Confessions

And men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the extent of the ocean, and the courses of the stars, and omit to wonder at themselves.

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.

People are moved to wonder by mountain peaks, by vast waves of the sea, by broad waterfalls on rivers, by the all-embracing extent of the ocean, by the revolutions of the stars. But in themselves they are uninterested.

As the flattery of friends corrupts, so often do the taunts of enemies instruct.

It was foul, and I loved it. I loved to perish. I loved my own 'not that for which I erred, but the itself. Base, falling from Your firmament to utter destruction 'not seeking anything through the shame but the shame its…

This is what we love in friends. We love to the point that human conscience feels guilty if we do not love the person who is loving us, and if that love is not returned - without demanding any physical response other tha…

For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall?

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

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

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.

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.

Those who ask 'What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?'are still steeped in error which they should have discarded.

In their perverted way all humanity imitates you. Yet they put themselves at a distance from you and exalt themselves against you. But even by thus imitating you they acknowledge that you are the creator of all nature an…

How stupid man is to be unable to restrain feelings in suffering the human lot! That was my state at that time. So I boiled with anger, sighed, wept, and was at my wits'end. I found no calmness, no capacity for deliberat…

In seeking him they find him, and in finding they will praise him.

Seeing is the property of our eyes. But we also use this word in other senses, when we apply the power of vision to knowledge generally. We do not say "Hear how that flashes", or "Smell how bright that is", or "Taste how…

Let such a person rejoice even to ask the question, What does this mean? Yes, let him rejoice in that, and choose to find by not finding rather than by finding fail to find you.

He who for us is life itself descended here and endured our death and slew it by the abundance of his life. In a thunderous voice he called us to return to him, at that secret place where he came forth to us. First he ca…

Why then should I be concerned for human readers to hear my confessions? It is not they who are going to 'heal my sicknesses' (Ps. 102: 3). The human race is inquisitive about other people's lives, but negligent to corre…

What is going on in our minds, then, that we should be more highly delighted at finding cherished objects, or having them restored to us, than if we had always kept them safe?

Thus pride wears the mask of loftiness of spirit, although You alone, O God, are high over all. Ambition seeks honour and glory, although You alone are to be honoured before all and glorious forever. By cruelty the great…

Run to and fro everywhere, holy fires, beautiful fires; for you are the light of the world, nor are you put under a bushel. He whom you cleave unto is exalted, and has exalted you. Run to and fro, and be known unto all n…

My questioning was my attentive spirit,and their reply, their beauty.

Time takes no holiday. It does not roll idly by, but through our senses works its own wonders in the mind. Time came and went from one day to the next; in its coming and its passing it brought me other hopes and other me…

But I was immobilized'less by another's static imposition than by my own static will. For the enemy had in thrall my power to choose, which he had used to make a chain for binding me. From bad choices an urge arises; and…

Day after day I postponed living in you, but I never put off the death which I died each day in myself. I longed for a life of happiness but I was frightened to approach it in its own domain; and yet, while I fled from i…

No longer was he the man who had joined the crowd; he was now one of the crowd he had joined, and a genuine companion of those who had led him there.

Nonetheless the memory of you stayed with me, and I had no doubt whatever whom I ought to cling to, though I knew that I was not yet capable of clinging, because the perishable body weighs down the soul, and its earthly…

Furthermore, what profit was it to me that I, rascally slave of selfish ambitions that I was, read and understood by myself as many books as I could get concerning the so-called liberal arts?... I had turned my back to t…

So too let him rejoice and delight in finding you who are beyond discovery rather than fail to find you by supposing you to be discoverable.

Is truth then a nothing, simply because it is not spread out through space either finite or infinite? Then from afar you cried to me, By no means, for I am who I am.

Quid est tempus? Si nemo me queret, scio; si aliqui explicare velim, nescio. What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

My weight is my love.

To what place can I invite you, then, since I am in you? Or where could you come from, in order to come into me? To what place outside heaven and earth could I travel, so that my God could come to me there, the God who s…

I fell away from you, my God, and I went astray, too far astray from you, the support of my youth, and I became to myself a land of want.

You have been professing yourself reluctant to throw off your load of illusion because truth was uncertain. Well, it is certain now, yet the burden still weighs you down, while other people are given wings on freer shoul…

A sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart. Nay, even idolatry is ample evidence of this fact.

My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it. It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide. But who is to…

Someone who knows enough to become the owner of a tree, and gives thanks to you for the benefits it brings him, is in a better state, even if ignorant of its height in feet and the extent of its spread, than another who…

Late have I loved you, Beauty so very ancient and so ever new. Late I have loved you! You were within, but I was without.