; so that it is possible, as Solomon somewhere says, to detect in it a beginning, an end, and a middle; and mark the sequence of its history by divisions of time.” — editor's note: Compare Eccles. iii. 1–11; and viii. 5, “and a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment.”
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John Cassian, Conferences XVIII–XXIV XXI.12Conference XXI
“…speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace;” and below: “For there is a time,” it says, “for everything and for every deed.”” — editor's note: Eccl. iii. 1–8, 17.
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Jerome, Letters Letter 22
“There is a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together.”” — editor's note: Eccles. iii. 5.
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Jerome, Letters Letter 107
“But because “there is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing,” and because “the wife hath not power of her own body,” and because the apostle says “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called” in the…” — editor's note: Eccl. iii. 5.
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Jerome, Letters Letter 123
“There is “a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.”” — editor's note: Eccles. iii. 5.
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Augustine of Hippo, On the Good of Marriage Chapter 15
“…bond, having power to contain from all sexual intercourse, seeing it to be now “a time,” as it is written, “not of embracing, but of abstaining from embrace,” would not choose rather to keep virginal or widowed continence, than (now that there is no obligation from duty to human society) to endure tribulation of the…” — editor's note: Eccles. iii. 5
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Augustine of Hippo, On the Good of Widowhood Chapter 11
“…and livest in that end of the world, wherein now is the time not of casting stones, but of gathering; not of embracing, but of abstaining from embracing; when the Apostle cries out, “But this I say, brethren, the time is short; it remains, that both they who have wives be as not having;” assuredly if thou hadst…” — editor's note: Eccl. iii. 5
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