Augustine of Hippo

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

The good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices.

You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but h…

Give what you command, and command what you will.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

I didn't know that evil doesn't exist except as the absence of good up to the point of annihilation

A person who is a good and true Christian should realize that truth belongs to his Lord, wherever it is found, gathering and acknowledging it even in pagan literature, but rejecting superstitious vanities and deploring a…

Thou art every where, Whom no place encompasseth! and Thou alone art near, even to those that remove far from Thee. Let them then be turned, and seek Thee; because not as they have forsaken their Creator, hast Thou forsa…

What then, is correctness of speech but the maintenance of the practice of others, as established by the authority of ancient speakers? But the weaker men are, the more they are troubled by such matters. Their weakness s…

17. He thought that thus fear would act as a curb on lust, and that lust being curbed would not run riot in luxury, and that luxury being prevented avarice would be at an end; and that these vices being banished, virtue…

You have stricken my heart with your word and I have loved you.

A wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens.

This is pride when the soul abandons Him to Whom it ought to cleave as its end and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it becomes its own satisfaction.

In this manner the Church proceeds on its pilgrim way in this world, in these evil days. Its troubled course began not merely in the time of the bodily presence of Christ and the time of his apostles; it started with Abe…

I did not yet love, and I loved to love; I sought what I might love, in love with loving.

God orders slight things that we may live forever, and we neglect to obey.

Humility raises us not by human arrogance but by divine grace.

So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them.

In this world, therefore, the dominion of good men is profitable, not so much for themselves as for human affairs. But the dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls b…

O that men would know themselves to be men; and that he that glorieth would glory in the Lord.

E 'n noi ceva mai ad'nc dec't noi 'n?ine.

When we transform our old life and give our spirit a new image, we find it hard and tiring to turn back from the darkness of earthly passions to the serene calm of the divine light. We thus ask God to help us that a comp…

Care for your body as though you were going to live forever. Care for your soul as if you were going to die tomorrow.

Reason judges in one way, custom in another. Reason judges by the light of truth, so that by right judgment it subjects lesser things to greater. Custom is often swayed by agreeable habits, so that it esteems as greater…

Do not feel surprise at being schooled amid toil: you are being schooled for a wondrous destiny.

With love for mankind and hatred of sins.

the princes of the city of Christ patiently wait for the time of a blessedness that is not fallacious.

We are not delivered from offences, but it is equally true that we are not deprived of our refuge; our griefs do not cease, but our consolations are equally abiding.

To the primitive believers came the Psalter, like an aftermath, wet with the dews of a new birth as from the womb of the morning. The Spirit had descended upon it anew, as showers upon the mown grass; and it had sprung u…

Observe how often these two qualities, loving mercy and truth, are joined together in the holy Scriptures. For in His loving mercy He called sinners, and in His truth He judgeth those who when called refused to come.

The confession of evil works is the beginning of good works.

For there is no single cause of evil; rather, everyone who does evil is the cause of his own evildoing. If you doubt this, recall what I said earlier: Evil deeds are punished by the justice of God. They would not be puni…

I will refrain, if I can, from attacking their weak points, which I know well, with the violence with which they attack what they know nothing of; for I wish them, if possible, to be cured rather than conquered.

Now you love yourself suitably when you love God better than yourself. What, then, you aim at in yourself you must aim at in your neighbor, namely, that he may love God with a perfect affection. For you do not love him a…

There is something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humi…

Of course, as everyone knows, neither my five books nor any five hundred books are sufficient to silence and pertinacity. It is the glory of vain men never to yield to the truth.

Among us, on the other hand, 'the righteous man lives by faith.' Now, if you take away positive affirmation, you take away faith, for without positive affirmation nothing is believed. And there are truths about things un…

Thus, every entity, even if it is a defective one, in so far as it is an entity, is good. In so far as it is defective, it is evil.

If the things of this world delight you, praise God for them but turn your love away from them and give it to their Maker, so that in the things that please you you may not displease him.

credo ut intelligam. (i believe so i can understand).

That vague and wandering opinion of Deity is declared by an apostle to be ignorance of God:

I was inflamed to love, and seek, and obtain, and hold, and embrace, not some sect, but wisdom itself-whatever it was.

After saying all that, what have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What does anyone who speaks of you really say? Yet woe betide those who fail to speak, while the chatterboxes go on saying nothing.

At one time in my infancy I also knew no Latin, and yet by listening I learnt it with no fear or pain at all, from my nurses caressing me, from people laughing over jokes, and from those who played games and were enjoyin…

I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares.

Where shall I go, beyond the bounds of heaven and earth, that God may come to me, since He has said: Heaven and earth do I fill.

Narrow is the mansion of my soul;enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in.

But where could I find such pleasure in you, Lord - except in you, who teaches us by sorrow, who wound us to heal us, and kill us so that we may not die apart from you.

So the will's desire for death is not a desire for nonexistence, but a desire for peace. When someone wrongly believes that he will not exist, he desires by nature to be at peace; that is, he desire to exist in a higher…