BIBLIOGRAPHY
On the Trinity (Cambridge, 2002)
Tractates on the Gospel of John 1 10 (Catholic University, 1988)
On the Free Choice of the Will, etc. (Cambridge, 2010)
De Bono Coniugali, De Sancta Virginitate (Clarendon, 2001)
De Doctrina Christiana (Clarendon, 1995)
City of God
The Confessions of Saint Augustine
King Alfred's Old English Version of St. Augustine's Soliloquies
Earlier Writings (Westminster, 2006)
Later Works (Westminster, 2006)
Political Writings (Cambridge, 2001)
Aristotle - Poetics (St. Augustine's, 2002)
On the Beautiful and the Fitting (Latin: De Pulchra et Apto, 380)
On Free Choice of the Will (De libero arbitrio, 388-395)
On Christian Doctrine (Latin: De doctrina Christiana, 397426)
Confessions (Confessiones, 397398)
The City of God (De civitate Dei, begun c. 413426)
On the Trinity (De trinitate, 400416)
Enchiridion (Enchiridion ad Laurentium, seu de fide, spe et caritate)
Retractationes (Retractations): At the end of his life (c. 426428) Augustine revisited his previous works in chronological order. The English translation of the title has led some to assume that at the end of his career, Augustine retreated from his earlier theological positions. In fact, the Latin title literally means 're-treatments" (not "Retractions") and though in this work Augustine suggested what he would have said differently, it provides little in the way of actual "retraction." It does, however, give the reader a rare picture of the development of a writer and his final thoughts.
The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram, 393-4)
On the Catechising of the Uninstructed (De catechizandis rudibus)
On Faith and the Creed (De fide et symbolo)
Concerning Faith of Things Not Seen (De fide rerum invisibilium)
On the Profit of Believing (De utilitate credendi)
On the Creed: A Sermon to Catechumens (De symbolo ad catechumenos)
On Continence (De continentia, 395)
On the teacher (De magistro, a dialogue between Augustine and his son Adeodatus)
On the Good of Marriage (De bono coniugali)
On Holy Virginity (De sancta virginitate)
On the Good of Widowhood (De bono viduitatis)
On Lying (De mendacio)
To Consentius: Against Lying (Contra mendacium [ad Consentium])
To Quodvultdeus, On Heresies (De haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum)
On the Work of Monks (De opere monachorum)
On Patience (De patientia)
On Care to be Had For the Dead (De cura pro mortuis gerenda)
On the Morals of the Catholic Church and on the Morals of the Manichaeans (De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum)
On Two Souls, Against the Manichaeans (De duabus animabus [contra Manichaeos])
Acts or Disputation Against Fortunatus the Manichaean ([Acta] contra Fortunatum [Manichaeum])
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental (Contra epistulam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti)
Reply to Faustus the Manichaean (Contra Faustum [Manichaeum])
Concerning the Nature of Good, Against the Manichaeans (De natura boni contra Manichaeos)
On Baptism, Against the Donatists (De baptismo [contra Donatistas])
The Correction of the Donatists (De correctione Donatistarum)
On Merits and Remission of Sin, and Infant Baptism (De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum)
On the Spirit and the Letter (De spiritu et littera)
On Nature and Grace (De natura et gratia, 415)
On Man's Perfection in Righteousness (De perfectione iustitiae hominis)
On the Proceedings of Pelagius (De gestis Pelagii)
On the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin (De gratia Christi et de peccato originali)
On Marriage and Concupiscence (De nuptiis et concupiscientia)
On the Nature of the Soul and its Origin (De natura et origine animae)
On the Magnitude of the Soul (De animae quantitate)
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians (Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum)
On Grace and Free Will (De gratia et libero arbitrio)
On Rebuke and Grace (De correptione et gratia)
On the Predestination of the Saints (De praedestinatione sanctorum)
On the Gift of Perseverance (De dono perseverantiae)
The Christian Combat (De agone Christiano)
On the Harmony of the Evangelists (De consensu evangelistarum)
Treatises on the Gospel of John (In Iohannis evangelium tractatus)
Soliloquies (Soliloquiorum libri duo)
Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms (Enarrationes in Psalmos)
On the Immortality of the Soul (De immortalitate animae)
Answer to the Letters of Petilian, Bishop of Cirta (Contra litteras Petiliani)
Against the Academics (Contra Academicos)
On eighty-three various questions (De diversis quaestionibus octaginta tribus, 396)
Sermons, among which a series on selected lessons of the New Testament
Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount
Homilies, among which a series on the First Epistle of John (In Epistolam Joannis Ad Parthos Tractatus Decem)
On Music (De musica, 387-391)
On Order (De Ordine)
On Dialectic (De Dialetica)
WIKI
Augustine of Hippo (Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 28 August 430 AD), also known as Saint Augustine, was a Roman African, Manichaean, early Christian theologian, doctor of the Church, and Neoplatonic philosopher from Numidia whose writings influenced the development of the Western Church and Western philosophy, and indirectly all of Western Christianity. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa and is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church for his writings in the Patristic Period. Among his most important works are The City of God, De doctrina Christiana, and Confessions. According to his contemporary, Jerome, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith". In his youth he was drawn to Manichaeism and later to neoplatonism. After his baptism and conversion to Christianity in 386, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and perspectives. Believing that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, he helped formulate the doctrine of original sin and made seminal contri butions to the development of just war theory. When the Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine imagined the Church as a spiritual City of God, distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. The segment of the Church that adhered to the concept of the Trinity as defined by the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople closely identified with Augustine's On the Trinity. Augustine is recognized as a saint in the Catholic Churches, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion and as a preeminent Doctor of the Church. He is also the patron of the Augustinians. His memorial is celebrated on 28 August, the day of his death. Augustine is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, and a number of cities and dioceses. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists and Lutherans, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of the Protestant Reformation due to his teachings on salvation and divine grace. Protestant Reformers generally, and Martin Luther in particular, held Augustine in preeminence among early Church Fathers. Luther himself was, from 1505 to 1521, a member of the Order of the Augustinian Eremites. In the East, his teachings are more disputed, and were notably attacked by John Romanides. But other theologians and figures of the Eastern Orthodox Church have shown significant approbation of his writings, chiefly Georges Florovsky. The most controversial doctrine associated with him, the filioque, was rejected by the Orthodox Church as Heretic Teaching. Other disputed teachings include his views on original sin, the doctrine of grace, and predestination. Nevertheless, though considered to be mistaken on some points, he is still considered a saint, and has even had influence on some Eastern Church Fathers, most notably Gregory Palamas. In the Orthodox Church his feast day is celebrated on 15 June. Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch has written: "Augustine's impact on Western Christian thought can hardly be overstated; only his beloved example Paul of Tarsus, has been more influential, and Westerners have generally seen Paul through Augustine's eyes.
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Manichaeism ::: One of the major ancient religions. Though its organized form is mostly extinct today, a revival has been attempted under the name of Neo-Manichaeism. However, most of the writings of the founding prophet Mani have been lost. Some scholars and anti-Catholic polemicists argue that its influence subtly continues in Western Christian thought via Saint Augustine of Hippo, who converted to Christianity from Manichaeism and whose writing continues to be enormously influential among Catholic and Protestant theologians.
KEYS (10k)
189 Saint Augustine of Hippo
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926 Saint Augustine of Hippo
1:He is here. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
2:He who labours, prays. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
3:Make friends with angels. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
4:What a man loves, a man is. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
5:For in our hope we are saved. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
6:Tolle, lege: take up and read. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
7:Truth is not private property. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
8:Love God, and do what you like. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
9:To believe is to think with assent. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
10:Patience is the companion of Wisdom. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
11:Things are solved by walking around. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
12:We speak, but it is God who teaches. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
13:We should never use the truth to wound. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
14:Every infinity... is made finite to God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
15:Thanks be unto You, our God, we are Yours. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
16:Give me chastity and continence, but not yet. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
17:We come to God by love and not by navigation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
18:Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
19:Purity of soul cannot be lost without consent. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
20:Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
21:Carnal lust rules where there is no love of God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
22:God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
23:Charity is possessed only in the unity of the Church. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
24:God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
25:Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
26:Before God can deliver us we must undeceive ourselves. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
27:Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
28:Put no faith in salvation through the political order. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
29:We are too weak to discover the truth by reason alone. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
30:Without God, man cannot, and without man, God will not. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
31:In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
32:Let us sing a new song not with our lips but with our lives. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
33:For what is faith unless it is to believe what you do not see? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
34:Let us sing a new song, not with our lips, but with our lives. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
35:No one can begin a new life, unless he repent of the old. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
36:Nothing conquers except truth: the victory of truth is charity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
37:There is no greater invitation to love than loving first. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
38:Angels surround and help the priest when he is celebrating Mass. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
39:Pride changes angels into devils, humility makes man into angels. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
40:God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
41:A free curiosity is more effective in learning than a rigid discipline. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
42:He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
43:The greatest kindness one can render to any man is leading him to truth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
44:Yet we must say something when those who say the most are saying nothing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
45:The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.
~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#KEYS
46:Whoever looks in the Church for something other than Christ is a mercenary. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
47:Unless we believed what we were told, we would do nothing at all in this life. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
48:He who has God has everything; he who has everything but God has nothing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
49:Symbols are powerful because they are the visible signs of invisible realities." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
50:Other things a man can do unwillingly, but he must be willing in order to believe. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
51:Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
52:The world is a great book, of which they that never stir from home read only a page. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
53:All truth and understanding is a result of a divine light which is God Himself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
54:Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
55:Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
56:The true religion has always been one from the beginning, and will always be the same. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
57:What you are must always displease you, if you would attain to that which you are not. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
58:God is more truly imagined than expressed, and He exists more truly than He is imagined. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
59:Remove justice, then, and what are kingdoms but large gangs of robbers? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, City of God IV.4, #KEYS
60:In failing to confess, Lord, I would only hide You from myself, not myself from You. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
61:God's own Scriptures have summed it up exactly: Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
62:Do not wander far and wide but return into yourself. Deep within man there dwells the truth." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
63:Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
64:Faith is to believe what we cannot see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
65:so that my feeling of devotion overflowed, and the tears ran from eyes, and I was happy in them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
66:Do not wander far and wide but return into yourself. Deep within man there dwells the truth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
67:To dye oneself with paints in order to have a rosier or a paler complexion is a lying counterfeit. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
68:He who denies the existence of God, has some reason for wishing that God did not exist. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T8], #KEYS
69:The inclination to seek the truth is safer than the presumption which regards unknown things as known. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
70:Two works of mercy set a person free: Forgive and you will be forgiven, and give and you will receive. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
71:When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
72:By Martha a feast was being prepared for the Lord, in whose feast Mary was even now delighting herself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
73:They have gone out of this world so perfected that instead of being our clients they are our advocates. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
74:Each are in each, and all in each, and each in all, and all in all, and all are one. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate VI.10.12, #KEYS
75:The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light: although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
76:For where I found Truth, there found I my God, the Truth itself; which since I learnt, I have not forgotten. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
77:God wills that our desire should be exercised in prayer, that we may be able to receive what he is prepared to give. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
78:And he is our peace who made the two into one: that we might be men of good will, sweetly linked by the bond of unity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
79:Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
80:To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of eternal things; to knowledge, the rational knowledge of temporal things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
81:Christ is never conquered. … He hath conquered in thy behalf, and he hath conquered for thee, and he hath conquered in thee. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
82:Now this Word, whose flesh was so real that he could be touched by human hands, began to be flesh in the Virgin Mary's womb. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
83:You can force a man to enter a church, to approach the altar, to receive the sacrament; but you cannot force him to believe. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
84:And he departed from our sight that we might return to our hearts and find him there. For he left us, and behold, he is here. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
85:Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
86:So the believer who imitates Christ becomes as far as permitted the same as Christ whom he imitates. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Galatians, #KEYS
87:How can you draw close to God when you are far from your own self? Grant, Lord, that I may know myself that I may know thee.
~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#KEYS
88:You move us to delight in praising You; for You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
89:Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
90:Sin is the father of death. If there had been no sin, there would have been no death ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermons of the Liturgical Seasons, 231.2)., #KEYS
91:God bestows more consideration on the purity of the intention with which our actions are performed than on the actions themselves. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
92:Should you ask me what is the first thing in religion, I should reply that the first, second, and third thing therein is humility. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
93:Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
94:To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of things eternal; to knowledge, the rational apprehension of things temporal. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
95:By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #KEYS
96:Our justice… is such that in this life it consists in the forgiveness of sins rather than in the perfection of virtue. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, City of God xix.26, #KEYS
97:To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.
~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5],#KEYS
98:The Father is wisdom, the Son is wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is wisdom, and together not three wisdoms, but one wisdom ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate 7.3.6)., #KEYS
99:O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
100:I say: When matters of great moment are inquired into by men of little ability, they usually make them men of great ability. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Contra Academicos 1.2.6, #KEYS
101:Try to acquire the virtues you believe lacking in your brothers. Then you will no longer see their defects, for you will no longer have them yourself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
102:Let your old age be childlike, and your childhood like old age; that is, so that neither may your wisdom be with pride, nor your humility without wisdom. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
103:If you have risen w/ Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
104:She is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley. Through her birth the nature inherited from our first parents is changed. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
105:You rouse men to take delight in praising you: for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it comes to rest in you ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 1.1)., #KEYS
106:We must be on our guard against giving interpretations which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
107:Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.
~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#KEYS
108:A Christian is: a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks, and a hand through which Christ helps. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
109:We did for one instant attain to touch it... in a flash of the mind attained to touch the eternal Wisdom which abides over all. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 9, 10, 23 (5th century) #KEYS
110:Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
111:We can take birth-pangs as meaning anxiety felt over them, that they should be born in Christ; or again, that he is suffering because he sees them surrounded by dangers. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
112:All natures, because they exist and therefore have a mode of their own, a form of their own, and a certain peace within themselves, are certainly good. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, City of God xii.5, #KEYS
113:Do not be afraid to throw yourself on the Lord! He will not draw back and let you fall! Put your worries aside and throw yourself on him; He will welcome you and heal you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
114:Music, that is the science or the sense of proper modulation, is likewise given by God's generosity to mortals having rational souls in order to lead them to higher things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
115:Run through all the words of the holy prayers [in Scripture], and I do not think that you will find anything in them that is not contained and included in the Lord's Prayer. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
116:Awake, mankind! For your sake God has become man. Awake, you who sleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you. I tell you again: for your sake, God became man. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
117:We who debate things and write books, we make progress as we write. Every day we learn, we explore as we dictate our books. We knock on God's door as we speak. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 162C.15, #KEYS
118:Although in God there can be no suffering, and patience has its name ~ patiendo), from suffering, yet a patient God we not only faithfully believe, but also wholesomely confess. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
119:Every one of us tries to discover how to sing to God. You must sing to him, but you must sing well. He does not want your voice to come harshly to his ears, so sing well, brothers! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
120:Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
121:The way of death for us was through the sin of Adam. The devil is the mediator of this way, the one who persuades us to sin and hurled us headlong into death ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, The Trinity, 4.12.15)., #KEYS
122:The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but- what is worse - the slave of as many masters as he has vices. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
123:There is no rest where are you seek for it…. You seek the happy life in the region of death; it is not there. How can there be a happy life where there is not even life? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, #KEYS
124:Though it was quite allowable in the earliest ages of the human race to marry one's sister, it is now abhorred as a thing which no circumstances could justify ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, The City of God XV.16), #KEYS
125:You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
126:There are a very few healthy, fat sheep - that is, those that are made strong by feeding on the truth, by God's gift making good use of the pastures - but they are not safe from the bad shepherds. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
127:In a certain way, sadness is like dung. Dung, not consigned to its proper place, is filth; dung, not consigned to its proper place, makes a house unclean; but, in its place, it makes a field fertile. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
128:Our own effort is roused from slothful sleep by the restlessness of heretics, forcing us to examine the Scriptures more carefully, lest they use them to harm the flock of Christ ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Letter 194 to Sixtus)., #KEYS
129:It is only a lazy and worldly person or one who is ignorant or uneducated who will rest content with the literal and superficial sense and refuse to penetrate the deeper meaning ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, 20.21)., #KEYS
130:If we both see that what you say is true, and we both see that what I say is true, then where do we see that? Not I in you, nor you in me, but both of us in that unalterable truth that is above our minds. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
131:Context shows sufficiently and clearly that brotherly love itself (for brotherly love is that whereby we love one another) is taught by so eminent an authority, not only to be from God, but also to be God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
132:Some persons, however, find a difficulty in this faith; when they hear that the Father is God, and the Son God, and the Holy Spirit God, and yet that this Trinity is not three Gods, but one God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, #KEYS
133:The Apostles were many and to only one of them did he say Feed my sheep. May it never happen that we truly lack good shepherds! May it never happen to us! May God's loving kindness never fail to provide them! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
134:Anyone who says, 'If God is omnipotent, let him make what has happened not to have happened,' does not realize that he is saying, 'If God is omnipotent, let him make true things false insofar as they are true.' ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
135:But now, if every one to whom we ought to show, or who ought to show to us, the offices of mercy is by right called a neighbor, it is manifest that the command to love our neighbor embraces the holy angels also. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
136:What is reprehensible is that while leading good lives themselves and abhorring those of wicked men, some, fearing to offend, shut their eyes to evil deeds instead of condemning them and pointing out their malice. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
137:This thing is good and that good, but take away this and that, and regard good itself if you can, so will you see God, not good by a good that is other than Himself, but the good of all good. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, On the Trinity, ch. 8, #KEYS
138:Unhappy is the man who knows all those things, but knows You not; but happy is he who knows You, though these he may not know. But he who knows both You and them is not the happier on account of them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 5.4, #KEYS
139:Our Father who art in heaven is rightly understood to mean that God is in the hearts of the just, as in his holy temple. At the same time, it means that those who pray should desire the one they invoke to dwell in them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
140:They who have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, 'You shall not kill.' ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
141:Truth, then, has arisen from the earth: Christ who said, I am the Truth, was born of the Virgin. And justice looked down from heaven: because believing in this new-born child, man is justified not by himself but by God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
142:Trials and tribulations offer us a chance to make reparation for our past faults and sins. On such occasions the Lord comes to us like a physician to heal the wounds left by our sins. Tribulation is the divine medicine." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
143:It is God's hidden power, which penetrates all things by that presence of its which cannot be defiled, that gives existence to anything that exists in any way at all and insofar as it exists at all.... ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, City of God xii.26, #KEYS
144:When a man lusts after a woman then even if she remains chaste he is still an adulterer. The Lord's judgement is clear and true: If a man looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
145:Now if there are good sheep then it follows that there are good shepherds, since a good sheep will naturally make a good shepherd. But all good shepherds are in the one Shepherd, and in that sense they are not many but one. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
146:We are weighed down in soul and body by sloth and indolence, an disinclined to make an effort because, in fact, this price of effort, even for our good, is a part of the penalty we must pay for sin ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, 22.22)., #KEYS
147:And so because I too am, why am I asking you to come into me, who would not be unless you were in me? I am not hell, after all; and yet even in hell, you are present; for if I descend into hell, you are there ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 1.2)., #KEYS
148:Our Father: at this name love is aroused in us . . . and the confidence of obtaining what we are about to ask.... What would he not give to his children who ask, since he has already granted them the gift of being his children? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
149:The Passion of Christ discloses the miseries of this life; the Resurrection of Christ points to the happiness of the life to come. At present, let us labor; let us hope for the future. Now is the time for work; then, for reward. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
150:That virtue of the soul, which is called Patience, is so great a gift of God, that even in Him who bestows the same upon us, whereby He waits for evil men that they may amend, is set forth by the name of Patience ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, On Patience 1)., #KEYS
151:It is useful that many persons should write many books, differing in style but not in faith, concerning even the same questions, that the matter itself may reach the greatest number — some in one way, some in another. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, #KEYS
152:Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
153:See how he himself provides you with a way of singing. Do not search for words, as if you could find a lyric which would give God pleasure. Sing to him 'with songs of joy.' This is singing well to God, just singing with songs of joy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
154:A song is a thing of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love. Anyone, therefore, who has learned to love the new life has learned to sing a new song, and the new song reminds us of our new life. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermo 34, 1-3. 5-6: CCL 42, 424-426, #KEYS
155:In created and changeable things, what is not said according to substance, must, by necessary alternative, be said according to accident. . . . But in God nothing is said to be according to accident, because in him nothing is changeable. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
156:Asked whether she did not dread leaving her body at such a distance from her own city, my mother replied, "Nothing is far to God; nor need I fear lest He should be ignorant at the end of the world of the place whence He is to raise me up." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
157:Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
158:Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former glories in itself, the latter in the Lord ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, City of God 14.28).., #KEYS
159:It is the one Savior of his body, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who prays for us and in us and is himself the object of our prayers.... Let us then recognize both our voice in his, and his voice in ours. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms 85:1, #KEYS
160:You will not let yourself be found by the proud... Many true statements do they [the philosophers] make about creation, but they do not find the Truth who is artificer of creation because they do not seek him with reverence. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions. 5.3,5, #KEYS
161:We are commanded to live righteously, and the reward is set before us of our meriting to live happily in eternity. But who is able to live righteously and do good works unless he has been justified by faith? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Various Questions to Simplician 1:2:21, #KEYS
162:And by the words, "God saw that it was good," it is sufficiently intimated that God made what was made not from any necessity, nor for the sake of supplying any want, but solely from His own goodness, that is, because it was good. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, City of God xi.24, #KEYS
163:May the sacred page be a book for you, so that you may hear, may the globe of the earth be a book for you so that you may see; in these books only those who know letters read these things; in the whole world, even the fool can read. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, On the Psalms 45.7, #KEYS
164:God is to be loved, not this and that good, but the good itself. For the good that must be sought for the soul is not one above which it is to fly by judging, but to which it is to cleave by loving; and what can this be except God? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, On the Trinity, ch. 8, #KEYS
165:The Lord then did not blame Martha's work, but distinguished between their services. You are occupied about many things; yet one thing is needful. Already has Mary chosen this for herself. The labor of many things pass away, and the love of unity abides. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
166:These words are explained by our oneness with Christ, for he is our head and we are his body. No one ascended into heaven except Christ because we also are Christ: he is the Son of Man by his union with us, and we by our union with him are the sons of God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
167:God does not speak by these things, but by the truth itself—if anyone is prepared to hear with the mind rather than with the body. For he speaks to that part of us that is better than everything else in us. Only God, in fact, is better than that part of us. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
168:Let him who finds fault with my discourse, see whether he can understand other men who have handled similar subjects and questions, when he does not understand me: and if he can, let him put down my book, or even, if he pleases, throw it away. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, #KEYS
169:You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
170:The only nature contrary to the nature which supremely is, and by which everything else that is was made, is a nature which has no being at all.... There is no being contrary to God... who is the author of all beings of any kind whatsoever. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, City of God xii.2, #KEYS
171:Even Peter had yielded to the scandalised protests of the circumcisers. He pretended to believe that the Gospel would not save the Gentiles unless they fulfilled the burden of the law. But Paul recalled him from such dissimulation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on the Galatians, #KEYS
172:If everything that is comprehended by knowledge is rendered finite by the comprehension of the knower, then, in some inexpressible way, all infinity is rendered finite to God because it is certainly not incomprehensible to his knowledge. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, City of God xii.19(18), #KEYS
173:Some things abide by soaring over the whole rolling wheel of time... while other things do so according to the limits of their time, and thus it is through things giving way to and taking the place of one another that the beautiful tapestry of the ages is woven. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
174:You O Lord art good and merciful, and Your right hand had respect unto the profoundness of my death, and removed from the bottom of my heart that abyss of corruption. And this was the result, that I willed not to do what I willed, and willed to do what you willed. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
175:In general the city of the ungodly is not ruled by God and is not obedient to him in offering sacrifice only to him, and in that city, as a consequence, the soul does not rightly and faithfully rule the body, nor does reason the vices. And so it lacks true justice. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
176:What is it that makes a man want to become sad in beholding mournful and tragic events which he himself would not willingly undergo? Yet, as he watches, he wishes to suffer their sorrow; this sorrow is his own pleasure. What is this but a wretched weakness of mind? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
177:Some people read books in order to find God. Yet there is great book, the very appearance of created things. Look above you; look below you! Note it; read it! God, whom you wish to find, never wrote that book with ink. He set before your eyes the things He had made. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
178:Who will presume that he's living in such a way that he has no need to say to God, Forgive us our debts? Only an arrogant person... not someone who is truly great but someone puffed up with pride, who is justly resisted by the one who pours out his grace and humble. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
179:Christ takes shape in a believer through the faith that is in his inmost soul. Such a believer, gentle and humble of heart, is called to the freedom of grace. He does not boast of the merit he gains from good works, for they are worth nothing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Galatians, #KEYS
180:If you study every word of the petitions of Scripture, you will find, I think, nothing that is not contained and included in the Lord's Prayer. When we pray, then, we may use different words to say the same things, but we may not say different things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Letter to Proba, #KEYS
181:I read [in certain Platonic books] that God the Word was born not of flesh nor of blood, nor of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh, but of God (Jn 1.13). But that the Word was made flesh and lived among us (Jn 1.14) I did not read there. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 13.9.14, #KEYS
182:We should understand God, if we can and as far as we can, to be good w/o quality, great w/o quantity, creative w/o need or necessity, presiding w/o position, holding all things together w/o possession, wholly everywhere w/o place, everlasting w/o time. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trin V prol, #KEYS
183:What merits of his own has the saved to boast of when, if he were dealt with according to his merits, he would be nothing if not damned? Have the just then no merits at all? Of course they do, for they are the just. But they had no merits by which they were made just. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
184:For the devil who is not subject to the death of flesh and on this account has become inordinately proud another kind of death is prepared in the eternal fire of hell, by which not only the spirits with earthly bodies, but also those with aerial bodies can be tortured. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
185:Just as the proud devil led the proud man to death, so the humble Christ led the obedient man back to life; and as the former fell when he was exalted and dragged down him who consented to him, so the latter when He was humbled arose and raised him who believed in Him. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
186:When they feed the sheep it is Christ who feeds. Similarly, the bridegroom's friends do not speak with their own voices, but when they hear the bridegroom's voice they are filled with joy. Thus it is that Christ is feeding the sheep when the shepherds are feeding them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
187:Let us sing alleluia here on earth, while we still live in anxiety, so that we may sing it one day in heaven in full security...Sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labors. Sing as wayfarers do ~ sing, but continue your journey. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
188:Give me yourself, O my God, give yourself back to me. Lo, I love you, but if my love is too mean, let me love more passionately. I cannot gauge my love, nor know how far it fails, how much more love I need for my life to set its course straight into your arms, never swerving until hidden in the covert of your face. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
189:Far be it from us to doubt that all number is known to Him 'Whose understanding is infinite' (Ps. 147:5). The infinity of number, though there be no numbering of infinite numbers, is yet not incomprehensible by Him Whose understanding is infinite. And thus, if everything which is comprehended is defined or made finite by the comprehension of him who knows it, then all infinity is in some ineffable way made finite to God, for it is comprehensible by His knowledge. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
190:To seek the greatest good is to live well, and to live well is nothing other than to love God with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole mind: It is therefore obvious that this love must be kept whole and uncorrupt, that is temperance; it should not be overcome with difficulties, that is fortitude, it must not be subservient to anything else, that is justice; it must discriminate among things so as not to be deceived by falsity or fraud, that is prudence. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
191:What art Thou then, my God? what, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong; stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Fallor Ergo Sum. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
2:Sin, but sin boldly. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
3:My weight is my love. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
4:You raise us upright. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
5:I err, therefore I am. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
6:Desiderium sinus cordis ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
7:He who labours, prays. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
8:Love, then do as you like. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
9:This disease of curiosity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
10:Si comprehendis non est Deus ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
11:What a man loves, a man is. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
12:For in our hope we are saved. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
13:I cannot grasp all that I am. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
14:i understand that i understand ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
15:Love is the beauty of the soul ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
16:Nondum amabam, et amare amabam ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
17:Tolle, lege: take up and read. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
18:An unjust law is no law at all. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
19:Love and say it with your life. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
20:Tolle, lege: take up and read. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
21:Truth is not private property. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
22:Love the sinner and hate the sin. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
23:My sin grew sleek on my excesses. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
24:He that is jealous is not in love. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
25:What do I love when I love my God? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
26:Sin is Energy in the wrong channel. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
27:Take up and read, take up and read. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
28:Patience is the companion of wisdom. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
29:We speak, but it is God who teaches. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
30:God gives where he finds empty hands. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
31:Things are solved by walking around. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
32:We speak, but it is God who teaches. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
33:219Take up and read, take up and read. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
34:Anyone wants to be true what one loves ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
35:Man cannot believe unless he wishes to. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
36:We should never use the truth to wound. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
37:E în noi ceva mai adânc decât noi înșine. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
38:With love for mankind and hatred of sins. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
39:If you understood him, it would not be God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
40:He who has no tomb has the sky for his vault. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
41:Salvator ambulado. (It is solved by walking.) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
42:Charity is no substitute for justice withheld. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
43:For the love of money is the root of all evil; ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
44:For this my good from them, was good for them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
45:la mesure de l'amour c'est d'aimer sans mesure ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
46:Love is ever new because it never groweth old. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
47:Omnis natura, inquantum natura est, bonum est. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
48:The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
49:God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
50:Habits, if not resisted, soon become necessity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
51:I know what it is, but when you ask me I don’t. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
52:Si precisas una mano, recuerda que yo tengo dos ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
53:The measure of love is to love without measure. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
54:Embrace the love of God, and by love embrace God ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
55:Thou madest him, but sin in him Thou madest not. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
56:To spare the conquered, and beat down the proud. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
57:Lavish spending cloaks the dark side of generosity ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
58:A Christian should be an Alleluia from head to foot ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
59:credo ut intelligam. (i believe so i can understand). ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
60:El mundo no se hizo en el tiempo, sino con el tiempo. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
61:Give what you command, and command what you will. You ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
62:God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
63:He who is filled with love is filled with God himself ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
64:Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
65:Lord give me chastity and self control - but not yet. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
66:The peace of all things is the tranquillity of order. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
67:There are wolves within, and there are sheep without. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
68:Adalet olmayınca devlet büyük bir çeteden başka nedir? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
69:Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
70:He then goes on to show that love--the love of God for ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
71:He who is filled with love is filled with God himself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
72:Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
73:Sin is looking for the right thing in the wrong place. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
74:Dai-me o que me ordenais, e ordenai-me o que quiserdes. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
75:I do not know where I came from..For I do not remember. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
76:Vatru u drugima može zapaliti samo onaj tko sam izgara. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
77:In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
78:Nada está perdido mientras haya ilusión por encontrarlo. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
79:Place your hopes in the man from whom you do not inherit ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
80:You know how stupid and weak I am: teach me and heal me. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
81:God has one Son without sin, but none without affliction. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
82:Le bonheur, c'est continuer à désirer ce que l'on a déjà. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
83:The soul is the life whereby we are joined into the body. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
84:You are my Lord, because You have no need of my goodness. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
85:A wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
86:Dilige et quod vis fac. (Love and then what you will, do.) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
87:Christ is not valued at all, unless he is valued above all. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
88:crucified Christ, when He, mindful of mercy, said, "Father, ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
89:... It is humility which has access to the highest regions. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
90:The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
91:Sing with your voices, your hearts, your lips and your lives. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
92:There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
93:what you want to ignite in others must first burn in yourself ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
94:being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
95:Every where the greater joy is ushered in by the greater pain. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
96:Humility raises us not by human arrogance but by divine grace. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
97:Saviour had not styled us the sugar but the salt of the earth, ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
98:There is more than one way of sacrificing to the rebel angels. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
99:Even the straws under my knees shout to distract me from prayer ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
100:For what is faith unless it is to believe what you do not see? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
101:Let us sing a new song, not with our lips, but with our lives. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
102:You have stricken my heart with your word and I have loved you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
103:As flattering friends mislead, quarreling foes can often correct ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
104:He who created you without you will not justify you without you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
105:No one can begin a new life, unless he repent of the old. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #NFDB
106:Still, dust and ashes I am, allow me to speak before your mercy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
107:The greatest and worst of all deaths is where death does not die ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
108:There is no greater invitation to love than loving first. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #NFDB
109:THE WORLD IS A BOOK AND THOSE WHO DO NOT TRAVEL READ ONLY A PAGE ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
110:Angels surround and help the priest when he is celebrating Mass. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
111:he World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
112:If you have understood, then what you have understood is not God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
113:The end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
114:The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
115:What are kingdoms without justice? They're just gangs of bandits. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
116:He that becomes protector of sin shall surely become its prisoner. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
117:In seeking him they find him, and in finding they will praise him. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
118:Pride changes angels into devils, humility makes man into angels. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
119:The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
120:The weakness then of infant limbs, not its will, is its innocence. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
121:The world is a book, and he who does not travel reads only a page. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
122:The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
123:Why are you relying on yourself, only to find yourself unreliable? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
124:Why then should a man, who has done no wrong, do wrong to himself? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
125:Every visible thing in this world is put in the charge of an Angel. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
126:In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
127:I was still unteachable, being inflated with the novelty of heresy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
128:No man can be a good bishop if he loves his title but not his task. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
129:The happy life is this - to rejoice to thee, in thee, and for thee. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
130:The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
131:The world is a book, and those who don't travel only read one page. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
132:For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
133:Give, O Lord, what Thou commandest, and then command what Thou wilt. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
134:No eulogy is due to a man who simply does his duty and nothing more. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
135:Clearly, it is a happier lot to be the slave of a man than of a lust: ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
136:el mal no es más que privación del bien hasta llegar a la misma nada. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
137:In faith, unity, in doubtful matters, liberty, in all things charity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
138:Inter faeces et urinam nascimur. (We are born between shit and piss.) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
139:In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
140:Des Elends voll ist dieses Leben und ungewiß ist die Stunde des Todes. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
141:God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
142:In the usual course of study I had come to a book of a certain Cicero. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
143:Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
144:Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi. In interiore homine habitat veritas. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
145:Thou distributest Thy riches through the hidden springs of all things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
146:For what is the self-complacent man but a slave to his own self-praise. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
147:God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
148:HE THAT LOVETH LITTLE PRAYETH LITTLE, HE THAT LOVETH MUCH PRAYETH MUCH. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
149:I write because I've made progress and I make progress because I write. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
150:A community is nothing else than a harmonious collection of individuals. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
151:A free curiosity is more effective in learning than a rigid discipline. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
152:Moral character is assessed not by what a man knows but by what he loves ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
153:This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
154:But no one doth well against his will, even though what he doth, be well. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
155:In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
156:My questioning was my attentive spirit,
and their reply, their beauty. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
157:Oh! for Thy mercies' sake, tell me, O Lord my God, what Thou art unto me. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
158:The greatest kindness one can render to any man is leading him to truth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
159:Yet we must say something when those who say the most are saying nothing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
160:Better to have fewer wants than greater riches to supply increasing wants. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
161:Every good man resists others in those points in which he resists himself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
162:God grants us not always what we ask so as to bestow something preferable. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
163:Nemo nisi per amicitiam cognoscitur. (No one learns except by friendship.) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
164:Yet we must say something when those who say the most are saying nothing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
165:Celui qui se perd dans sa passion perd moins que celui qui perd sa passion. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
166:The world is a great book...they who never stir from home read only a page. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
167:Whither do I call Thee, since I am in Thee? or whence canst Thou enter into ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
168:The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.
~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
169:Anyone who does not love Him Who made man has not learned to love man aright. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
170: Book I. Containing a General View of the Subjects Treated in Holy Scripture. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
171:He who falls, falls by his own will; and he who stands, stands by God's will. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
172:Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
173:São quatro as perturbações da alma: o desejo, a alegria, o medo e a tristeza. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
174:He cannot have God for his Father who will not have the Church for his mother. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
175:La ira busca vengarse; pero, ¿qué venganza puede ser tan justa como las tuyas? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
176:Learn to dance, so when you get to heaven the angels know what to do with you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
177:... the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
178:You never depart from us, but yet, only with difficulties do we return to You. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
179:God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to permit no evil to exist. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
180:Our sole hope, our sole confidence, our
only assured promise, is your mercy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
181:When men do what is displeasing to God, they perform their own will, not God's. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
182:As the flattery of friends corrupts, so often do the taunts of enemies instruct. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
183:¡ay de los que se callan acerca de ti!, porque no son más que mudos charlatanes. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
184:He who has God has everything; he who has everything but God has nothing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #NFDB
185:Narrow is the mansion of my soul;
enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
186:Woe betide those who fail to speak, while the chatterboxes go on saying nothing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
187:Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
188:Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
189:Pray as though everything depends on God. And work as if everything depends on you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
190:Come, O Lord, and stir our hearts. Call us back to yourself. Kindle your fire in us. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
191:In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
192:O God, who is ever at work and ever at rest. May I be ever at work and ever at rest. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
193:Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe so that you may understand. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
194:Cantare amantis est ... Singing belongs to one who loves." (s. 336, 1 – PL 38, 1472). ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
195:El único cometido en esta vida es procurar ver a Dios con los ojos de nuestro corazón ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
196:Em certos casos, podemos, pois aprovar que haja alguma dor, mas nunca a podemos amar. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
197:Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he lives so as to make happiness impossible. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
198:My God, how I burned, how I burned with longing to leave earthly and fly back to you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
199:The world is a great book, of which they that never stir from home read only a page. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
200:All truth and understanding is a result of a divine light which is God Himself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #NFDB
201:Da quod iubes et iube quod vis
Give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
202:I have said before, and shall say again, that I write this book for love of your love. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
203:It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
204:Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
205:Really great things, when discussed by little men, can usually make such men grow big. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
206:En las cosas necesarias, la unidad; en las dudosas, la libertad, y en todas, la caridad ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
207:He who denies the existence of God, has some reason for wishing that God did not exist. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
208:Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
209:That Christians Have No Authority for Committing Suicide in Any Circumstances Whatever. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
210:The true religion has always been one from the beginning, and will always be the same. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
211:What you are must always displease you, if you would attain to that which you are not. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
212:O mundo é um imenso livro do qual aqueles que nunca saem de casa lêem apenas uma página. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
213:el sonido no es el artífice del canto, antes está sujeto al alma que canta por el cuerpo, ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
214:God is more truly imagined than expressed, and He exists more truly than He is imagined. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
215:I did not yet love, and I loved to love; I sought what I might love, in love with loving. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
216:nos creaste para ti y nuestro corazón andará siempre inquieto mientras no descanse en ti. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
217:To my God a heart of flame; To my fellow man a heart of love; To myself a heart of steel. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
218:...nothing could perish on earth save what they would be ashamed to carry away from earth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
219:Sing with your voices, your hearts, your lips and your lives: Sing to the Lord a new song. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
220:The past times that you think were good, are good because they are not yours here and now. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
221:Do not abandon what You have begun in me, but go on to perfect all that remains unfinished. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
222:God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
223:In failing to confess, Lord, I would only hide You from myself, not myself from You. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #NFDB
224:Our hearts have been made for you, O God, and they shall never rest until they rest in you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
225:That vague and wandering opinion of Deity is declared by an apostle to be ignorance of God: ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
226:The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
227:The good man is free, even if he is a slave. The evil man is a slave, even if he is a king. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
228:The person who knows the truth knows it, and he who knows it knows eternity. Love knows it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
229:The truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
230:The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
231:To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
232:To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and all the more if I enjoyed my loved one's body. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
233:For every man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points to the lust of the flesh. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
234:for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
235:I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love...I sought what I might love, in love with loving. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
236:Trust the past to God's mercy, the present to God's love, and the future to God's providence. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
237:O that men would know themselves to be men; and that he that glorieth would glory in the Lord. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
238:Some things are to be enjoyed, others to be used, and there are others to be enjoyed and used. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
239:Faith is to believe what we cannot see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
240:A sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart. Nay, even idolatry is ample evidence of this fact. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
241:Do not feel surprise at being schooled amid toil: you are being schooled for a wondrous destiny. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
242:A person can do other things against his will, but belief is possible only in one who is willing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
243:He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
244:the soul is not moved to abandon higher things and love inferior things unless it wills to do so. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
245:The wicked have told me of things that delight them, but not such things as your law has to tell. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
246:Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
247:Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
248:Inasmuch as love grows in you, in so much beauty grows; for love is itself the beauty of the soul. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
249:It is greater felicity to have a good neighbour at peace, than to conquer a bad one by making war. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
250:The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
251:Trust the past to the mercy of God, the present to God’s love, and the future to God’s providence. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
252:Do not wander far and wide but return into yourself. Deep within man there dwells the truth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #NFDB
253:I didn't know that evil doesn't exist except as the absence of good up to the point of annihilation ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
254:To dye oneself with paints in order to have a rosier or a paler complexion is a lying counterfeit. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
255:266. "Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of the faith is to see what we believe. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
256:Don't you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
257:For grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
258:divides into three classes,--things to be enjoyed, things to be used, and things which use and enjoy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
259:it is grace that makes us fulfil the law, and causes nature to be liberated from the dominion of sin. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
260:See, heaven and earth exist, they cry aloud that they are made, for they suffer change and variation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
261:So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
262:Unless someone is faithful in handling the temptations of wealth, who will commit to him true riches? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
263:... Unscrupulous ambition has nothing to work upon, save in a nation corrupted by avarice and luxury. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
264:Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo (Give me chastity and continence, but not just yet)! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
265:Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
266:He who denies the existence of God, has some reason for wishing that God did not exist. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T8], #index, #NFDB
267:Let him love to find You while not finding it out, rather than, while finding it out, not to find You. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
268:O crooked paths! Woe to the audacious soul, which hoped, by forsaking Thee, to gain some better thing! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
269:I am no more than a child, but my Father lives for ever and I have a Protector great enough to save me. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
270:Lord Jesus, don't let me lie when I say that I love you...and protect me, for today I could betray you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
271:Two works of mercy set a person free: Forgive and you will be forgiven, and give and you will receive. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
272:When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
273:No one will make a good end to the life into which he is born unless he is born again before he ends it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
274:The Trinity, one God, of whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things. [1723] ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
275:For you have imposed order, and so it is that the punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
276:God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
277:his own sake and the love of our neighbor for God's sake--is the fulfillment and the end of all Scripture. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
278:For the human race is, more than any other species, at once social by nature and quarrelsome by perversion. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
279:Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in you." -St. Augustine of Hippo ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
280:The only object which ought to be enjoyed is the triune God, who is our highest good and our true happiness. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
281:the mode of ascertaining the proper meaning, and the mode of making known the meaning when it is ascertained. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
282:I will plant my feet on that step where my parents put me as a child, until self-evident truth comes to light. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
283:We are Christians, and strangers on earth. Let none of us be frightened; our native land is not in this world. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
284:And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
285:Our whole business therefore in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
286:Porque más vencido es el enemigo en aquel a quien más tiene preso y por cuyo medio tiene a otros muchos presos; ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
287:No doubt, then, that a free curiosity has more force in our learning these things, than a frightful enforcement. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
288:Thus it is that love is not without hope, hope is not without love, and neither hope nor love are without faith. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
289:Tu excitas, ut laudare te delectet, quia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
290:Do not say that the past was better than the present. Virtues are what make the good times and vices that go bad. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
291:I count myself one of the number of those who write as they learn and learn as they write.” Augustine/John Calvin ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
292:This power is that of my mind and is a natural endowment, but I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am. Is ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
293:Prayer is the key that opens heaven; the favors we ask descend upon us the very instant our prayers ascend to God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
294:For where I found Truth, there found I my God, the Truth itself; which since I learnt, I have not forgotten. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #NFDB
295:Homer invented these fictions and attributed human powers to the gods; I wish he had attributed divine powers to us ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
296:Indeed, the only cause of their [Rome] perishing was that they chose for their protectors gods condemned to perish. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
297:...those victories they boast were not the substantial joys of the happy, but the empty comforts of wretched men... ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
298:Ah, God, my God, what wretchedness I suffered in that world, and how I trifled with!
-St. Augustine on school ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
299:For it is one thing to see the Land of Peace from a wooded ridge, and yet another to walk the road that leads to it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
300:The nature of God can never and nowhere be deficient in anything, while things made out of nothing can be deficient. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
301:186. " I never have any difficulty believing in miracles, since I experienced the miracle of change in my own heart." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
302:But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in [God] but in myself and his other creatures ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
303:Care for your body as though you were going to live forever. Care for your soul as if you were going to die tomorrow. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
304:Hence it is not the case that every bad man will become good, but no one will be good who was not bad originally. Yet ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
305:I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love itself; and I sought for something to love, since I loved nothing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
306:The house of my soul is too small to receive Thee: let it be enlarged by Thee. It is all in ruins: do Thou repair it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
307:Alabarán al Señor quienes lo buscan; pues si lo buscan lo habrán de encontrar; y si lo encuentran lo habrán de alabar. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
308:Ignorance and stupidity are given the names of simplicity and innocence...Idleness appears as desire for a quiet life. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
309:I was inflamed to love, and seek, and obtain, and hold, and embrace, not some sect, but wisdom itself-whatever it was. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
310:Thy purpose unchanged; receivest again what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing in gains; ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
311:entre más se engaña, más se es alabado. ¡Tanta es la ceguera de los hombres, que hasta de, su misma ceguera se glorían! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
312:the poverty of human intelligence has plenty to say, for inquiry employs more words than the discovery of the solution; ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
313:Every day my conscience makes confession relying on the hope of Your mercy as more to be trusted than its own innocence. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
314:Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
315:For no one should consider anything his own, except perhaps a lie, since all truth is from Him who said, "I am the truth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
316: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
317:Men are so blind in their impiety that, as it were, they bump into mountains and refuse to see what hits them in the eye. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
318:We made bad use of immortality, and so ended up dying; Christ made good use of mortality, so that we might end up living. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
319:For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
320:Have I not confessed against myself my transgressions unto Thee, and Thou, my God, hast forgiven the iniquity of my heart? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
321:If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
322:I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
323:Your wishes are bad, when you desire that one whom you hate or fear should be in such a condition that you can conquer him. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
324:The promise of satisfaction in worldly loves is an enduring lie that moves the soul to unfaithfulness from its proper lover. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
325:To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of eternal things; to knowledge, the rational knowledge of temporal things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
326:Conviértanse pues a ti; que te busquen, pues tú, el creador, no abandonas jamás a tus criaturas como ellas te abandonan a ti. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
327:Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
328:Every soul must pay back what it owes, either by using well what it received, or by losing what it was unwilling to use well. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
329:Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure: where your treasure, there your heart; where your heart, there your happiness ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
330:And he departed from our sight that we might return to our hearts and find him there. For he left us, and behold, he is here. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
331:Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
332:His knowledge is not like ours, which has three tenses: present, past, and future. God's knowledge has no change or variation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
333:However alarming, however distressing self-knowledge may be, better that than the tremendous evils of self-ignorance."--Caird. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
334:...It is no less impossible for us not to taste as bitter the death of those whose life for us was such a source of sweetness. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
335:Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
336:Remove justice and what are states but gangs of bandits on a large scale? And what are bandit gangs but kingdoms in miniature? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
337:Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
338:How can you draw close to God when you are far from your own self? Grant, Lord, that I may know myself that I may know thee.
~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
339:Let Him do what pleases Him; let Him disclose Himself when it pleases Him! I now commit myself wholly to His care and clemency. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
340:The promise of satisfaction in worldly loves is an enduring lie that moves the soul to unfaithfulness from its proper lover. We ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
341:Those who ask ‘What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?’ are still steeped in error which they should have discarded. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
342: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
343:243. “Faith seeks, understanding finds. This is why the prophet says, ‘Unless you believe, you will not understand’.[Isaiah 7:9]” ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
344:For the good make use of this world in order to enjoy God, whereas the evil want to make use of God in order to enjoy the world – ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
345:Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #NFDB
346:To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
347:Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
348:Who can plumb its depths? And yet it is a faculty of my soul. Although it is part of my nature, I cannot understand all that I am. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
349:God bestows more consideration on the purity of the intention with which our actions are performed than on the actions themselves. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
350: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
351:Woe is me! how high art Thou in the highest, and how deep in the deepest! and Thou never departest, and we scarcely return to Thee. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
352:What is time then? If nobody asks me, I know; but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I do not know. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
353:When it happens that I am more moved by the song than the thing which is sung, I confess that I sin in a manner deserving punishment ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
354:But it must not be supposed that folly is as powerful as truth, just because it can, if it likes, shout louder and longer than truth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
355:Why, therefore, do we delay to abandon our hopes of this world, and give ourselves wholly to seek after God and the blessed life? But ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
356:You stir us to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
357: Chapter XVI.--He Disapproves of the Mode of Educating Youth, and He Points Out Why Wickedness is Attributed to the Gods by the Poets. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
358:Faith is to believe that which you do not yet see; and the reward of this faith is to see that which you believe. - Saint Augustine of Hippo P.g64 ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
359:Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants as to willing what he has heard from you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
360:You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
361:By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5], #NFDB
362:Si nemo me queret, scio; si aliqui explicare velim, nescio.
"If no one asks me, I know. If I am asked to explain,I do not know". ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
363:was not yet in love, but I was in love with love, and from the very depth of my need hated myself for not more keenly feeling the need. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
364:Volgevo le spalle alla luce e la faccia agli oggetti da essa illuminati, per cui la faccia vedeva le cose luminose, ma non era luminosa. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
365: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
366:Ami e non ti scomponi, sei geloso e imperturbabile, ti penti e non provi rimorso, ti infurii e resti in pace, muti le opere ma non l’idea. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
367:They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
368:Thou owest men nothing, yet payest out to them as if in debt to thy creature, and when thou dost cancel debts thou losest nothing thereby. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
369:Vous cherchez la vie heureuse dans la région de la mort. Elle n'est pas là. Comment y aurait-il vie heureuse où il n'y a même pas de vie ? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
370:Y la ambición, ¿qué busca, sino honores y gloria, siendo tú el único sobre todas las cosas digno de ser honrado y glorificado eternamente? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
371:The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. (City of God, Book 19) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
372:To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.
~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5],#NFDB
373: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
374:¿De dónde me viene pues esta vacilación para dejar de lado las esperanzas del mundo y consagrarme a la búsqueda de Dios y de la vida feliz?". ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
375:Men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the extent of the oceans, and the courses of the stars, and omit to wonder at themselves. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
376:O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
377:He is Thy best servant who looks not so much to hear that from Thee which himself willeth, as rather to will that, which from Thee he heareth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
378:He is Thy best servant who looks not so much to hear that from Whee which himself willeth, as rather to will that, which from Thee he heareth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
379:Too late came I to love you, O Beauty both so ancient and so new! Too late came I to love you - and behold you were with me all the time . . . ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
380:Hence a ‘bishop’ who has set his heart on a position of eminence rather than an opportunity for service should realize that he is no bishop. So ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
381:it is a higher glory... to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with the sword, and to procure or maintain peace by peace, not by war. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
382:be ye transformed (saith he) by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Wherefore ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
383:For a prohibition always increases an illicit desire so long as the love of and joy in holiness is too weak to conquer the inclination to sin... ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
384:The whole of history since the ascension of Jesus into heaven is concerned with one work only: the building and perfecting of this “City of God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
385:For whence had that former sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick, but that I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
386:Variation on the middle sentence: A thing is not necessarily false because it is badly expressed, nor true because it is expressed magnificently. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
387:For in truth lust is made out of a perverse will, and when lust is served, it becomes habit, and when habit is not resisted, it becomes necessity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
388:It is not reason which turns the young man from God; it is the flesh. Skepticism but provides him with the excuses for the new life he is leading. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
389:La esperanza que se ve, ya no es esperanza. ¿Cómo esperar lo que uno ve? Pero si esperamos lo que no vemos, en paciencia esperamos (Rm. 8, 24-25), ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
390:Only one possibility remains: the movement by which the will turns from enjoying the Creator to enjoying his creatures belongs to the will itself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
391:That joy is to know You as You are. This is the happy life, to rejoice in You, of You, and for You. This is the happy life, and there is no other. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
392:There can only be two basic loves... the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self unto the forgetfulness and denial of God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
393:... They who have just ideas, and express them in suitable language, would need to use no long discourse to refute the errors of empty conjecture. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
394:The Incarnate Word has been spoken. It calls the soul back to its place of peace that cannot be disturbed and love that will never be disappointed. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
395:No one should be ashamed to admit that they do not know what they do not know, in case while feigning knowledge, they come to deserve to never know. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
396:Often the contempt of vainglory becomes a source of even more vainglory, for it is not being scorned when the contempt is something one is proud of. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
397:This experience sufficiently illuminates the truth that free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. Nevertheless, ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
398:To confess, then, is to praise and glorify God; it is an exercise in self-knowledge and true humility in the atmosphere of grace and reconciliation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
399:You are not the mind itself. For You are the Lord God of the mind. All these things are liable to change, but You remain immutable above all things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
400:Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
401:But whosoever recount his true merits to Thee, what is it that he recounts to Thee but Thine own gifts? Oh, if men would know themselves to be men... ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
402: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
403:Oh! that I might repose on Thee! Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
404:they have only that power which the secret decree of the Almighty allots to them, in order that we may not set too great store by earthly prosperity, ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
405:This only I know, that woe is me except in Thee: not only without but within myself also; and all abundance, which is not my God, is emptiness to me. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
406:What great good, then, we are to expect and hope from participating in his divinity, when even his distress calms us and his weakness strengthens us. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
407:Los hombres están siempre dispuestos a curiosear y averiguar sobre las vidas ajenas, pero les da pereza conocerse a sí mismos y corregir su propia vida ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
408:Ni son las mismas cosas las que entran, sino las imágenes de las cosas sentidas, las cuales quedan allí a disposición del pensamiento que las recuerda. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
409:O Vosso servo mais fiel é aquele que não espera nem prefere ouvir aquilo que quer, mas se propõe a aceitar, antes de tudo, a resposta que de Vós ouvis. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
410:There is no sin unless through a man's own will, and hence the reward when we do right things also of our own will."
(Against Fortunatus) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
411:This, then, is true liberty: the joy that comes in doing what is right. At the same time, it is also devoted service in obedience to righteous precept. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
412:Try to acquire the virtues you believe lacking in your brothers. Then you will no longer see their defects, for you will no longer have them yourself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
413:What, then, is the God I worship? He can be none but the Lord God himself, for who but the Lord is God? What other refuge can there be, except our God? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
414:What we say would not be complete if one word did not cease to exist when it has sounded its constituent parts, so that it can be succeeded by another. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
415:For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
416:The reward of virtue will be God himself, who gave the virtue, together with the promise of himself, the best and greatest of all possible promises. For ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
417:Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
418:Oh! that I might repose on Thee! Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
419:What should you, O man, do, you who seek your own glory whenever you do anything good, while when you do something bad, you figure out ways to blame God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
420:Y es que el alimento que se toma en sueños, no obstante ser muy semejante al que se toma despierto, no alimenta a los que duermen, porque están dormidos. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
421:Heaven forbid that we should believe in such a way as not to accept or seek reasons, since we could not even believe if we did not possess rational souls. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
422:Let your old age be childlike, and your childhood like old age; that is, so that neither may your wisdom be with pride, nor your humility without wisdom. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
423:memoria por sí mismo, sino por su imagen, puesto que, si estuviese presente por sí mismo, el olvido no haría que nos acordásemos, sino que nos olvidásemos? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
424:The winds of gossip blow from the chests of people ventilating their opinions; so the soul is carried about and turned, twisted and twisted back again. The ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
425:Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
426:Can human folly harbour a more arrogant or ungrateful thought than the notion that whereas God makes man beautiful in body, man makes himself pure in heart? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
427:Volved, transgresores, al corazón y adheríos a aquél que es vuestro Hacedor. Estad con él, y permaneceréis estables; descansad en él, y estaréis tranquilos. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
428:FR : Celui qui perd sa passion perd plus que celui qui se perd dans sa passion
EN : Whoever loses his passion loses more than he who is lost in his passion ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
429:Go on, O Lord, and act: stir us up and call us back; inflame us and draw us to thee; stir us up and grow sweet to us; let us now love thee, let us run to thee. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
430:I held my heart back from positively accepting anything, since I was afraid of another fall, and in this condition of suspense I was being all the more killed. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
431:Purity both of the body and the soul rests on the steadfastness of the will strengthened by God's grace, and cannot be forcibly taken from an unwilling person. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
432:The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
433:The wicked make all God's good works serve evil purposes but the person of good will, to the contrary, makes the evil doings of the wicked serve good purposes. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
434:Though I was retreating from the Truth, I appeared to myself to be going toward it because I did not yet know that evil with nothing but the privation of good. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
435:Señor, cualquiera que delante de Vos contara y alegara sus verdaderos méritos, ¿qué hacía sino contar lo que Vos le habíais dado, pues todos son dones vuestros? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
436:If you find physical pleasure in earthly experiences, use the occasion to praise God for these gifts. Turn your love not on the pleasures but toward their Maker. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
437:Since God is the highest good, he would not allow any evil to exist in his works unless his omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
438:Idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
439:We must be on our guard against giving interpretations which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
440:how shall we be beautiful? By loving the One who is always beautiful. The more love grows in you, the more beauty grows: for love itself is the beauty of the soul. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
441:I call [love to God] the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for his own sake, and the enjoyment of one's self and of one's neighbor for the sake of God ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
442:I write because I've made progress and I make progress because I write." (i.e. I write as I learn and I learn as I write)
St. Augustine
(354 - 430 A.D.) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
443:Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.
~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
444:When I come to be united to thee with all my being, then there will be no more pain and toil for me, and my life shall be a real life, being wholly filled by thee. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
445:A Christian is: a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks, and a hand through which Christ helps. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
446:In yourself you rouse us, giving us delight in glorifying you, because you made us with yourself as our goal, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. Grant ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
447:It’s not in the book or in the writer that readers discern the truth of what they read; they see it in themselves, if the light of truth has penetrated their minds. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
448:Such is the strength of the burden of habit. Here I have the power to be but do not wish it. There I wish to be but lacks the power. On both grounds, I'm in misery. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
449:word "thing" in a strict sense, to signify that which is never employed as a sign of anything else: for example, wood, stone, cattle, and other things of that kind. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
450:Thus I remained to myself an unhappy lodging where I could neither stay nor leave.
For where could my heart fly from my heart? Where could I fly from my own self? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
451:I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
452:I write because I've made progress and I make progress because I write."
(I write as I learn and I learn as I write)
St. Augustine
(354 - 430 A.D.) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
453:My mother was already well aware of that, and her plan was to commit to the waves the clay out of which I would later be shaped rather than the actual image itself.20 ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
454: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
455:Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
456:Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
457:But unscrupulous ambition has nothing to work upon, save in a nation corrupted by avarice and luxury. Moreover, a people becomes avaricious and luxurious by prosperity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
458: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
459:Thou gavest; and to my nurses willingly to give me what Thou gavest them. For they, with a heaven-taught affection, willingly gave me what they abounded with from Thee. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
460:For a possession which is not diminished by being shared with others, if it is possessed and not shared, is not yet possessed as it ought to be possessed. The Lord saith ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
461:Humility must accompany all our actions, must be with us everywhere; for as soon as we glory in our good works they are of no further value to our advancement in virtue. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
462:In You we do not fear that there will be no home to return to if we wander off. While we are away, You preserve our mansion with a patience that stretches into eternity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
463:What grace is meant to do is to help good people, not to escape their sufferings, but to bear them with a stout heart, with a fortitude that finds its strength in faith. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
464:Chapter 3. That the Romans Did Not Show Their Usual Sagacity When They Trusted that They Would Be Benefited by the Gods Who Had Been Unable to Defend Troy. And these ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
465:For the will cannot be forced into such iniquity by anything superior or equal to it, since that would be unjust; or by anything inferior to it, since that is impossible. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
466:Free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. Nevertheless, the free ranging flux of curiosity is channeled by discipline under Your Law. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
467:Tú me dirigías entonces con secretos movimientos de tu providencia y, poco a poco, ibas poniendo ante mis ojos mis funestos errores, para que los viera y los aborreciera. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
468:I fear my own self-deception, for my corrupt heart lies even to itself. I offer no defense against Your judgment, for if You, Lord, kept a record of sins, who could stand? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
469:Cicero, Hortensius, teaching that happiness is not found in physical pleasures of luxurious food, drink, and sex, but in a dedication of the mind to the discovery of truth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
470:Do not be afraid to throw yourself on the Lord! He will not draw back and let you fall! Put your worries aside and throw yourself on him; He will welcome you and heal you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
471:Music, that is the science or the sense of proper modulation, is likewise given by God's generosity to mortals having rational souls in order to lead them to higher things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
472:... The soul which is led by God and His wisdom, rather than by bodily concupiscence, will certainly never consent to the desire aroused in its own flesh by another's lust. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
473:To whatever the soul of man turns, unless toward God, it cleaves to sorrow, even though the things outside God and outside itself to which it turns may be things of beauty. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
474:When consent takes the form of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is called desire. When consent takes the form of enjoying the things we wish, this is called joy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
475:All the dancer's gestures are signs of things, and the dance is called rational, because it aptly signifies and displays something over and above the pleasure of the senses. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
476:Just as truly as the Confessions are the autobiography of St. Augustine, The City of God is the autobiography of the Church written by the most Catholic of her great saints. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
477:Music, that is the science or the sense of proper modulation, is likewise given by God's generosity to mortals having rational souls in order to lead them to higher things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
478:Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
479:The throne of wisdom is the soul of the righteous, that is, wisdom sits on the soul of the righteous as on her chair, as on her throne, and there judges whatever she judges. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
480:Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
481:He (Scipio of Rome) did not consider that republic flourishing whose walls stand, but whose morals are in ruins. -- City of God, Book 1, argument #34 on The Overthrow of Rome ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
482: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
483:I write because I've made progress and I make progress because I write.
(i.e. I write as I learn and I learn as I write)
St. Augustine of Hippo
(354 - 430 A.D.) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
484:Evidently there is difficulty, real difficulty, in learning a foreign language at all, as if it sprinkled all the sweet flavor of the Greek mythical stories with a foul taste. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
485:Fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum
est cor nostrum donec
resquiescat
in Te.
(You have made us for you, and our heart is in turmoil until it finds its rest in you) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
486:Radost koju daje svijet isprazna je. Očekujemo je s velikom željom, no kada dođe, ne zadržavamo je. Tuga onoga tko trpi nepravdu bolja je od radosti onoga koji čini bezakonje. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
487: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? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
488:so strong is that bond of fellowship in married persons, that, although it be tied for the sake of begetting children, not even for the sake of begetting children is it loosed. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
489:He who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice nor love the vice because of the man. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
490:Ein Zeichen ist nämlich ein Ding, das bewirkt, dass außer seiner äußeren Erscheinung, die es den Sinnen einprägt, irgendetwas anderes aus ihm selbst im Nachdenken ausgelöst wird. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
491:How high a price we pay for the burden of habit! I am fitted for life here where I do not want to be, I want to live there but am unfit for it, and on both counts I am miserable. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
492:I see not how the man can have permission to marry another, in case he have left an adulteress, when a woman has not to be married to another, in case she have left an adulterer. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
493:I write because I've made progress and I make progress because I write.
(i.e. I write as I learn and I learn as I write)
St. Augustine of Hippo
(354 - 430 A.D.) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
494: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
495:And how shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord, since, when I call for Him, I shall be calling Him to myself? and what room is there within me, whither my God can come into me? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
496: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
497:Our city must remember that in the ranks of its enemies, lie hid fellow citizens to be, and that it is well to bear with them until we can reach them in their profession of faith. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
498:I write because I've made progress and I make progress because I write."
(i.e. I write as I learn and I learn as I write)
St. Augustine of Hippo
(354 - 430 A.D.) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
499:La soberbia remeda a la excelencia, siendo así que sólo tú eres excelso y, la ambición busca los honores y la gloria, cuando sólo tú eres glorioso y merecedor de eternas alabanzas. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
500:Seek what ye seek; but it is not there where ye seek. Ye seek a blessed life in the land of death; it is not there. For how should there be a blessed life where life itself is not? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
501:But man did not so fall away94 as to become absolutely nothing; but being turned towards himself, his being became more contracted than it was when he clave to Him who supremely is. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
502:It is my faith that calls to you, Lord, the faith which you gave me and made to live in me through the merits of your Son, who became man, and through the ministry of your preacher. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
503:The bodies of irrational animals are bent toward the ground, whereas man was made to walk erect with his eyes on heaven, as though to remind him to keep his thoughts on things above. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
504:You can easily see what and endless, wearisome and fruitless task it would be if I were to refute all the unconsidered objections of people who pigheadly contradict everything I say. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
505:En lo que pecaba yo entonces era en buscar en mí mismo y en las demás criaturas, no en él, los deleites, grandezas y verdades, por lo que caía luego en dolores, confusiones y errores. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
506:It would have been more profitable to love the sun in the sky, which at least our eyes perceive truly, than those chimeras offered to a mind that had been led astray through its eyes. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
507:The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but - what is worse - the slave of as many masters as he has vices. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
508:The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but- what is worse - the slave of as many masters as he has vices. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
509:What do you think you are doing by infesting the whole world? Because I do it with one puny boat, I am called a pirate; because you do it with a great fleet, you are called an emperor. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
510:Neither were they afraid of its being said to them, Why do you exhort us, and why do you rebuke us, if no good thing that we have is from us, and if our hearts are not in our own power? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
511:No en comilonas y embriagueces ,no en lechos y en liviandades, no en contiendas y emulaciones, sino revestíos de nuestro Señor Jesucristo y no cuidéis de la carne con demasiados deseos. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
512: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
513:You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
514:if we are wayfarers who want to return home, then we must see the world as a means of transportation (terestibus vel marinis vehiculis) and always remember to distinguish the means and ends. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
515:People go to admire lofty mountains, and huge breakers at sea, and crashing waterfalls, and vast stretches of ocean, and the dance of the stars, but they leave themselves behind out of sight. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
516:Porque esta misma pasión, que en la edad escolar tiene por objeto nueces, pelotas y pajaritos, en las edades posteriores, para prefectos y reyes, es ambición de oro, de tierras y de esclavos. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
517:When men cannot communicate their thoughts to each other, simply because of difference of language, all the similarity of their common human nature is of no avail to unite them in fellowship. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
518:Y si todas estas cosas que de Cristo se dicen fueran falsas, todo lo demás naufragaría en la mentira y no quedaría en los sagrados Libros ninguna esperanza de salvación para el género humano. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
519:For what am I to myself without Thee, but a guide to mine own downfall? Or what am I even at the best, but one sucking Thy milk, [268] and feeding upon Thee, the meat that perisheth not? [269] ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
520:The good Christian should beware of mathematicians. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
521:Yet when it happens to me that the music moves me more than the subject of the song, I confess myself to commit a sin deserving punishment, and then I would prefer not to have heard the singer. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
522:If two friends ask you to judge a dispute, don't accept, because you will lose one friend; on the other hand, if two strangers come with the same request, accept because you will gain one friend. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
523: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
524:El que no tiene mujer se preocupa de las cosas de Dios y de cómo agradarle; pero el que está unido en matrimonio se preocupa de las cosas del mundo y de cómo agradar a su mujer" (1Co 7, 28.32.33). ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
525:I heard Your voice from on high. "I am the food of the fully grown. Grow and you will feed on me. And you will not change Me into you, like the food of flesh eats. But you will be changed into Me. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
526: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
527:El bien que amáis proviene de él, pero sólo es bueno y suave en cuanto está en relación a él; pero justamente será amargo si, habiendo abandonado a Dios, injustamente se amare lo que de él procede. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
528:Oh, God, to know you is life. To serve You is freedom. To praise you is the soul's joy and delight. Guard me with the power of Your grace here and in all places. Now and at all times, forever. Amen. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
529:The garden of the Lord, brethren, includes – yes, it truly includes – includes not only the roses of martyrs but also the lilies of virgins, and the ivy of married people, and the violets of widows. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
530:What could be more hapless than a man controlled by his own creations? It is surely easier for a man to cease to be a man by worshiping man-made gods than for idols to become divine by being adored. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
531:If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
532:There could be nothing more fortunate for human affairs than that by the mercy of God they who are endowed with true piety of life if they have the skill for ruling people should also have the power. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
533:For no wisdom is true wisdom if it does not direct all its prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice towards that final state where God shall be all in all in an assured eternity and perfect peace. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
534:The good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world's happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
535:Though you hale my body to that place, and there set me, can you force me also to turn my mind or my eyes to those shows? I shall then be absent while present, and so shall overcome both you and them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
536:It is not that we keep His commandments first and that then He loves but that He loves us and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace which is revealed to the humble but hidden from the proud. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
537:Time was also (as an infant) I knew no Latin; but this I learned without fear or suffering, by mere observation, amid the caresses of my nursery and jests of friends, smiling and sportively encouraging me. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
538:True inner righteousness does not judge according to custom but by the measure of the most perfect law of God Almighty by which the mores of various places and times were adapted to those places and times. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
539:Hence words are learnt; hence eloquence is to be attained, most necessary to persuade people to your way of thinking, and to unfold your opinions." So, in truth, we should never have understood these words, ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
540:How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
541:Kötülüğün iyilikten yoksun kalmak olduğunu bilmiyordum. İyilikten yoksun kalmak hiçliğe götürür. Ben, maddi olandan ötesini göremeyen gözlerimle, hayallerin ötesini göremeyen aklımla bunu nasıl görebilirdim? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
542:Their irreligious pride makes them withdraw from you and eclipse your great light from reaching themselves. They can foresee a future eclipse of the sun, but do not perceive their own eclipse in the present. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
543:To sum up, I would not exist, my God, I would not exist at all, unless you existed in me. Or is it rather that I would not exist unless I existed in you, from whom, through whom, in whom, everything exists?*8 ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
544: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. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
545:So anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
546:Sprawiedliwości i niewinności pragnę, pięknych i jasnych dla oczu czystych, ich pragnę, które im bardziej sycą, tym bardziej się ich pożąda. W nich jest spokój pewny, w nich jest życie, którego nic nie zakłóci. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
547:Tú enjugas con blandura sus lágrimas, para que lloren todavía más y en su llanto se gocen. Porque tú, Señor, no eres un hombre de carne y sangre; eres el creador que los hiciste y que los restauras y consuelas. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
548:Era yo miserable, como lo es toda alma prisionera del amor de las cosas temporales, que se siente despedazar cuando las pierde, sintiendo entonces su miseria, por la que es miserable aun antes de que las pierda. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
549:No man has a right to lead such a life of contemplation as to forget in his own ease the service due his neighbor; nor has any man a right to be so immersed in active life as to neglect the contemplation of God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
550:There are others whose concept of God, such as it is, ascribes to him the nature and moods of the human spirit, a mistake which ties their arguments about God to distorted and misleading rules of interpretation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
551:Tu hoy es la eternidad; por eso engendraste coeterno a ti a aquel a quien dijiste: Yo te he engendrado hoy. Tú hiciste todos los tiempos, y tú eres antes de todos ellos; ni hubo un tiempo en que no había tiempo. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
552:Tanto è il potere che ha sulla mia carne un'illusione, un'immagine della mia mente, che quando dormo delle false visioni acquistano su di me una forza di suggestione quale da sveglio non hanno neppure quelle vere. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
553:For sin bust be punished either by the penitent sinner or by God, his judge; and God, who has promised pardon to the penitent sinner, has nowhere promised to one who delays his conversion a morrow to do penance in. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
554:So when someone happens to consult the pages of a poet whose verses and intention are concerned with a quite different subject, in a wonderful way a verse often emerges appropriate to the decision under discussion. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
555:What is reprehensible is that while leading good lives themselves and abhorring those of wicked men, some, fearing to offend, shut their eyes to evil deeds instead of condemning them and pointing out their malice. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
556:Woe to my proud soul, which hoped that if it fell away from you, it would have something better! It turned and turned again upon its back and sides and belly, but all places were hard to it, for you alone are rest. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
557:For this reason no intelligent student of history could doubt that Cain could have founded not only some sort of a city but even a large one, at a time when the lives of mortals were prolonged to so great an age. But ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
558:If God had designed woman as man's master, he would have taken her from his head; if as his slave, he would have taken her from his feet; but as he designed her for his companion and equal, he took her from his side. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
559:Se nós retemos na memória aquilo que nos lembramos, e se nos é impossível, ao ouvir a palavra esquecimento, compreender o que ela significa, a não ser que nos lembremos, conclui-se que a memória retém o esquecimento. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
560:All these last offices and ceremonies that concern the dead, the careful funeral arrangements, and the equipment of the tomb, and the pomp of obsequies, are rather the solace of the living than the comfort of the dead. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
561:A ti no te pierde sino el que te abandona. Y el que te deja, ¿a dónde va, a dónde huye sino de ti benévolo a ti enojado? ¿Y en dónde no encontrará tu ley en su propia pena? Pues tu ley es la verdad y la Verdad eres tú. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
562:a thing is good and pleasant only because it is connected to Him. Use it apart from its Source, and it will come to taste bitter. Since the good thing is His, how can it remain worth loving if you forsake Him to get it? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
563:C'est ce qui change en amertume les douceurs dont nous jouissions auparavant. C'est ce qui noit notre coeur dans vos larmes, et fait que la perte de la vie de ceux qui meurent devient la mort de ceux qui restent en vie. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
564:si en confessant l’existence de Dieu il lui refuse la prescience, cela revient encore à dire avec l’insensé dont parle l’Ecriture : Il n’y a point de Dieu. En effet, celui qui ne connaît point l’avenir n’est point Dieu. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
565:There are many going afar to marvel at the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the long courses of great rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the movements of the stars, yet they leave themselves unnoticed! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
566:To the divine providence it has seemed good to prepare in the world to come for the righteous good things, which the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and for the wicked evil things, by which the good shall not be tormented. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
567:Pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation - when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
568:But if you do not wish to die of thirst in the desert, drink charity. This is the fountain the Lord has willed to place here, lest we faint on the way, and we shall drink it more abundantly when we come to the Fatherland. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
569:Man himself is a great deep, whose very hairs Thou numberest, O Lord, and they fall not to the ground without Thee. And yet are the hairs of his head easier to be numbered than his feelings, and the beatings of his heart. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
570:What therefore have I to do with men that they should hear my confessions, as if it were they who would cure all that is evil in me?9 Men are a race curious to know of other men’s lives, but slothful to correct their own. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
571:You are not blamed for your unwilling ignorance, but because you fail to ask about what you do not know.... For no one is prevented from leaving behind the disadvantage of ignorance and seeking the advantage of knowledge. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
572:However, if you look at the matter more closely, you will scarcely call it greatness of soul, which prompts a man to kill himself rather than bear up against some hardships of fortune, or sins m which he is not implicated. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
573:I held back my heart from all assent, fearing to fall headlong, and died all the more from that suspense.5 I wished to be made just as certain of things that I could not see, as I was certain that seven and three make ten. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
574:What is pride but an appetite for inordinate exaltation? Now, exaltation is inordinate when the soul cuts itself off from the very Source to which it should keep close and somehow makes itself and becomes an end to itself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
575:si conocen a Dios no lo glorifican como a Dios ni le dan gracias, sino que se desvanecen en sus propios pensamientos y se les oscurece el corazón; mientras dicen ser sabios, se convierten en necios (Mt 11, 19 y Rm 1, 21-22). ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
576:And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
577:He who loves the coming of the Lord is not he who affirms that it is far off, nor is it he who says it is near, but rather he who, whether it be far off or near, awaits it with sincere faith, steadfast hope, and fervent love. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
578:People are moved to wonder by mountain peaks,13 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. They ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
579:Shall any be his own artificer? or can there elsewhere be derived any vein, which may stream essence and life into us, save from thee, O Lord, in whom essence and life are one? for Thou Thyself art supremely Essence and Life. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
580: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 itself! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
581:I was unhappy and so is every soul unhappy which is tied to its love for mortal things; when it loses them, it is torn in pieces, and it is then that it comes to realize the unhappiness which was there even before it lost them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
582: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 nations. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
583: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 degree. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
584:What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
585:Com efeito, não só o ir ao céu mas também o atingi-lo não são mais que o querer ir, mas um querer forte e total, não uma vontade tíbia que anda e desanda daqui para ali, que luta entre si, erguendo-se num lado e caindo no outro. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
586:Eu, ainda que diante de Vós me despreze e me tenha em conta de terra e cinza, sei de Vós algumas coisas que não conheço de mim [...]. Sei que em nada podeis ser prejudicado, mas ignoro a que tentações posso ou não posso resistir. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
587:I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
588:Ninguém se deve ter por seguro nesta vida que toda ela se chama tentação. Quem é que, sendo pior, não se pode tornar melhor, e de melhor descer a pior? Só há uma única esperança, uma única promessa inabalável: Vossa misericórdia. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
589:Every soul is wretched that becomes bound in friendship to perishable things. The soul is torn apart when the thing loved is lost. The wretchedness was perhaps always there, masked by the beloved thing that has been stripped away. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
590:I inquired what wickedness is, and I didn't find a substance, but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance – You oh God – towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matter. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
591:... 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 by greater licence in wickedness; ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
592:Does God proclaim Himself in the wonders of creation? No. All things proclaim Him, all things speak. Their beauty is the voice by which they announce God, by which they sing, "It is you who made me beautiful, not me myself but you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
593:There is a joy that brings true happiness, but it is not given to the ungodly. It is only for those who love You for Your own sake. That joy is to know You as You are. This is the happy life, to rejoice in You, of You, and for You. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
594:[T]hey feel no shame that they themselves are evil amid the things they praise as good. They are more pained if their villa is poor than if their life is bad, as though man's greatest good were to have everything good except himself ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
595:But Augustine seems to have perceived, though he never explicitly defined this perception, that it is of the essence of Christian truth to be dramatic, to be an encounter cast in dramatic form between God revealing and man believing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
596:For dismissed by You from Paradise, and having taken my journey into a far country, I cannot by myself return, unless Thou meetest the wanderer: for my return has throughout the whole tract of this world's time waited for Your mercy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
597:No te acercas sino a los de corazón contrito, ni te dejas encontrar por los soberbios por más que en su curiosidad y pericia sean capaces de contar las estrellas y conocer y medir los caminos de los astros por las regiones siderales. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
598: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 correct their own. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
599:And if all could with one voice be asked whether they wished to be happy, there is no doubt they would all answer that they would. And this would not be possible unless the thing itself, which we call "happiness", were held in memory. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
600:God. For they had not the insight to see that I might put the lessons which they forced me to learn to any other purpose than the satisfaction of man's insatiable desire for the poverty he calls wealth and the infamy he knows as fame. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
601:You called and shouted and burst my deafness. You flashed, shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors, and I drew in breath and panted for You. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
602:For I am aware what ability is requisite to persuade the proud how great is the virtue of humility, which raises us, not by a quite human arrogance, but by a divine grace, above all earthly dignities that totter on this shifting scene. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
603:Or, la vraie religion n’est point une institution de quelque cité de la terre ; c’est elle qui forme la Cité céleste, et elle est inspirée par le vrai Dieu, arbitre de la vie éternelle, qui enseigne lui-même la vérité à ses adorateurs. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
604:no era conveniente celebrar aquel entierro con quejas lastimeras y gemidos, con los cuales se suele frecuentemente llorar la miseria de los que mueren o su total extinción; y ella ni había muerto miserablemente ni había muerto del todo; ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
605:Now the fact that they will be unable to delight in sin does not entail that they will have no free will. In fact, the will will be the freer in that it is freed from a delight in sin and immovably fixed in a delight in not sinning. The ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
606: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 forsaken Thy creation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
607:and even now we labor in our residual gloom, until in your only Son we become your righteousness; for that righteousness is like God's high and holy mountains, while your judgments, which were all the being we then had, are like the deep. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
608:see me as I am and do not praise me for more than I am, here believe nothing else about me but my own testimony.....And if something in me pleases you, here praise Him with me--him whom I desire to be praised on my account and not myself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
609:Augustine taught that true freedom is not choice or lack of constraint, but being what you are meant to be. Humans were created in the image of God. True freedom, then, is not found in moving away from that image but only in living it out. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
610:But Thou who fillest all things, fillest Thou them with Thy whole self? or, since all things cannot contain Thee wholly, do they contain part of Thee? and all at once the same part? or each its own part, the greater more, the smaller less? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
611:Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
612:You are God and Lord of all you have created. In you are the constant causes of inconstant things. All mutable things have in you their immutable origins. In you all irrational and temporal things have the everlasting causes of their life. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
613:This joy in God is not like any pleasure found in physical or intellectual satisfaction. Nor is it such as a friend experiences in the presence of a friend. But, if we are to use any such analogy, it is more like the eye rejoicing in light. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
614:What matters it to me if someone does not understand this? Let him too rejoice and say, “What is this?” Let him rejoice even at this, and let him love to find you while not finding it out, rather than, while finding it out, not to find you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
615:Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
616:Faith will falter if the authority of holy scripture is shaken; and if faith falters, love itself decays. For if someone lapses in his faith, he inevitably lapses in his love as well, since he cannot love what he does not believe to be true. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
617:Hence, you see your faith, you see your doubt, you see your desire and will to learn, and when you are induced by divine authority to believe what you do not see, you see at one that you believe these things; you analyze and discern all this. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
618:What I needed most was to love and to be loved, eager to be caught. Happily I wrapped those painful bonds around me; and sure enough, I would be lashed with the red-hot pokers of jealousy, by suspicions and fear, by burst of anger and quarrels ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
619:Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you…. The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
620:Sorrow is permitted human beings, but it is not to be desired if we would be like You, Lord God. For You, who love souls far more purely than we and feel a perfect pity for others, are wounded, yet without sorrow. How can we be like You in this? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
621:I looked with longing at honors, wealth, and marriage, and you laughed at me. Amidst such desires I suffered most bitter troubles, but your mercy was so much the greater according as you let nothing prove sweet to me that was apart from yourself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
622: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 it, I still searched for it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
623:He used to say that it was no wonder if from the human soul, by some higher instinct that does not know what goes on within itself, some utterance emerges not by art but by ‘chance’ which is in sympathy with the affairs or actions of the inquirer.7 ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
624: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 what truth reveals as lower. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
625:And man, being a part of Thy creation, desires to praise Thee, man, who bears about with him his mortality, the witness of his sin, even the witness that Thou "resistest the proud," [122] --yet man, this part of Thy creation, desires to praise Thee. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
626:Let the Lord your God be your hope – seek for nothing else from him, but let him himself be your hope. There are people who hope from him riches or perishable and transitory honours, in short they hope to get from God things which are not God himself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
627:For He foreknew the remnant which He should make so according to the election of grace. That is, therefore, He predestinated them; for without doubt He foreknew if He predestinated; but to have predestinated is to have foreknown that which He should do. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
628:For often we wickedly blind ourselves to the occasions of teaching and admonishing them, sometimes even of reprimanding and chiding them, either because we shrink from the labor or are ashamed to offend them, or because we fear to lose good friendships, ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
629:Todos deben ser amados igualmente, pero cuando no se puede socorrer a todos, ante todo se ha de mirar por el bien de aquellos que, conforme a las circunstancias de lugares y tiempos de cada cosa, se hallan más unidos a ti como por una especie de suerte. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
630:You, my soul’s excellent mate, go into her and make her suitable to yourself, so that you can keep her and possess her without her having a spot or wrinkle.* 3 This is my hope: it is why I speak,* 4 and in this hope I feel whatever wholesome joy I feel. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
631:You they served me up the sun and the moon, beautiful works of Yours, but works of Yours all the same and not Yourself: not even Your mightiest works. For Your spiritual creation is greater than these material things, brilliantly as they shine in the sky. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
632: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 said, I fill heaven and Earth? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
633:In order, then, to our performance of good works, let us not have hope in man, making strong the flesh of our arm; nor let our heart ever depart from the Lord, but let it say to him, “Be Thou my helper; forsake me not, nor despise me, O God of my salvation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
634:O mortals, how long will you be heavy-hearted? Life has come down to you, and are you reluctant to ascend and live? But what room is there for you to ascend, you with your high-flown ways and lofty talk? Come down, that you may ascend, ascend even to God... ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
635:So you see how endlessly futile and fruitless it would be if we wanted to refute their objections every time they obstinately resolved not to think through what they say but merely to speak, just so long as they contradict our arguments in any way they can. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
636:Thus the quarrel that arose between Remus and Romulus demonstrated the division of the earthly city against itself; while the conflict between Cain and Abel displayed the hostility between the two cities themselves, the City of God and the city of men. Thus ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
637:Claramente tú respondes, pero no todos oyen claramente. Todos te consultan sobre lo que quieren, mas no todos oyen siempre lo que quieren. Optimo ministro tuyo es el que no atiende tanto a oír de ti lo que él quisiera cuanto a querer aquello que de ti oyere. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
638:For no one ought to consider anything as his own, except perhaps what is false. All truth is of Him who says, "I am the truth." [1715] For what have we that we did not receive? and if we have received it, why do we glory, as if we had not received it? [1716] ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
639: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 than the marks of affectionate good will. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
640:Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.” ― Saint Augustine of Hippo ~ Christopher Smith, #NFDB
641:But every one of these qualities are gifts of my God: I did not give them to myself. They are good qualities, and their totality is my self. Therefore he who made me is good, and he is my good, and I exult to him, for all the good things that I was even as a boy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
642: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 complete conversion may be brought about in us. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
643:You were always present, angry and merciful at once, strewing the pangs of bitterness over all my lawless pleasures to lead me to look for others unallied with pain. You meant me to find them nowhere but in yourself, O Lord, for... you smite so that you may heal. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
644:The reader of these reflections of mine on the Trinity should bear in mind that my pen is on the watch against the sophistries of those who scorn the starting-point of faith, and allow themselves to be deceived through an unseasonable and misguided love of reason. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
645:...if the republic is the good of the people, and there is no people if it be not associated by a common acknowledgment of right, and if there is no right where there is no justice, then most certainly it follows that there is no republic where there is no justice. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
646:I acknowledge Thee, Lord of heaven and earth, and praise Thee for my first rudiments of being, and my infancy, whereof I remember nothing; for Thou hast appointed that man should from others guess much as to himself; and believe much on the strength of weak females. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
647:People travel to wonder
at the height of the mountains,
at the huge waves of the seas,
at the long course of the rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars,
and yet they pass by themselves
without wondering. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
648:Always add, always walk, always proceed; neither stand still, nor go back, nor deviate; he that standeth still proceedeth not; he goeth back that continueth not; he deviateth that revolteth; he goeth better that creepeth in his way than he that moveth out of his way. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
649:In the first dawning of my youth, I begged of Thee chastity, but by halves, miserable wretch that I am; I said, "Give me chastity, but not yet," afraid that Thou tightest hear me too soon, and heal me of the disease which I wished to have satisfied rather than cured. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
650: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 rid it of these things? There is no one but you ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
651:Love all men, even your enemies; love them, not because they are your brothers, but that they may become your brothers. Thus you will ever burn with fraternal love, both for him who is already your brother and for your enemy, that he may by loving become your brother. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
652: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 rid it of these things? There is no one but you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
653: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 habitation oppresses a mind teeming with thoughts. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
654:How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose..! You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place.... O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
655:It is the common experience, after all, that things that are well written are not only read with enjoyment by those who come to them for the first time, but also do not fail to be enjoyed when read again by those who know them and whose memory of them has not faded away. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
656:I think I have now, by God's help, discharged my obligation in writing this large work. Let those who think I have said too little, or those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough join me in giving thanks to God. Amen. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
657:It is the duty, therefore, of the eloquent churchman, when he is trying to persuade the people about something that has to be done, not only to teach, in order to instruct them; not only to delight, in order to hold them; but also to sway, in order to conquer and win them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
658:And yet, will we ever come to an end of discussion and talk if we think we must always reply to replies? For replies come from those who either cannot understand what is said to them, or are so stubborn and contentious that they refuse to give in even if they do understand. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
659:For God would never have created any human beings, let alone any angels, whose future evil he foreknew, if he had not known equally well how he would put them to use for the good and so adorn the course of the ages, like the most beautiful poem, with antitheses of a sort.[39] ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
660:There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
661:And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For “pride is the beginning of sin.”92 And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
662:I probably felt more resentment for what I personally was to suffer than for the wrong they were doing to anyone and everyone. But at that time I was determined not to put up with badly behaved people more out of my own interest than because I wanted them to become good people. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
663: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 memories. [quoted in Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, p. 54] ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
664:analytically; or even to defend it upon grounds of reason. The keen Dr. South expresses the common sentiment, when he remarks that "as he that denies this fundamental article of the Christian religion may lose his soul, so he that much strives to understand it may lose his wits. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
665:And when compliance was not forthcoming, either because people didn’t understand me or wouldn’t do something to my disadvantage, I was wrathful that my elders wouldn’t submit themselves to me, and that free people wouldn’t be my slaves, and I wreaked vengeance on them—by crying. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
666:Quem pode duvidar que vive e entende, e que julga? se duvida, vive; se duvida, entende que duvida; se duvida é porque quer ter certeza; se duvida, pensa; se duvida, sabe que não sabe; se duvida, julga que convém não prestar um assentimento temerário.
(De Trinitate, livro X) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
667:So speak that I may hear, Lord, my heart is listening; open it that it may hear Thee say to my soul I am Thy salvation. Hearing that word, let me come in haste to lay hold upon Thee. Hide not Thy face from me.19 Let me see Thy face even if I die,20 lest I die with longing to see it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
668:Why does a man like to be made sad by viewing doleful and tragic scenes, which he himself could not by any means endure? Yet, as a spectator, he wishes to experience from them a sense of grief, and in this very sense of grief his pleasure consists. What is this but wretched madness? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
669:This is the sacrifice of Christians: we, being many, are one body in Christ. And this also is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, known to the faithful, in which she teaches that she herself is offered in the offering she makes to God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
670:If you find physical pleasure in earthly experiences, use the occasion to praise God for these gifts. Turn your love not on the pleasures but toward their Maker.3 Otherwise, the things that please you will cause you to displease. Love those souls that please you, but love them in God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
671:. . . I would learn to discern and distinguish the difference between presumption and confession, between those who see what the goal is but not how to get there and those who see the way which leads to the home of bliss, not merely as an end to be perceived but as a realm to live in. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
672:The deformity of Christ forms you. If he had not willed to be deformed, you would not have recovered the form which you had lost. Therefore he was deformed when he hung on the cross. But his deformity is our comeliness. In this life, therefore, let us hold fast to the deformed Christ. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
673:Nunca nuevo, nunca viejo; todo lo renuevas, pero haces envejecer a los soberbios sin que ellos se den cuenta. Siempre activo, pero siempre quieto; todo lo recoges, pero nada te hace falta. Todo lo creas, lo sustentas y lo llevas a perfección. Eres un Dios que busca, pero nada necesita. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
674:¡Oh Dios de las virtudes, conviértenos a ti, muéstranos tu rostro y seremos salvos! (Sal 79, 4). Porque a dondequiera que se vuelva el alma del hombre fuera de ti, queda fincada en el dolor, aunque se detenga en cosas bellas fuera de ti y fuera de él mismo, cosas que sin ti nada serían. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
675:For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next...They are set up on the course of their existence, and the faster they climb towards its zenith, the more they hasten towards the point where they exist no more. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
676:Do you know who the upright of heart are? They are those who wish what God wishes. Therefore, do not try to twist God's will to you own but correct your will to that of God. The will of God is a rule of conduct. By it you have the means of being converted and of correcting your evil ways. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
677:I myself have had a good deal to say on those subjects in previous books,1 basing my statements on holy Scripture; what I said there was either what I found stated in Scripture or what I could infer from scriptural statements, always keeping in conformity with the authority of the Bible. A ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
678:Haz pues, Señor, que yo te busque y te invoque; y que te invoque creyendo en ti, pues ya he escuchado tu predicación. Te invoca mi fe. Esa fe que tú me has dado, que infundiste en mi alma por la humanidad de tu Hijo, por el ministerio de aquel que tú nos enviaste para que nos hablara de ti. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
679:recorriendo con la memoria, llena de amargura, aquellos mis caminos perversísimos, para que tú me seas dulce, dulzura sin engaño, dichosa y eterna dulzura, y me recojas de la dispersión en que anduve dividido en partes cuando, apartado de la unidad, que eres tú, me desvanecí en muchas cosas. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
680:C’est pourquoi l’homme de bien dans tes fers est libre, tandis que le méchant est esclave jusque sur le trône ; et il n’est pas esclave d’un seul homme, mais il a autant de maîtres que de vices. L’Ecriture veut parler de ces maîtres, quand elle dit « Chacun est esclave de celui qui l’a vaincu ». ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
681: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 and so concede that there is no palace where one can entirely escape from you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
682:Angosta es la casa de mi alma para que vengas a ella: sea ensanchada por ti. Ruinosa está: repárala. Hay en ella cosas que ofenden tus ojos: lo confieso y lo sé; pero ¿quién la limpiará o a quién otro clamaré fuera de ti: De los pecados ocultos líbrame, Señor, y de los ajenos perdona a tu siervo? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
683:Now in my opinion it is certainly a complete mistake to suppose that no narrative of events in this type of literature has any significance beyond the purely historical record; but it is equally rash to maintain that every single statement in those books is a complex of allegorical meanings. That ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
684:For, Thou art righteous, O Lord, but we have sinned and committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and Thy hand is grown heavy upon us, and we are justly delivered over unto that ancient sinner, the king of death; because he persuaded our will to be like his will whereby he abode not in Thy truth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
685:Seeing that the compact of marriage is not done away by divorce intervening; so that they continue wedded persons one to another, even after separation; and commit adultery with those, with whom they shall be joined, even after their own divorce, either the woman with a man, or the man with a woman. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
686:...Since divine truth and scripture clearly teach us that God, the Creator of all things, is Wisdom, a true philosopher will be a lover of God. That does not mean that all who answer to the name are really in love with genuine wisdom, for it is one thing to be and another to be called a philosopher. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
687:But be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind; not now after your kind, as though following your neighbour who went before you, nor as living after the example of some better man (for Thou saidst not, "Let man be made after his kind," but, Let us make man after our own image and similitude), that ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
688:Te amaré, Señor, y te daré gracias y confesaré tu nombre por haberme perdonado tantas y tan nefastas acciones mías. A tu gracia y misericordia debo que hayas deshecho mis pecados como hielo y no haya caído en otros muchos. ¿Qué pecados realmente no pude yo cometer, yo, que amé gratuitamente el crimen? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
689:Why, then, do I set before You an ordered account of so many things? it's certainly not through me that You know them. But I'm stirring up love for You in myself and in those who read this so that we may all say, great is the Lord and highly worthy to be praised. I tell my story for love of Your love. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
690:For such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that, even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else, from boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal, and with talents greater than I possess, I would still be making progress in discovering their treasures. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
691:Tu, que queres conhecer-te a ti mesmo, sabes que existes?
- Sei.
De onde sabes?
- Não sei.
Sentes-te como um ser simples ou múltiplo?
- Não sei.
Sabes que te moves?
- Não sei.
Sabes que pensas?
- Sei.
Portanto, é verdade que pensas.
- Sim.
(Solilóquios, Livro II) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
692:If, on the contrary, they hear from you about themselves, they will be in no position to say, “The Lord is lying.” Is hearing the truth about oneself from you anything different from knowing oneself? And can anyone have this self-knowledge and still protest, “It is not true,” unless he himself is lying? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
693:Amidst these offences of foulness and violence, and so many iniquities, are sins of men, who are on the whole making proficiency; which by those that judge rightly, are, after the rule of perfection, discommended, yet the persons commended, upon hope of future fruit, as in the green blade of growing corn. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
694:For suicide we cannot cite the example of patriarchs, prophets, or apostles; though our Lord Jesus Christ, when He admonished them to flee from city to city if they were persecuted, might very well have taken that occasion to advise them to lay violent hands on themselves, and so escape their persecutors. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
695:Epistles; let them peruse the large number of precepts against avarice and luxury which are everywhere read to the congregations that meet for this purpose, and which strike the ear, not with the uncertain sound of a philosophical discussion, but with the thunder of God’s own oracle pealing from the clouds. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
696:Nevertheless, lest the will itself should be deemed capable of doing any good thing without the grace of God, after saying, “His grace within me was not in vain, but I have laboured more abundantly than they all,” he immediately added the qualifying clause, “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
697:Those who must inevitably die ought not to worry overmuch about what accident will cause their death, but about their destination after dying. Christians know that the death of a poor religious man, licked by the tongues of dogs, is far better than the death of a godless rich man, dressed in purple and linen. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
698:La sabiduría y la necedad se parecen a los alimentos, que son buenos unos y malos otros, pero se pueden unos y otros servir lo mismo en vasija de lujo que en vasos rústicos y corrientes. La sabiduría y la necedad pueden ofrecerse lo mismo con palabras cultas y escogidas que con expresiones corrientes y vulgares. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
699: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 measures and counts all its branches but neither owns it nor knows its creator nor loves him. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
700:Thy wilt carry us both when little, and even to grey hairs wilt thou carry us; for our firmness, when it is thou then it is firmness, and when it is ours, then it is infirmity. Our good lives always with Thee, from which when we are averted we are perverted. Let us now, O Lord, return, that we be not overturned. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
701:Augustin calls diligens negligentia was the best diligence as to that; while I was yet a very young man I had learned out of him that it was no solecism in a preacher to use ossum for os, for (saith he) an iron key is better than one made of gold if it will better open the door, for that is all the use of the key. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
702:Give me yourself, O my God, give yourself back to me. Lo, I love you, but if my love is too mean, let me love more passionately. I cannot gauge my love, nor know how far it fails, how much more love I need for my life to set its course straight into your arms, never swerving until hidden in the covert of your face. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
703:...Since the mind, which was meant to be reasonable and intelligent, has, by dark and inveterate vices, become too weak to adhere joyously to His unchangeable light (or even to bear it) until, by gradual renewal and healing, it is made fit for such happiness, its first need was to be instructed by faith and purified. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
704:Behold, now, how foolish it is, in so great an abundance of the truest opinions which can be extracted from these words, rashly to affirm which of them Moses particularly meant; and with pernicious contentions to offend charity itself, on account of which he hath spoken all the things whose words we endeavour to explain! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
705:Mas era necesario que el Mediador entre Dios y los hombres tuviese algo de común con Dios y algo de común con los hombres, no fuese que, siendo semejante en ambos extremos a los hombres, estuviese alejado de Dios; o, siendo semejante en ambos extremos a Dios, estuviese alejado de los hombres, y así no pudiera ser mediador. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
706:Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
707:¿A dónde vais pues, una vez y otra vez, por caminos difíciles y laboriosos? Buscad la paz que queréis encontrar; pero la paz no está en donde la andáis buscando. Pues, ¿cómo hablar de una vida feliz cuando ni siquiera es vida? Cristo, nuestra vida, bajó acá para llevarse nuestra muerte y matarla con la abundancia de su vida; ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
708:Between temporal and eternal things there is this difference: a temporal thing is loved more before we have it, and it begins to grow worthless when we gain it, for it does not satisfy the soul, whose true and certain rest is eternity; but the eternal is more ardently loved when it is acquired than when it is merely desired. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
709:Let us, on both sides, lay aside all arrogance. Let us not, on either side, claim that we have already discovered the truth. Let us seek it together as something which is known to neither of us. For then only may we seek it, lovingly and tranquilly, if there be no bold presumption that it is already discovered and possessed. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
710:Weaned from all passing fancies, let my soul praise You, O God, Creator of all. You did not allow my soul to remain attached to corruptible things with the glue of love, attached to what my senses find pleasing. For things we are attached to go where they will, then they cease, leaving the lover torn with corrupted longings. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
711:Now the Apostle, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says, "Knowledge inflates: but love edifies." The only correct inerpretation of this saying is that knowledge is valuable when charity informs it. Without charity, knowledge inflates; that is, it exalts man to an arrogance which is nothing but a kind of windy emptiness. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
712:He saith not, Our Father: in one sense, therefore, is He mine, in another sense, yours; by nature mine, by grace yours. "And my God, and your God." Nor did He say here, Our God: here, therefore, also is He in one sense mine, in another sense yours: my God; under whom I also am as man; your God, between whom and you I am mediator. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
713:But I am aware of some that murmur: What, say they, if all men should abstain from all sexual intercourse, whence will the human race exist? Would that all would this, only in charity out of a pure heart, and good conscience, and faith unfeigned; much more speedily would the City of God be filled, and the end of the world hastened. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
714:Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or to whom should I cry, save Thee? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
715:We have wandered far from God; and if we wish to return to our Father's home, this world must be used, not enjoyed, that so the invisible things of God may be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,—that is, that by means of what is material and temporary we may lay hold upon that which is spiritual and eternal. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
716:am inclined rather to approve the practice of singing in church, although I do not offer an irrevocable opinion on it, so that through the pleasure afforded the ears the weaker mind may rise to feelings of devotion. However, when it so happens that I am moved more by the singing than by what is sung, I confess that I have sinned, in ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
717:When the will abandons what is above itself and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil—not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked. Therefore it is not an inferior thing which has made the will evil, but it is itself which has become so by wickedly and inordinately desiring an inferior thing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
718:But I, a most wretched youth, most wretched from the very start of my youth, had even sought chastity from you, and had said, “Give me chastity and continence, but not yet!” For I feared that you would hear me quickly, and that quickly you would heal me of that disease of lust, which I wished to have satisfied rather than extinguished ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
719:Ó virtude da minha alma, entrai nela, adaptai-a a Vós, para a terdes e possuirdes sem mancha nem ruga. É esta a esperança com que falo, a esperança em que me alegro quando gozo de uma alegria sã. Os outros bens dessa vida, tanto menos se deveriam chorar, quanto mais os choramos; e tanto mais se deveria chorar, quanto menos os choramos. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
720:For, though the voices of the prophets were silent, the world itself, by its well-ordered changes and movements, and by the fair appearance of all visible things, bears a testimony of its own, both that it has been created, and also that it could not have been created save by God, whose greatness and beauty are unutterable and invisible. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
721:to entrust their city! O too, too piteous mistake! And they are enraged at us when we speak thus about their gods, though, so far from being enraged at their own writers, they part with money to learn what they say; and, indeed, the very teachers of these authors are reckoned worthy of a salary from the public purse, and of other honors. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
722: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 shoulders, people who have not worn themselves out with research, nor spent a decade and more reflecting on these questions. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
723:Je péchais donc enfant, en préférant ainsi la vanité à l’utile ; ou plutôt je haïssais l’utile et j’aimais la vanité. « Un et un sont deux, deux et deux quatre, » était pour moi une odieuse chanson ; et je ne savais pas de plus beau spectacle qu’un fantôme de cheval de bois rempli d’hommes armés, que l’incendie de Troie et l’ombre de Creuse ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
724:17. 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 would flourish and increase the great profit of the state; and liberty, the fit companion of virtue, would abide unfettered. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
725:But he does not enter into temptation if he conquers his evil concupiscence by good will. And yet the determination of the human will is insufficient, unless the Lord grant it victory in answer to prayer that it enter not into temptation. What, indeed, affords clearer evidence of the grace of God than the acceptance of prayer in any petition? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
726:So then do the sky and the earth hold you, since you fill them? Or do you fill them, with some left over, since they don’t hold you? And where do you pour back what remains of you after you’ve filled earth and sky? Or do you not need to be held within anything—you who contain everything, since the things you fill, you fill by containing them? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
727:The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind commands the hand to move, and it so easy that one hardly distinguishes the order from its execution. Yet mind is mind and hand is body. The mind orders the mind to will. The recipient of the order is itself, yet it does not perform it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
728:Therefore, since we were too weak to find the truth by pure reason, and for that cause we needed the authority of Holy Writ, I now began to believe that in no wise would you have given such surpassing authority throughout the whole world to that Scripture, unless you wished that both through it you be believed in and through it you be sought. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
729:With what destination in mind are you walking, endlessly, endlessly, on those hard paths of suffering? There's no rest where you're looking for it. Look for what you're looking for—but it's not there where you're looking. You're seeking a happy life in a land of death. It's not there. How can there be a happy life where there isn't even life? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
730:If anyone shall set the authority of Holy Writ against clear and manifest reason, he who does this knows not what he has undertaken; for he opposes to the truth not the meaning of the Bible, which is beyond his comprehension, but rather his own interpretation; not what is in the Bible, but what he has found in himself and imagines to be there. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
731:With what destination in mind are you walking, endlessly, endlessly, on those hard paths of suffering? There's no rest where you're looking for it. Look for what you're looking for--but it's not there where you're looking. You're seeking a happy life in a land of death. It's not there. How can there be a happy life where there isn't even life? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
732: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 the light and my face to the things it illuminated, and so no light played upon my own face, or on the eyes that perceived them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
733:Nothing being less accordant with the nature of God than to cast off the government of the world, leaving it to chance, and so to wink at the crimes of men that they may wanton with impunity in evil courses; it follows, that every man who indulges in security, after extinguishing all fear of divine judgment, virtually denies that there is a God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
734:See, those things go their way that others may succeed them, and that a whole may exist comprised of all its parts, though a lowly whole indeed. "But I," says the Word of God, "shall I depart to any place?" Fix your dwelling there, my soul, lay up there for safe-keeping whatever you have thence received, if only because you are weary of deceits. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
735:Our wound is serious, but the Physician is all-powerful. Does it seem to you so small a mercy that, while you were living in evil and sinning, He did not take away your life, but brought you to belief and forgave your sins? What I suffer is serious, but I trust the Almighty. I would despair of my mortal wound if i had not found so great Physician. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
736:The theater enchanted me with its images of my own miseries. Its plays added fuel to my fire. What makes someone want to be made sad? Why behold doleful tragedies, vicariously experiencing what does not have to be suffered? Yet the spectator wants to feel sorrow at the stories, and this very anguish is pleasure. This seems to be wretched insanity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
737:Having made man in His own image, a rational being, He meant him to be lord only over irrational beings: not man set over man, but man set over beasts... The first cause of servitude is sin, by which man is subjected to man by the bonds of his condition... But by that nature in which God formerly created man, nobody is slave either to man or to sin. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
738:itself. Therefore I contend not in judgment with Thee; for if Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall abide it? Yet suffer me to speak unto Thy mercy, me, dust and ashes. Yet suffer me to speak, since I speak to Thy mercy, and not to scornful man. Thou too, perhaps, despisest me, yet wilt Thou return and have compassion upon me. For ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
739:Por que é que a verdade gera ódio? Por que é que os homens têm como inimigo aquele que prega a verdade, se amam a vida feliz que é mais que a alegria vinda da verdade? Talvez por amarem de tal modo a verdade que todos os que amam outra coisa querem que o que amam seja verdade. Como não querem ser enganados, não se querem convencer que estão em erro. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
740:Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
741:For the most part, we hesitate to instruct, to admonish, and, as occasion demands, to correct, and even to reprehend them. This we do either because the effort wearies us, or we fear offending them, or we avoid antagonizing them lest they thwart or harm us in those temporal matters where our cupidity ever seeks to acquire or our faint hearts fear to lose. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
742:Si te agradan las almas, ámalas en Dios, porque, si bien son mudables, fijas en él, permanecerán; de otro modo desfallecerían y perecerían. Ámalas, pues, en él y arrastra contigo hacia él a cuantos puedas y diles: «A éste amemos»; él es el que ha hecho estas cosas y no está lejos de aquí. Porque no las hizo y se fue, sino que proceden de él y en él están. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
743:Now Cain (whose name means ‘possession’) is the founder of the earthly city, and Enoch (‘dedication’) is the son in whose name the city was founded. This indicates that this city has its beginning and end on this earth, where there is no hope of anything beyond what can be seen in this world. In contrast with him is Seth, whose name means ‘resurrection’. He ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
744:still the teachings of the philosophers are not the commandments of the gods, but the discoveries of men, who, at the prompting of their own speculative ability, made efforts to discover the hidden laws of nature, and the right and wrong in ethics, and in dialectic what was consequent according to the rules of logic, and what was inconsequent and erroneous. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
745:The wisdom of what a person says is in direct proportion to his progress in learning the holy scriptures--and I am not speaking of intensive reading or memorization, but real understanding and careful investigation of their meaning. Some people read them but neglect them; by their reading they profit in knowledge, by their neglect they forfeit understanding. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
746:Watch, O Lord,
with those who wake,
or watch or weep tonight,
and give your angels charge
over those who sleep.
Tend your sick ones,
O Lord Jesus Christ;
rest your weary ones;
bless your dying ones;
soothe your suffering ones;
pity your afflicted ones;
shield your joyous ones;
and all for your love's sake.
Amen. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
747:For great are you, Lord, and you look kindly on what is humble, but the lofty-minded you regard from afar. Only to those whose hearts are crushed do you draw close. You will not let yourself be found by the proud, nor even by those who in their inquisitive skill count stars or grains of sand, or measure the expanses of heaven, or trace the paths of the planets. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
748:It is not without significance that Hebrew was the language used by Abraham, and that he could not hand it on to all his descendants but only to those who were derived from him through Jacob, and by uniting to form the people of God in the most evident and conspicuous fashion, were able to keep the covenants and to preserve the stock from which Christ came. And ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
749:First of all, we would ask why their gods took no steps to improve the morals of their worshippers. That the true God should neglect those who did not seek His help, that was but justice; but why did those gods, from whose worship ungrateful men are now complaining that they are prohibited, issue no laws which might have guided their devotees to a virtuous life? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
750:He was not utterly unskilled in handling his own lack of training, and he refused to be rashly drawn into a controversy about those matters from which there would be no exit nor easy way of retreat. This was an additional ground for my pleasure. For the controlled modesty of a mind that admits limitations is more beautiful than the things I was anxious to know about. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
751:Know that whatever you take from Truth,
He will not be diminished.
In Truth even what decays shall bloom again.
It will be reformed after all diseases have been healed.
After mortal parts remade.
After their being is bound to Yours.
The final things will not fall away.
They stand fast with You forever.
For God will abide and stand fast forever. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
752:Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or to whom should I cry, save Thee? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and therefore do I speak. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
753:Amongst other things, when the Holy Gospel was being read, ye heard what the Lord Jesus said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life." (John xiv.6). Truth and life doth every man desire; but not every man doth find the way. That God is a certain Life Eternal, Unchangeable, Intelligible, Intelligent, Wise, Making wise, some philosophers even of this world have seen. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
754:The mind commands the body, and obedience is instant; the mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind tells the hand to move, and all goes so smoothly that it is hard to distinguish the command from its execution. Yet the mind is the mind, and the hand is a body. The mind tells the mind to will; one is the same as the other, and yet it does not do what it is told. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
755:O Lord, turned me back upon myself. You took me from behind my own back, where I had placed myself because I did not wish to look upon myself. You stood me face to face with myself, so that I might see how foul I was, how deformed and defiled, how covered with stains and sores. I looked, and I was filled with horror, but there was no place for me to flee to away from myself ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
756:Sin is to a nature what blindness is to an eye. The blindness is an evil or defect which is a witness to the fact that the eye was created to see the light and, hence, the very lack of sight is the proof that the eye was meant...to be the one particularly capable of seeing the light. Were it not for this capacity, there would be no reason to think of blindness as a misfortune. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
757:I do acknowledge You, Lord of heaven and earth. I do praise You for assembling the pieces of my being and for the infancy I do not remember. For You have appointed ways by which we can discover the essential facts about ourselves. We can see others and guess much about Your work in us. We can learn much about Your care by seeing those “weak females” who cared for us as infants. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
758:In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
759:My soul’s house is too meager for you to visit; enlarge it. It is falling down; rebuild it. Inside it are things that would disgust you to see: I confess this, and I know it. But who’s going to clean it? Or rather, to whom else am I going to shout, “Clean away from me, Master, the hidden things that are my own, and spare your slave from the hidden things coming from others!”?*19 ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
760:O Lord my God, tell me what you are to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. Say it so that I can hear it. My heart is listening, Lord; open the ears of my heard and say to my soul, I am your salvation. Let me run toward this voice and seize hold of you. Do not hide your face from me: let me die so that I may see it, for not to see it would be death to me indeed. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
761:This, therefore, is the complete satisfaction of souls, that is, the happy life: to know precisely and perfectly Him through whom you are led into the truth, the nature of the truth you enjoy, and the bond that connects you with the Supreme Measure! These three show to those who understand the one God, the one Substance, excluding the variety of all vain and superstitious images. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
762:O man, that which My Scripture saith, I say: and yet doth that speak in time; but time has no relation to My Word; because My Word exists in equal eternity with Myself. So the things which ye see through My Spirit, I see; like as what ye speak by My Spirit, I speak. And so when ye see those things in time, I see them not in time; as when ye speak in time, I speak them not in time. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
763:Virgil certainly is held to be a great poet; in fact he is regarded as the best and the most renowned of all poets, and for that reason he is read by children at an early age-they take great draughts of his poetry into their unformed minds, so that they may not easily forget him, for, as Horace remarks, "New vessels will for long retain the taste of what is first poured into them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
764:A fitting and true response was once given to Alexander the Great by an apprehended pirate. When asked by the king what he thought he was doing by infesting the sea, he replied with noble insolence, 'What do you think you are doing by infesting the whole world? Because I do it with one puny boat, I am called a pirate; because you do it with a great fleet, you are called an emperor. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
765:Even so, I could not have been wholly content to confine sexual union to acts intended to procreate children, as your law prescribes, Lord... 'It is good for a man not touch a woman' (I Cor. 7:1), and 'He who has no wife thinks on the things of God, how he can please God. But he who is joined in marriage thinks on the affairs of the world, how he can please his wife' (I Cor. 7:32-2) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
766:se hizo semejante a los hombres y fue contado como uno de ellos; se humilló hasta la muerte y muerte de cruz, por lo cual Dios lo levantó de entre los muertos y le dio un Nombre que está sobre todo nombre, para que al Nombre de Jesús toda rodilla se doble en los cielos, en la tierra y en los infiernos y para que todo hombre confiese que el Señor Jesús está en la gloria de Dios Padre. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
767:But the idling of men is called business; 47 the idling of boys, though exactly like, is punished by those same men: and no one pities either boys or men. Perhaps an unbiased observer would hold that I was rightly punished as a boy for playing with a ball: because this hindered my progress in studies—studies which would give me the opportunity as a man to play at things more degraded. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
768:Het geheugen moet zoiets zijn als een maag voor de gedachten, het vergane geluk en plezier en verdriet zijn als ranzig of verzuurd eten - overgelaten aan het geheugen belandt alles in een soort maag, het eten bewaard maar de smakelijkheid ervan niet. Misschien is het dwaas om te zeggen dat het geheugen en de maag overeenkomsten vertonen. Maar volstrekt verschillend zijn ze allerminst. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
769:Further, when the mind attains the objects of its desire, however hurtful or empty they may be, error prevents it from perceiving their true nature, or its perceptions are overborne by a diseased appetite, and so it is puffed up with a foolish joy. From these fountains of evil, which spring out of defect rather than superfluity, flows every form of misery that besets a rational nature. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
770:And when I was not presently obeyed (my wishes being hurtful or unintelligible), then I was indignant with my elders for not submitting to me, with those owing me no service, for not serving me; and avenged myself on them by tears. Such have I learnt infants to be from observing them; and that I was myself such, they, all unconscious, have shown me better than my nurses who knew it. And, ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
771:The earthly [city] has made for herself, according to her heart's desire, false gods out of any sources at all, even out of human beings, that she might adore them with sacrifices. The heavenly one, on the other hand, living like a wayfarer in this world, makes no false gods for herself. On the contrary, she herself is made by the true God that she may be herself a true sacrifice to Him. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
772:As Christians, our task is to make daily progress toward God. Our pilgrimage on earth is a school in which God is the only teacher, and it demands good students, not one who play truant. In this school we learn something every day. We learn something from commandments, something from examples, and something from sacraments. These things are remedies for our wounds and materials for study. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
773:For Thy mercies’ sake, O Lord my God, tell me what Thou art to me. Say unto my soul, I am Thy salvation. 18 So speak that I may hear, Lord, my heart is listening; open it that it may hear Thee say to my soul I am Thy salvation. Hearing that word, let me come in haste to lay hold upon Thee. Hide not Thy face from me. 19 Let me see Thy face even if I die, 20 lest I die with longing to see it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
774:Man's maker was made man that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother's breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that Truth might be accused of false witnesses, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
775:When I then turned toward the scriptures, they appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Tully. For my inflated pride was repelled by their style, nor could the sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning. Truly they were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones, but I scorned to be a little one and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as fully grown. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
776:¡Dios mío!, que yo te recuerde en acción de gracias y confiese tus misericordias sobre mí. Que mis huesos se empapen de tu amor y digan: Señor: ¿quién semejante a ti ?. Rompiste mis ataduras; sacrifíquete yo un sacrificio de alabanza. Contaré cómo las rompiste, y todos los que te adoran dirán cuando lo oigan: Bendito sea el Señor, en el cielo y en la tierra, grande y admirable es el nombre suyo ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
777:Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, "What do you mean by seizing the whole earth; because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor". ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
778:These were Homer's fictions; he transfers things human to the gods. I could have wished him to transfer divine things to us." [173] But it would have been more true had he said: "These are, indeed, his fictions, but he attributed divine attributes to sinful men, that crimes might not be accounted crimes, and that whosoever committed any might appear to imitate the celestial gods and not abandoned men. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
779:Thus, little by little, I became conscious where I was; and to have a wish to express my wishes to those who could content them, and I could not; for the wishes were within me, and they without; nor could they by any sense of theirs enter within my spirit. So I flung about at random limbs and voice, making the few signs I could, and such as I could, like, though in truth very little like, what I wished. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
780:¡Desdichada el alma temeraria que se imaginó que alejándose de ti puede conseguir algo mejor! Se vuelve y se revuelve de un lado para otro, hacia la espalda y boca abajo y todo le es duro, pues la única paz eres tú. Y tú estás ahí, para librarnos de nuestros desvaríos y hacernos volver a tu camino; nos consuelas y nos dices: ¡Vamos! ¡Yo los aliviaré de peso, los conduciré hasta el fin y allí los liberaré! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
781:Our praise is expressed with joy, our petitions with yearning. We have been promised something we do not yet possess, and because the promise was made by one who keeps his word, we trust him and are glad; but insofar as possession is delayed, we can only long and yearn for it. It is good for us to persevere in longing until we receive what was promised, and yearning is over; then praise alone will remain. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
782:When we pray we ask for what we need, yet the Truth himself has told us: 'Your heavenly Father knows well what your needs are before you ask him', so by confessing our own miserable state and acknowledging your mercy towards us we open up our hearts to you, so that you may free us wholly, as you have already begun to do. Then we shall no longer be miserable ourselves, but will find our true happiness in you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
783:And what did it profit me, that all the books I could procure of the so-called liberal arts, I, the vile slave of vile affections, read by myself, and understood? And I delighted in them, but knew not whence came all, that therein was true or certain. For I had my back to the light, and my face to the things enlightened; whence my face, with which I discerned the things enlightened, itself was not enlightened. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
784:Escucha, Señor, mi súplica para que mi alma no se quiebre bajo tu disciplina, ni desmaye en confesar las misericordias con las que me sacaste de mis pésimos caminos. Seas tú siempre para mí una dulzura más fuerte que todas las mundanas seducciones que antes me arrastraban. Haz que te ame con hondura y apriete tu mano con todas las fuerzas de mi corazón, y así me vea libre hasta el fin de todas las tentaciones. 2. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
785:But since those Romans were in an earthly city, and had before them, as the end of all the offices undertaken in its behalf, its safety, and a kingdom, not in heaven, but in earth—not in the sphere of eternal life, but in the sphere of demise and succession, where the dead are succeeded by the dying—what else but glory should they love, by which they wished even after death to live in the mouths of their admirers? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
786:Let kings estimate their prosperity, not by the righteousness, but by the servility of their subjects. Let the provinces stand loyal to the kings, not as moral guides, but as lords of their possessions and purveyors of their pleasures; not with a hearty reverence, but a crooked and servile fear. Let the laws take cognizance rather of the injury done to another man’s property, than of that done to one’s own person. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
787:Thus, if our understanding finds its delight within, in the brightest of secret places, let it also delight in the following insight into the ways of love: the more love goes down in a spirit of service into the ranks of the lowliest people, the more surely it rediscovers the quiet that is within when its good conscience testifies that it seeks nothing of those to whom it goes down but their eternal salvation.[16] ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
788:It is in hope, therefore, that a man lives, as the ‘son of the resurrection’; it is in hope that the City of God lives, during its pilgrimage on earth, that City which is brought into being by faith in Christ’s resurrection. For Abel’s name means ‘lamentation’,109 and the name of Seth, his brother, means ‘resurrection’. And so in those two men the death of Christ and his life from among the dead, are prefigured. As ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
789:Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto Thee Thy mercies, whereby Thou hast saved me from all my most mischievous ways, that Thou mightest become sweet to me beyond all the seductions which I used to follow; and that I may love Thee entirely, and grasp Thy hand with my whole heart, and that Thou mayest deliver me from every temptation, even unto the end. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
790:Is it not rather proof of a feeble mind, to be unable to bear either the pains of bodily servitude or the foolish opinion of the vulgar? And is not that to be pronounced the greater mind, which rather faces than flees the ills of life, and which, in comparison of the light and purity of conscience, holds in small esteem the judgment of men, and specially of the vulgar, which is frequently involved in a mist of error? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
791:Y luego desapareció de nuestra vista para que lo busquemos en nuestro corazón y allí lo encontremos. 3. Se fue, pero aquí está. No se quiso quedar largo tiempo con nosotros, pero no nos dejó. Se fue hacia el lugar en que siempre estuvo y que nunca abandonó; porque El hizo el mundo y estuvo en el mundo, a donde vino para salvar a los pecadores. A El se confiesa mi alma, para que El la sane, pues había pecado contra El. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
792:For no sin is committed save by that desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it being ill with us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in order that it may be well with us, but which makes us more miserable than we were. And why is this, but because the source of man’s happiness lies only in God, whom he abandons when he sins, and not in himself, by living according to whom he sins? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
793:Hear, Lord, my prayer; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto Thee all Thy mercies, whereby Thou hast drawn me out of all my most evil ways, that Thou mightest become a delight to me above all the allurements which I once pursued; that I may most entirely love Thee, and clasp Thy hand with all my affections, and Thou mayest yet rescue me from every temptation, even unto the end. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
794:Blessed are the pure in heart: [25] for they shall see God." How foolish, therefore, are those who seek God with these outward eyes, since He is seen with the heart! as it is written elsewhere, "And in singleness of heart seek Him." [26] For that is a pure heart which is a single heart: and just as this light cannot be seen, except with pure eyes; so neither is God seen, unless that is pure by which He can be seen. [27] ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
795:So it falls out that in this world, in evil days like these, the Church walks onward like a wayfarer stricken by the world's hostility, but comforted by the mercy of God. Nor does this state of affairs date only from the days of Christ's and His Apostles' presence on earth. It was never any different from the days when the first just man, Abel, was slain by his ungodly brother. So shall it be until this world is no more. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
796:Who can unravel this most snarled, knotty tangle? It is disgusting, and I do not want to look at it or see it. O justice and innocence, fair and lovely, it is on you that I want to gaze with eyes that see purely and find satiety in never being sated. With you is rest and tranquil life. Whoever enters into you enters the joy of his Lord; there he will fear nothing and find his own supreme good in God who is supreme goodness. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
797:Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world...Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of the Holy Scriptures, talking nonsense on these topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
798:Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
799:For no one believes anything unless he has first thought that it is to be believed. For however suddenly, however rapidly, some thoughts fly before the will to believe, and this presently follows in such wise as to attend them, as it were, in closest conjunction, it is yet necessary that everything which is believed should be believed after thought has preceded; although even belief itself is nothing else than to think with assent. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
800:A man may count himself happy in having licence to slander; but he will be far happier if deprived entirely of that liberty. Then he can drop the silly pose of superiority and take the opportunity to raise what objection he likes, as one really interested in getting to know; he can ask his questions in a spirit of friendly discussion, and listen when those whom he consults do their best to give a courteous, serious, and frank reply. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
801:Tell me, in the name of your mercies, you, Master, who are my God, what you are to me. Say to my soul, 'I myself am your rescue.' Say it in such a way that I hear it. Here before you are the ears with which my heart hears, Master. Open them and say to my soul, 'I myself am your rescue.' I will run after the sound of your voice and lay hold of you. Do not hide your face from me. Let me die, to keep from dying, and let me see your face. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
802:Is not the life of man upon earth all trial? Who wishes for troubles and difficulties? Thou commandest them to be endured, not to be loved. No man loves what he endures, though he love to endure. For though he rejoices that he endures, he had rather there were nothing for him to endure. In adversity I long for prosperity, in prosperity I fear adversity. What middle place is there betwixt these two, where the life of man is not all trial? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
803:...Though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
804:I had not yet fallen in love, but I was in love with the idea of it, and this feeling that something was missing around me made me despise myself for not being more anxious to satisfy the need. I began to look around for some object for my love, since I badly wanted to love something. I had no liking for the safe path without pitfalls, for although my real need was for you, my God, who are the food of the soul, I was not aware of this hunger. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
805: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 Abel himself, the first righteous man slain by an ungodly brother; and the pilgrimage goes on from that time right up to the end of history, with the persecutions of the world on one side, and on the other the consolations of God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
806:He is not rightly touched, that is to say, in any other way He is not rightly believed on. But Mary might have still so believed as to account Him unequal with the Father, and this certainly is forbidden her by the words, "Touch me not;" that is, Believe not thus on me according to thy present notions; let not your thoughts stretch outwards to what I have been made in thy behalf, without passing beyond to that whereby thou hast thyself been made. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
807:There is a Master within Who teaches us. Christ is our Master, and his inspiration and his anointing teaches us. Where his inspiration and his anointing are lacking, it is in vain that words resound in our ears. As Paul the Apostle said: 'I planted the seed and Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.' Therefore, whether we plant or whether we water by our words, we are nothing. It is God Who gives the increase; His anointing teaches you all things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
808:Give me yourself, O my God, give yourself back to me. Lo, I love you, but if my love is too mean, let me love more passionately. I cannot gauge my love, nor know how far it fails, how much more love I need for my life to set its course straight into your arms, never swerving until hidden in the covert of your face. This alone I know, that without you all to me is misery, woe outside myself and woe within, and all wealth but penury, if it is not my God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
809:Around 400 A.D., Saint Augustine, a prominent Roman bishop, described a pastor's job:
Disturbers are to be rebuked, the low-spirited to be encouraged, the infirm to be supported, objectors confuted, the treacherous guarded against, the unskilled taught, the lazy aroused, the contentious restrained, the haughty repressed, litigants pacified, the poor relieved, the oppressed liberated, the good approved, the evil borne with, and all are to be loved. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
810:When spirits fall, their darkness is revealed, for they are stripped of the garment of your light. By the misery and restlessness which they then suffer you make clear to us how noble a being is your rational creation, for nothing less than yourself suffices to give it rest and happiness. This means that it cannot find them in itself. For you, O God, will shine on the darkness about us. From you proceeds our garment of light, and our dusk shall be noonday. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
811:as if it were owing to the merit of our turning to God that His grace were given us, wherein He Himself even turns unto us. Now the persons who hold this opinion fail to observe that, unless our turning to God were itself God’s gift, it would not be said to Him in prayer, “Turn us again, O God of hosts;” and, “You, O God, wilt turn and quicken us;” and again, “Turn us, O God of our salvation,” — with other passages of similar import, too numerous to mention here. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
812:Far be it from us to doubt that all number is known to Him 'Whose understanding is infinite' (Ps. 147:5). The infinity of number, though there be no numbering of infinite numbers, is yet not incomprehensible by Him Whose understanding is infinite. And thus, if everything which is comprehended is defined or made finite by the comprehension of him who knows it, then all infinity is in some ineffable way made finite to God, for it is comprehensible by His knowledge. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
813:For we know no other books, which so destroy pride, which so destroy the enemy and the defender, who resisteth Thy reconciliation by defending his own sins. I know not, Lord, I know not any other such pure words, which so persuade me to confess, and make my neck pliant to Thy yoke, and invite me to serve Thee for nought. Let me understand them, good Father: grant this to me, who am placed under them: because for those placed under them, hast Thou established them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
814:To seek the greatest good is to live well, and to live well is nothing other than to love God with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole mind: It is therefore obvious that this love must be kept whole and uncorrupt, that is temperance; it should not be overcome with difficulties, that is fortitude, it must not be subservient to anything else, that is justice; it must discriminate among things so as not to be deceived by falsity or fraud, that is prudence. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
815:But You, Lord, by whom the very hairs of our head are numbered, 51 used for my good the error of those who urged me to study; but my own error, in that I had no will to learn, you used for my punishment—a punishment richly deserved by one so small a boy and so great a sinner. Thus, You brought good for me out of those who did ill, and justly punished me for the ill I did myself. So You have ordained and so it is: that every disorder of the soul is its own punishment. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
816:But, among the disciples of Socrates, Plato was the one who shone with a glory which far excelled that of the others, and who not unjustly eclipsed them all. (…) And, as he had a peculiar love for his master Socrates, he made him the speaker in all his dialogues, putting into his mouth whatever he had learned, either from others, or from the efforts of his own powerful intellect, tempering even his moral disputations with the grace and politeness of the Socratic style. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
817:For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
818:We are inflamed, by Thy Gift we are kindled; and are carried upwards; we glow inwardly, and go forwards. We ascend Thy ways that be in our heart, and sing a song of degrees; we glow inwardly with Thy fire, with Thy good fire, and we go; because we go upwards to the peace of Jerusalem: for gladdened was I in those who said unto me, We will go up to the house of the Lord. There hath Thy good pleasure placed us, that we may desire nothing else, but to abide there for ever. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
819:Não podeis ser obrigado, por Vossa força, seja ao que for, porque em Vós a vontade não é maior do que o poder. Porém, seria maior, se Vós fôsseis maior que Vós mesmo. Mas a vontade e o poder de Deus são o próprio Deus.Para Vós que tudo conheceis, existe acaso alguma coisa imprevista? Nenhhuma natureza existe, senão porque a conhecestes. Para que proferimos nós tantas palavras a fim de comprovar que a substância de Deus não é corruptível, já que, se o fosse não seria Deus? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
820:I was infatuated with excusing myself and accusing some other thing that was with me but wasn’t me.* 42 Of course it was me, me entirely, but my lack of reverence had factionalized me against myself,* 43 and mine was a form of sin harder to heal in that I didn’t consider myself to be the sinner; and it was a damnable wickedness that I preferred for you, the all-powerful God, to be defeated within me, for my own destruction, than for me to be defeated by you for my salvation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
821:It was to Noah that God gave instructions to make an ark in which he was to be rescued from the devastation of the Flood, together with his family, that is, his wife, his sons and daughters-in-law, and also the animals that went into the ark in accordance with God’s directions. Without doubt this is a symbol of the City of God on pilgrimage in this world, of the Church which is saved through the wood on which was suspended ‘the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
822:Se pois, é pela imagem, e não por si mesmo, que o esquecimento se enraíza na memória, foi preciso que se achasse presente para que a memória pudesse captar a imagem. Como pôde o esquecimento, quando estava presente, gravar a sua imagem na memória, se ele, com sua presença apaga tudo que lá encontra? Enfim, seja como for, apesar de ser inexplicável e incompreensível o modo como se enraíza de fato, estou certo de que me lembro do esquecimento, que nos varre da memória tudo aquilo de que nos lembramos. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
823:For I was astonished that other mortals lived, since he whom I loved, as if he would never die, was dead; and I wondered still more that I, who was to him a second self, could live when he was dead. Well did one say of his friend, Thou half of my soul, for I felt that my soul and his soul were but one soul in two bodies; and, consequently, my life was a horror to me, because I would not live in half. And therefore, perchance, was I afraid to die, lest he should die wholly whom I had so greatly loved. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
824:No one knows what he himself is made of, except his own spirit within him, yet there is still some part of him which remains hidden even from his own spirit; but you, Lord, know everything about a human being because you have made him...Let me, then, confess what I know about myself, and confess too what I do not know, because what I know of myself I know only because you shed light on me, and what I do not know I shall remain ignorant about until my darkness becomes like bright noon before your face. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
825:Dirijo-me para as planícies e os vastos palácios da memória, onde estão tesouros de inumeráveis imagens veiculadas por toda a espécie de coisas que se sentiram. Aí está escondido também tudo aquilo que pensamos, quer aumentando, quer diminuindo, quer variando de qualquer modo que seja as coisas que os sentidos atingiram, e ainda tudo aquilo que lhe tenha sido confiado, e nela depositado, e que o esquecimento ainda não absorveu nem sepultou. Quando aí estou, peço que me seja apresentado aquilo que quero. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
826:Thy word remaineth for ever, which word now appeareth unto us in the riddle of the clouds, and through the mirror of the heavens, not as it is because that even we, though the well beloved of thy Son, yet it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. He looked through the lattice of our flesh and he spake us fair, yea, he set us on fire, and we hasten on his scent. But when he shall appear, then shall we be like him, for we shall see him as he is. As he is, Lord, will our sight be, though the time be not yet. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
827:Allí solos conversábamos dulcísimamente; y olvidando las cosas pasadas, ocupados en lo por venir, nos preguntábamos los dos, delante de la verdad presente, que eres tú, cuál sería la vida eterna de los santos, que ni el ojo vio, ni el oído oyó, ni el corazón del hombre concibió. Abríamos anhelosos la boca de nuestro corazón hacia aquellos raudales soberanos de tu fuente –de la fuente de vida que está en ti– para que, rociados según nuestra capacidad, nos formásemos de algún modo una idea de algo tan grande. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
828: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 stems from a desire to appear learned, not with a knowledge of things, by which we are edified, but with a knowledge of signs, by which it is difficult not to be puffed up in some way; even a knowledge of things often makes people boastful, unless their necks are held down by the Lord's yoke. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
829:For you [God] are infinite and never change. In you 'today' never comes to an end: and yet our 'today' does come to an end in you, because time, as well as everything else, exists in you. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. And since your years never come to an end, for you they are simply 'today'...But you yourself are eternally the same. In your 'today' you will make all that is to exist tomorrow and thereafter, and in your 'today' you have made all that existed yesterday and for ever before. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
830:What did it profit that I read the greatest human ideas of the so-called “liberal arts” in the books I got hold of. My thinking was enslaved to corrupt desires, so what difference did it make that I could read and understand these books? I delighted in learning, but I had no divine context for what my mind picked up. I had no foundation to discern what is true or certain. I was standing with my back to the light, so that the things that should be illuminated were in shadow, even though they were in front of my face. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
831:For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since
he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered
yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he
being dead. Well said one of his friend, "Thou half of my soul"; for
I felt that my soul and his soul were "one soul in two bodies": and
therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved.
And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved
should die wholly. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
832:It is indeed a song of steps. And as I have often said to you, these steps are not made to descend but to ascend. The questioner wishes then to ascend; and where does he wish to ascend if not to heaven? What does this mean—to ascend to heaven? Does he wish to ascend so as to be in the heavens with the sun, the moon, and the stars? Far from that! But there is in heaven an eternal Jerusalem where the angels, our co-citizens, are. From these co-citizens we on earth are estranged. In this exile we sigh; in the city we shall have joy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
833:São terríveis os Vossos Juízos, Senhor, pois a Vossa Verdade não é minha nem de qualquer outro, mas de todos nós, a quem manifestadamente convidais a participar dela. Vós nos admoestais reverissimamente a quem não queiramos tê-la como bem privado, para que não nos privemos dela. Efetivamente, quem revindica só para si próprio aquilo que ofereceis para o gozo de todos, querendo como particular o que é de todos, é repelido desses bens comuns para os seus, isto é, da verdade para a mentira. 'Com efeito, quem fala de si próprio mente'. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
834:But perhaps there are insensitive hearts, still incapable of receiving this Light because the weight of their sins prevents them from seeing it. Let them not imagine that they Light is absent because they do not see it, for on account of their sins they are in darkness. ‘And the Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness understood it not’ (Jn 1:5). Therefore, Brothers, like the blind man exposed to the sun, the sun being present to him but he being absent from the sun, so the insensitive one, the sinner, the impious has a blind heart. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
835: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 deliberation. I carried my lacerated and bloody soul when it was unwilling to be carried by me. I found no place where I could put it down. There was no rest in pleasant groves, nor in games or songs, nor in sweet-scented places, nor in exquisite feasts, nor in the pleasures of the bedroom and bed, nor, finally, in books and poetry. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
836:This is why, as the Lord carried his cross, so Isaac himself carried to the place of sacrifice the wood on which he too was to be placed. Moreover, after the father had been prevented from striking his son, since it was not right that Isaac should be slain, who was the ram whose immolation completed the sacrifice by blood of symbolic significance? Bear in mind that when Abraham saw the ram it was caught by the horns in a thicket. Who, then, was symbolized by that ram but Jesus, crowned with Jewish thorns150 before he was offered in sacrifice? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
837:This is my reply to anyone who asks: 'What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?' My reply is not that which someone is said to have given as a joke to evade the force of the question. He said: 'He was preparing hells for people who inquire into profundities.' It is one thing to laugh, another to see the point at issue, and this reply I reject. I would have preferred him to answer 'I am ignorant of what I do not know' rather than reply so as to ridicule someone who has asked a deep question and to win approval for an answer which is a mistake. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
838: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 and avoiding those who 'though they knew God did not glorify him as God or give thanks but became enfeebled in their own thoughts and plunged their senseless minds into darkness. Claiming to be wise they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the image of corruptible mortals and animals and reptiles' [Rom. 1:21-3] ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
839:When you suddenly command some unusual, unexpected course of action, then even if it is something you have hitherto forbidden, even if for the time being you conceal the reason for your behest, and even if it contravenes the accepted norms of a human society, can we doubt that it is right to obey, seeing that a human society is just precisely insofar as it serves you? Blessed are they who know that you have commanded them. Everything that is done by your servants is done either to make plain what needs to be revealed at present, or to foreshadow the future. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
840:Some Western Christians read the story as a factual account of the Original Sin that condemned the human race to everlasting perdition. But this is a peculiarly Western Christian interpretation and was introduced controversially by Saint Augustine of Hippo only in the early fifth century. The Eden story has never been understood in this way in either the Jewish or the Orthodox Christian traditions. However, we all tend to see these ancient tales through the filter of subsequent history and project current beliefs onto texts that originally meant something quite different. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
841:The Greeks think they justly honor players, because they worship the gods who demand plays; the Romans, on the other hand, do not suffer an actor to disgrace by his name his own plebeian tribe, far less the senatorial order. And the whole of this discussion may be summed up in the following syllogism. The Greeks give us the major premise: If such gods are to be worshiped, then certainly such men may be honored. The Romans add the minor: But such men must by no means be honoured. The Christians draw the conclusion: Therefore such gods must by no means be worshiped. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
842:The aim of our orator, then, when speaking of things that are just and holy and good--and he should not speak of anything else--the aim, as I say, that he pursues to the best of his ability when he speaks of these things is to be listened to with understanding, with pleasure, and with obedience. He should be in no doubt that any ability he has and however much he has derives more from his devotion to prayer than his dedication to oratory; and so, by praying for himself and for those he is about to address, he must become a man of prayer before becoming a man of words. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
843:You are surprised that the world is losing its grip, that the world is grown old? Think of a man: he is born, he grows up, he becomes old. Old age has its many complaints: coughing, shaking, failing eyesight, anxious, terribly tired. A man grows old; he is full of complaints. The world is old; it is full of pressing tribulations. . . . Do not hold onto the old man, the world; do not refuse to regain your youth in Christ, who says to you, ‘The world is passing away, the world is losing its grip, the world is short of breath. Do not fear. Thy youth shall be renewed as an eagle ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
844:What art Thou then, my God? what, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong, stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
845:What art Thou then, my God? what, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong; stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
846:But I marvel, if, as it is allowed to put away a wife who is an adulteress, so it be allowed, having put her away, to marry another. For holy Scripture causes a hard knot in this matter, in that the Apostle says, that, by commandment of the Lord, the wife ought not to depart from her husband, but, in case she shall have departed, to remain unmarried, or to be reconciled to her husband; [1950] whereas surely she ought not to depart and remain unmarried, save from an husband that is an adulterer, lest by withdrawing from him, who is not an adulterer, she cause him to commit adultery. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
847:...a man is not in any difficulty in making a reply according to his faith ... to those who try to defame our Holy Scripture. ... when they produce from any of their books a theory contrary to Scripture ... either we shall have some ability to demonstrate that it is absolutely false, or at least we ourselves will hold it so without any shadow of a doubt. ...let us choose [the doctrine] which appears as certainly the meaning intended by the author. ... For it is one thing to fail to recognize the primary meaning of the writer, and another to depart from the norms of religious belief. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
848:The mother of my flesh was in heavy anxiety, since with a heart chaste in Your faith she was ever in deep travail for my eternal salvation, and would have proceeded without delay to have me consecrated and washed clean by the Sacrament of salvation, while I confessed You, Lord Jesus, unto the remission of sins: but I made a sudden recovery. This caused my baptismal cleansing to be postponed: for it was argued that if I lived I should inevitably fall again into the filth of sin: and after baptism the guilt of sin’s defilement would be in itself graver and put the soul in graver peril. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
849:that is to say, their non-intervention is the result of selfishness, and not of love. Accordingly, this seems to me to be one principal reason why the good are chastised along with the wicked, when God is pleased to visit with temporal punishments the profligate manners of a community. They are punished together, not because they have spent an equally corrupt life, but because the good as well as the wicked, though not equally with them, love this present life; while they ought to hold it cheap, that the wicked, being admonished and reformed by their example, might lay hold of life eternal. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
850:For, in the same fire, gold gleams and straw smokes; under the same flail the stalk is crushed and the grain threshed; the lees are not mistaken for oil because they issued from the same press. So, too, the tide of trouble will test, purify, and improve the good, but beat, crush, and wash away the wicked. So it is that, under the weight of the same affliction, the wicked deny and blaspheme God, and the good pray to Him and praise Him. The difference is not in what people suffer but in the way they suffer. The same shaking that makes fetid water stink makes perfume issue a more pleasant odor. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
851:Or who is a god except our God?*11 The highest, the most excellent, the most powerful, all-powerful beyond all-powerful, most merciful and most just, most remote and most present, most beautiful and most powerful, unmoving but ungraspable, unchangeable but changing everything, never new, never old, but making all things new*12 while leading the arrogant into decrepitude, though they are unaware of it. You are always active and always at rest, gathering in but not in need, carrying and filling and protecting, creating and nurturing and bringing to fulfillment, searching though you lack nothing. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
852:I will soar, then, beyond this power of my nature also, still rising by degrees toward him who made me. And I enter the fields and spacious halls of memory, where are stored as treasures the countless images that have been brought into them from all manner of things by the senses. There, in the memory, is likewise stored what we cogitate, either by enlarging or reducing our perceptions, or by altering one way or another those things which
the senses have made contact with; and everything else that has been entrusted to it and stored up in it, which oblivion has not yet swallowed up and buried. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
853:Now there was, no doubt, a decided merit in the Apostle Paul, but it was an evil one, while he persecuted the Church, and he says of it: “I am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God.” 1 Corinthians 15:9 And it was while he had this evil merit that a good one was rendered to him instead of the evil; and, therefore, he went on at once to say, “But by the grace of God I am what I am.” 1 Corinthians 15:10 Then, in order to exhibit also his free will, he added in the next clause, “And His grace within me was not in vain, but I have laboured more abundantly than they all. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
854:What is a valley of tears? He was scourged, covered with spittle, crowned with thorns, nailed to the cross. From this valley of tears you must ascend. But ascend where? ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God‘ (Jn 1:1). For He Himself, the ‘Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.’ Abiding in Himself, He descended to you. He descended to you so as to become for you a valley of tears; He abode in Himself so as to be for you a mountain of ascent. And ‘In the days to come,’ said Isaiah, ‘the mountain of the Lord shall tower above the hills’ (Is 2:2). It is there we must ascend. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
855:Ainsi, à cet âge même, que l’on redoutait moins pour moi que l’adolescence, je n’aimais point l’étude ; je haïssais d’y être contraint, et l’on m’y contraignait, et il m’en advenait bien :, je n’eusse rien appris sans contrainte, mais moi je faisais mal ; car faire à contrecœur quelque chose de bon n’est pas bien faire. Et ceux même qui me forçaient à l’étude ne faisaient pas bien ; mais bien m’en advenait par vous, mon Dieu. Eux ne voyaient pour moi, dans ce qu’ils me pressaient d’apprendre, qu’un moyen d’assouvir l’insatiable convoitise de cette opulence qui n’est que misère, de cette gloire qui n’est qu’infamie. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
856:As for me, when I deliberated upon serving the Lord my God, as I had long planned to do, it was I myself who willed it and I myself who did not will it. It was I myself. I neither willed it completely, nor did I refrain completely from willing it. Therefore, I was at war within myself, and I was laid waste by myself. This devastation was made against my will indeed, and yet it revealed not the nature of a different mind within me, but rather the punishment of my own nature. Therefore, it is no more I that did it, but sin that dwells in me,7 sin that issues from punishment of a more voluntary sin, for I was Adam’s son.8 ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
857:...it was the business of such men as were prudent and wise to deceive the people in matters of religion, and in that very thing not only to worship, but also to imitate the demons, whose greatest lust is to deceive. For just as the demons cannot possess any but those whom they have deceived with guile, so also men in princely office, not indeed being just, but like demons, have persuaded the people in the name of religion to receive as true those things which they themselves knew to be false; in this way, as it were, binding them up more firmly in civil society, so that they might in like manner possess them as subjects. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
858:God bids you not to commit lechery, that is, not to have sex with any woman except your wife. You ask of her that she should not have sex with anyone except you -- yet you are not willing to observe the same restraint in return. Where you ought to be ahead of your wife in virtue, you collapse under the onset of lechery. ... Complaints are always being made about men's lechery, yet wives do not dare to find fault with their husbands for it. Male lechery is so brazen and so habitual that it is now sanctioned [= permitted], to the extent that men tell their wives that lechery and adultery are legitimate for men but not for women. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
859:O Lord our God, under the shadow of Your wings let us hope in Your custody. Carry us when we are little. Bear us when our hair is white and we cry out in infirmity. When You grasp us, the grip is firm. When we try to sustain ourselves, the grasp is feeble. The only good we can know rests in You. When we turn from the good, You push us aside until we return. Oh, Lord, turn us, lest we be overturned. Be the good in us that is not corrupted. You are our incorruptible good. In You we do not fear that there will be no home to return to if we wander off. While we are away, You preserve our mansion with a patience that stretches into eternity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
860:While this Heavenly City, therefore, is on pilgrimage in this world, she calls out citizens from all nations and so collects a society of aliens, speaking all languages. She takes no account of any difference in customs, laws, and institutions, by which earthly peace is achieved and preserved – not that she annuls or abolishes any of those, rather, she maintains them and follows them (for whatever divergences there are among the diverse nations, those institutions have one single aim – earthly peace), provided that no hindrance is presented thereby to the religion which teaches that the one supreme and true God is to be worshipped. Thus ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
861:For why in your calamities do you complain of Christianity, unless because you desire to enjoy your luxurious license unrestrained, and to lead an abandoned and profligate life without the interruption of any uneasiness or disaster? For certainly your desire for peace, and prosperity, and plenty is not prompted by any purpose of using these blessings honestly, that is to say, with moderation, sobriety, temperance, and piety; for your purpose rather is to run riot in an endless variety of sottish pleasures, and thus to generate from your prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a thousandfold more disastrous than the fiercest enemies. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
862:Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
863:Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
864:He who alone was free among he dead, for he was free to lay down his life and free to take it up again, was for us both Victor and Victim in your sight, and it was because he was he Victim that he was also the Victor. In your sight he was both Preist and Sacrifice, and it was because he was the Sacrifice that he was also the Preist. By being your Son, yet serving you, he freed us from servitude and made us your sons. Rightly do I place in my firm hope that you will cure all my ills through him who sits at your right hand and pleads for us: otherwise I should despair. For my ills are many and great, many and great indeed; but your medicine is greater still. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
865:As for the other stories, my position is that I have decided that I should neither affirm nor deny their truth; but I have quoted them along with the others for the very reason that I have read them in authorities from the side of our antagonists. My purpose here is to demonstrate the kind of marvels recorded in profusion in pagan literature and generally believed by our opponents, although no rational explanation is offered, whereas the same people cannot bring themselves to believe us, even though rational grounds are produced, when we say that Almighty God is to perform an act which lies outside their experience and contravenes the evidence of their senses. For ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
866:What madness, to love a man as something more than human! I lived in a fever, convulsed with tears and sighs that allowed me neither rest nor peace of mind. My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry. Everything that was not what my friend had been was dull and distasteful. I had heart only for sighs and tears, for in them alone I found some shred of consolation. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
867:You have truly gained the mastery of the very stronghold of philosophy, Mother. For without doubt only for lack of words you did not elaborate on this subject as did Tullius [Cicero], whose words will follow. For in the Hortensius, the book he wrote on the praise and defense of philosophy, he said: ‘But see, surely not the philosophers but all given to argument say that those who live just as they wish are happy.’ This is definitely false; for to want what is not appropriate is the worst of all miseries. It is not so miserable not to get what you want as to want to get what you ought not. Wickedness of will brings to everyone greater evil than good fortune brings good. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
868: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 enjoying them. I learnt Latin without the threat of punishment from anyone forcing me to learn it. My own heart constrained me to bring its concepts to birth, which I could not have done unless I had learnt some words, not from formal teaching but by listening to people talking; and they in turn were the audience for my thoughts. This experience sufficiently illuminates the truth that free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
869:But this we affirm, this we maintain, this we every way pronounce to be right, that no man ought to inflict on himself voluntary death, for this is to escape the ills of time by plunging into those of eternity; that no man ought to do so on account of another man's sins, for this were to escape a guilt which could not pollute him, by incurring great guilt of his own; that no man ought to do so on account of his own past sins, for he has all the more need of this life that these sins may be healed by repentance; that no man should put an end to this life to obtain that better life we look for after death, for those who die by their own hand have no better life after death. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
870:Your good spirit moved over the waters. But he was not upheld by them as though he rested upon them, for when he is said to rest upon a man, it is he who gives that man rest in himself. It was your incorruptible and immutable will, which is sufficient in itself and to itself, that moved over the life which you had created. To that life living and living in happiness are not one and the same, because it lives even in its state of fluidity and darkness. To gain happiness it must still be turned from that state towards God, its Creator. It must live ever closer to the Fountain of life. In his light it must see the light; in him it must be given perfection, splendor, and bliss. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
871:If you keep silent, keep silent by love: if you speak, speak by love; if you correct, correct by love; if you pardon, pardon by love; let love be rooted in you, and from the root nothing but good can grow.
Love and do what you will.
Love endures in adversity, is moderate in prosperity; brave under harsh sufferings, cheerful in good works; utterly reliable in temptation, utterly open-handed in hospitality; as happy as can be among true brothers and sisters, as patient as you can get among the false one's.
The soul of the scriptures, the force of prophecy, the saving power of the sacraments, the fruit of faith, the wealth of the poor, the life of the dying.
Love is all. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
872:O Lord, I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant, and the son of Thy handmaid: Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder. I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of Let my heart and my tongue praise Thee; yea, let all my bones say, O Lord, who is like unto Thee? Let them say, and answer Thou me, and say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Who am I, and what am I? What evil have not been either my deeds, or if not my deeds, my words, or if not my words, my will? But Thou, O Lord, are good and merciful, and Thy right hand had respect unto the depth of my death, and from the bottom of my heart emptied that abyss of corruption. And this Thy whole gift was, to nill what I willed, and to will what Thou willedst. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
873:In this wicked world, and in these evil times, the Church through her present humiliation is preparing for future exaltation. She is being trained by the stings of fear, the tortures of sorrow, the distresses of hardship, and the dangers of temptation; and she rejoices only in expectation, when her joy is wholesome. In this situation, many reprobates are mingled in the Church with the good, and both sorts are collected as it were in the dragnet of the gospel;228 and in this world, as in a sea, both kinds swim without separation, enclosed in nets until the shore is reached. There the evil are to be divided from the good; and among the good, as it were in his temple, ‘God will be all in all. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
874:Though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
875:Hear, Lord, my prayer; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto Thee all Thy mercies, whereby Thou hast drawn me out of all my most evil ways, that Thou mightest become a delight to me above all the allurements which I once pursued; that I may most entirely love Thee, and clasp Thy hand with all my affections, and Thou mayest yet rescue me from every temptation, even unto the end. For lo, O Lord, my King and my God, for Thy service be whatever useful thing my childhood learned; for Thy service, that I speak, write, read, reckon. For Thou didst grant me Thy discipline, while I was learning vanities; and my sin of delighting in those vanities Thou hast forgiven. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
876:I will soar, then, beyond
this power of my nature also, still rising by degrees
toward
him who made me. And I enter the fields and spacious
halls of memory,
where are stored
as treasures
the countless
images
that have been brought
into them from all manner
of
things by the senses.
There, in the memory,
is likewise
stored what we cogitate,
either by
enlarging
or reducing
our perceptions,
or by altering
one way or another
those things which
the senses have made contact
with; and everything
else that has been entrusted
to it and
stored up in it, which oblivion
has not yet swallowed
up and buried. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
877:Hence to be happy is nothing but not to be in need, that is, to be wise. But if you seek what wisdom is, reason has already explained and declared this as far as presently possible. For wisdom is nothing but the measure of the soul, that is, that by which the mind is liberated so that it neither runs over into too much nor falls short of fullness. For there is a running over into luxuries, tyrannies, acts of pride, and other such things whereby the souls of unrestrained and unhappy men think they get for themselves pleasure and power. But there is a falling short of fullness through baseness, fear, sorrow, passion, and other things, of whatever kind, whereby unhappy men even admit that they are unhappy. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
878:For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.
and thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor. (pg. 32, Book 1 argument #8) ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
879:3. And so in the Confessions we have the history of his own personal drama, a drama primarily of faith. In The City of God we have the dramatic history of the Church, also a drama of faith, contrasted in a very complex pattern with unbelief. The book could in fact be called “A Tale of Two Cities,” because it tells of the relations between the city of God and what Augustine calls the earthly city. And as each city is constituted by an appropriate kind of love,2 one could call the work a kind of love story, telling of the drama of love. It is love that makes faith or its refusal dramatic. 4. But in the De Trinitate, with a stroke of almost unconscious genius, we are presented with the dramatic history of God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
880:Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. 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 hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
881:O Lord our God, under the covering of your wings (Exod. 19: 4) we set our hope. Protect us and bear us up. It is you who will carry us; you will bear us up from our infancy until old age (Isa. 46: 4). When you are our firm support, then it is firm indeed. But when our support rests on our own strength, it is infirmity. Our good is life with you for ever, and because we turned away from that, we became twisted. Let us now return to you that we may not be overturned. Our good is life with you and suffers no deficiency (Ps. 101: 28); for you yourself are that good. We have no fear that there is no home to which we may return because we fell from it. During our absence our house suffers no ruin; it is your eternity. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
882:Et qu’ils ne se croient pas exempts de cette ignominie, ceux qui, en méprisant la gloire et le jugement des hommes, se plaisent à eux-mêmes et s’applaudissent de leur sagesse ; car leur vertu, si elle mérite ce nom, est encore asservie en quelque façon à la louange humaine, puisque se plaire à soi-même, c’est plaire à un homme. Mais quiconque croit et espère en Dieu d’un cœur vraiment pieux et plein d’amour, s’applique beaucoup plus à considérer en soi-même ce qui lui déplaît que ce qui peut lui plaire, moins encore à lui qu’à la vérité ; et ce qui peut lui plaire, il l’attribue à la miséricorde de celui dont il redoute le déplaisir, lui rendant grâces pour les plaies guéries, et lui offrant des prières pour les plaies à guérir. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
883:But in their turn, before the hour comes, let them listen also to what the Apostle says to them: ‘You were once darkness, and now youa re light in the Lord’ (Eph 5:8). Let them awaken according to the admonition of our Psalm. Already the mountains are lightened, why then sleep? ‘Let them lift their eyes toward the mountains whence help will come to them’ (Ps 120:1). What does it mean to say that the mountains are already lightened? Already there has arisen the Sun of Justice, already the Apostles have preached the Gospel, preached the Holy Scriptures, all the Mysteries have been laid open, the veil has been rent, the secret of the temple has been revealed; let them finally lift their eyes toward the mountain whence help will come to them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
884:Life is a misery, death an uncertainty. Suppose it steals suddenly upon me, in what state shall I leave this world? When can I learn what I have here neglected to learn? Or is it true that death will cut off and put an end to all care and all feeling? This is something to be inquired into.
But no, this cannot be true. It is not for nothing, it is not meaningless that all over the world is displayed the high and towering authority of the Christian faith.
Such great and wonderful things would never have been done for us by God, if the life of the soul were to end with the death of the body. Why then do I delay? Why do I not abandon my hopes of this world and devote myself entirely to the search for God and for the happy life? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
885:I look forward, not to what lies ahead of me in this life and will surely pass away, but to my eternal goal. I am intent upon this one purpose, not distracted by other aims, and with this goal in view I press on, eager for the prize, God's heavenly summons. Then I shall listen to the sound of Your praises and gaze at Your beauty ever present, never future, never past. But now my years are but sighs. You, O Lord, are my only solace. You, my Father, are eternal. But I am divided between time gone by and time to come, and its course is a mystery to me. My thoughts, the intimate life of my soul, are torn this way and that in the havoc of change. And so it will be until I am purified and melted by the fire of Your love and fused into one with You. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
886:Que amo eu, quando Vos amo? Não amo a formosura corporal, nem a glória temporal, nem a claridade da luz, tão amiga destes meus olhos, nem as doces melodias das canções de todo o gênero, nem o suave cheiro das flores, dos perfumes ou dos aromas, nem o maná ou o mel, nem os membros tão flexíveis aos abraços da carne. Nada disso amo, quando amo a Deus. E contudo, amo uma luz, uma voz, um alimento e um abraço, quando amo a Deus, luz, voz, perfume do homem interior, onde brillha para minha alma uma luz que nenhum espaço contém, onde soa uma voz que o tempo não arrebata, onde exala um perfume que o vento não esparge, onde se saboreia uma comida que a sofreguidão não diminui, onde se sente um contato que a saciedade não desfaz. Eis o que amo quando amo a Deus. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
887:...The Devil would not have begun by an open and obvious sin to tempt man into doing something which God had forbidden, had not man already begun to seek satisfaction in himself and, consequently, to take pleasure in the words: 'You shall be as Gods.' The promise of these words, however, would much more truly have come to pass if, by obedience, Adam and Eve had kept close to the ultimate and true Source of their being and had not, by pride imagined that they were themselves the source of their being. For, created gods are gods not in virtue of their own being but by a participation in the being of the true God. For, whoever seeks to be more than he is becomes less, and while he aspires to be self-sufficing he retires from Him who is truly sufficient for him. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
888:But what do I love when I love my God? Not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love Him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
889:But what do I love when I love my God? ... Not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
890:Augustine replied in a letter to a friend of Marcellinus and in a further one to Marcellinus himself. The themes of these two letters (Letters 137 and 138) foreshadow very clearly themes of the City of God, and some of them must be briefly mentioned: the Saviour came when the time was ripe for his coming; that coming was foretold not only by the prophets but also by secular philosophers and poets; the true mediator delivered man from the false mediators – the demons; Christ superseded Moses, who was greater than any pagan; the truth of Christianity is seen in its fulfilment of prophecy and its confirmation by miracles; the world is declining and is in its last age; Christians are multiplying everywhere and await the eternal happiness of the heavenly city (Letter 137). ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
891: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 by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore 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; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, “For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
892: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 the urge, yielded to, becomes a compulsion; and the compulsion, unresisted, becomes a slavery—each link in this process connected with the others, which is why I call it a chain—and that chain had a tyrannical grip around me. The new will I felt stirring in me, a will to 'give you free worship' and enjoy what I yearned for, my God, my only reliable happiness, could not break away from the will made strong by long dominance. Two wills were mine, old and new, of the flesh, of the spirit, each warring on the other, and between their dissonances was my soul disintegrating. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
893:although they do not fear them to such an extent as to be drawn to the commission of like iniquities, nay, not by any threats or violence soever; yet those very deeds which they refuse to share in the commission of, they often decline to find fault with, when possibly they might by finding fault prevent their commission. They abstain from interference, because they fear that, if it fail of good effect, their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed; not because they see that their preservation and good name are needful, that they may be able to influence those who need their instruction, but rather because they weakly relish the flattery and respect of men, and fear the judgments of the people, and the pain or death of the body; that is to say, their non-intervention is the result of selfishness, and not of love. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
894:the feeble mind of man did not presume to resist the clear evidence of truth, but yielded its infirmity to wholesome doctrines, as to a health-giving medicine, until it obtained from God, by its faith and piety, the grace needed to heal it, they who have just ideas, and express them in suitable language, would need to use no long discourse to refute the errors of empty conjecture. But this mental infirmity is now more prevalent and hurtful than ever, to such an extent that even after the truth has been as fully demonstrated as man can prove it to man, they hold for the very truth their own unreasonable fancies, either on account of their great blindness, which prevents them from seeing what is plainly set before them, or on account of their opinionative obstinacy, which prevents them from acknowledging the force of what they do see. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
895:But what do I love, when I love You? Not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time. Not the brightness of the light, so welcome to our eyes, Nor sweet melodies of varied songs, Nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments and spices. Not manna and honey, nor the embrace of arms in fleshly pleasure. None of these I love when I love my God. Yet this love is a kind of light and melody and fragrance and meat and embrace. When I love my God, the light, melody, fragrance, meat, and embrace is experienced by my inner man. Love shines into my soul, where space cannot contain it. Love speaks with sound that does not fade into silence with time. Its smells are not dispersed in breath, and its tastes do not grow stale. Love clings, and its satisfaction does not break my connection to the experience. This is it which I love, when I love my God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
896:I say to those who fail to understand what I write that it is not my fault they do not understand. Suppose they wanted to see the new moon, or not the old one, or a star that was very faint, and I pointed it out with my finger but their eyesight was too weak to see even my finger - surely it would be wrong from the to be annoyed with me for that reason? As for those who manage to learn and assimilate these rules but are still unable to see into the obscure passages of divine scripture, they should consider themselves capable of seeing my finger but not the star to which it points. Both types of objector should stop blaming me and pray for insight to be given to them by God. Although I can move a part of my body as to point to something, I cannot improve their eyesight to make them see even my pointing finger, let alone what I want to point out. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
897:[Y]ou are not ashamed of your sin [in committing adultery] because so many men commit it. Man's wickedness is now such that men are more ashamed of chastity than of lechery. Murderers, thieves, perjurers, false witnesses, plunderers and fraudsters are detested and hated by people generally, but whoever will sleep with his servant girl in brazen lechery is liked and admired for it, and people make light of the damage to his soul. And if any man has the nerve to say that he is chaste and faithful to his wife and this gets known, he is ashamed to mix with other men, whose behaviour is not like his, for they will mock him and despise him and say he's not a real man; for man's wickedness is now of such proportions that no one is considered a man unless he is overcome by lechery, while one who overcomes lechery and stays chaste is considered unmanly. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
898:When I come across one or other of my fellow Christians ignorant of astronomy, believing what is not so, I calmly look on, not thinking him the worse for mistaking the place or order of created things, so long as he holds nothing demeaning to you, Lord, the creator of all those things. But he is worse off if he holds that his error is a matter of religious faith, and persists stubbornly in the error. His faith is still a weak thing in its cradle, needing the milk of a mothering love, until the youth grows up and cannot be the play-thing, any more, of every doctrinal wind that blows.
But one who ventures on the role of teacher, of leader and ruler of those under his spell, whose followers heed him not as a man only but as your very Spirit -- what are we to make of him when he is caught purveying falsehoods? Should we not reject and despise such madness? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
899:Greed is not a defect in the gold that is desired but in the man who loves it perversely by falling from justice which he ought to esteem as incomparably superior to gold; nor is lust a defect in bodies which are beautiful and pleasing: it is a sin in the soul of the one who loves corporal pleasures perversely, that is, by abandoning that temperance which joins us in spiritual and unblemishable union with realities far more beautiful and pleasing; nor is boastfulness a blemish in words of praise: it is a failing in the soul of one who is so perversely in love with other peoples' applause that he despises the voice of his own conscience; nor is pride a vice in the one who delegates power, still less a flaw in the power itself: it is a passion in the soul of the one who loves his own power so perversely as to condemn the authority of one who is still more powerful. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
900:The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold back the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him are from the creation of the world clearly seen— being understood by the things that are made— even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are inexcusable.” Romans 1:18-20 In what sense does he pronounce them to be “inexcusable,” except with reference to such excuse as human pride is apt to allege in such words as, “If I had only known, I would have done it; did I not fail to do it because I was ignorant of it?” or, “I would do it if I knew how; but I do not know, therefore I do not do it”? All such excuse is removed from them when the precept is given them, or the knowledge is made manifest to them how to avoid sin. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
901:It is this Good which we are commanded to love with our whole heart, with our whole mind, and with all our strength. It is toward this Good that we should be led by those who love us, and toward this Good we should lead those whom we love. In this way, we fulfill the commandments on which depend the whole Law and the Prophets: 'Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with thy whole heart, and thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind'; and 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' For, in order that a man might learn how to love himself, a standard was set to regulate all his actions on which his happiness depends. For, to love one's own self is nothing but to wish to be happy, and the standard is union with God. When, therefore, a person who knows how to love himself is bidden to love his neighbor as himself, is he not, in effect, commanded to persuade others, as far as he can, to love God? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
902:Further, all men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you. For, suppose that you had a great deal of some commodity, and felt bound to give it away to somebody who had none, and that it could not be given to more than one person; if two persons presented themselves, neither of whom had either from need or relationship a greater claim upon you than the other, you could do nothing fairer than choose by lot to which you would give what could not be given to both. Just so among men: since you cannot consult for the good of them all, you must take the matter as decided for you by a sort of lot, according as each man happens for the time being to be more closely connected with you.
Book 1, Chapter 28 - How we are to decide whom to aid ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
903:La différence de ceux qui sont frappés demeure dans la ressemblance des maux qui les frappent ; et pour être exposés aux mêmes tourments, la vertu et le vice ne se confondent pas. Car, comme un même feu fait briller l’or et noircir la paille, comme un même fléau écrase le chaume et purifie le froment, ou encore, comme le marc ne se mêle pas avec l’huile, quoiqu’il soit tiré de l’olive par le même pressoir, ainsi un même malheur, venant à tomber sur les bons et sur les méchants, éprouve, purifie et fait resplendir les uns, tandis qu’il damne, écrase et anéantit les autres. C’est pour cela qu’en une même affliction, les méchants blasphèment contre Dieu, les bons, au contraire, le prient et le bénissent : tant il importe de considérer, non les maux qu’on souffre, mais l’esprit dans lequel on les subit ; car le même mouvement qui tire de la boue une odeur fétide, imprimé à un vase de parfums, en fait sortir les plus douces exhalaisons. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
904:They even endeavour to comprehend things eternal; but as yet their heart flies about in the past and future motions of things, and is still wavering. Who shall hold it and fix it, that it may rest a little, and by degrees catch the glory of that everstanding eternity, and compare it with the times which never stand, and see that it is incomparable; and that a long time cannot become long, save from the many motions that pass by, which cannot at the same instant be prolonged; but that in the Eternal nothing passes away, but that the whole is present; but no time is wholly present; and let him see that all time past is forced on by the future, and that all the future follows from the past, and that all, both past and future, is created and issues from that which is always present? Who will hold the heart of man, that it may stand still, and see how the still-standing eternity, itself neither future nor past, utters the times future and past? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
905: Chapter XV.--He Entreats God, that Whatever Useful Things He Learned as a Boy May Be Dedicated to Him. 24. Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto Thee Thy mercies, whereby Thou hast saved me from all my most mischievous ways, that Thou mightest become sweet to me beyond all the seductions which I used to follow; and that I may love Thee entirely, and grasp Thy hand with my whole heart, and that Thou mayest deliver me from every temptation, even unto the end. For lo, O Lord, my King and my God, for Thy service be whatever useful thing I learnt as a boy--for Thy service what I speak, and write, and count. For when I learned vain things, Thou didst grant me Thy discipline; and my sin in taking delight in those vanities, Thou hast forgiven me. I learned, indeed, in them many useful words; but these may be learned in things not vain, and that is the safe way for youths to walk in. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
906:Mais, dit-on, plusieurs se sont tués pour ne pas tomber en la puissance des ennemis. Je réponds qu’il ne s’agit pas de ce qui a été fait, mais de ce qu’on doit faire. La raison est au-dessus des exemples, et les exemples eux-mêmes s’accordent avec la raison, quand on sait choisir ceux qui sont le plus dignes d’être imités, ceux qui viennent de la plus haute piété. Ni les Patriarches, ni les Prophètes, ni les Apôtres ne nous ont donné l’exemple du suicide. Jésus-Christ, Notre-Seigneur, qui avertit ses disciples, en cas de persécution, de fuir de ville en ville, ne pouvait-il pas leur conseiller de se donner la mort, plutôt que de tomber dans les mains de leurs persécuteurs ? Si donc il ne leur a donné ni le conseil, ni l’ordre de quitter la vie, lui qui leur prépare, suivant ses promesses, les demeures de l’éternité, il s’ensuit que les exemples invoqués par les Gentils, dans leur ignorance de Dieu, ne prouvent rien pour les adorateurs du seul Dieu véritable. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
907:Quid est enim tempus? Quis hoc facile breuiterque explicauerit? Quis hoc ad uerbum de illo proferendum uel cogitatione comprehenderit? Quid autem familiarius et notius in loquendo commemoramus quam tempus? Et intellegimus utique cum id loquimur, intellegimus etiam cum alio loquente id audimus. Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quærat, scio; si quærenti explicare uelim, nescio. Fidenter tamen dico scire me quod, si nihil præteriret, non esset præteritum tempus, et si nihil adueniret, non esset futurum tempus, et si nihil esset, non esset præsens tempus. Duo ergo illa tempora, præteritum et futurum, quomodo sunt, quando et præteritum iam non est et futurum nondum est? Præsens autem si semper esset præsens nec in præteritum transiret, non iam esset tempus, sed æternitas. Si ergo præsens, ut tempus sit, ideo fit, quia in præteritum transit, quomodo et hoc esse dicimus, cui causa, ut sit, illa est, quia non erit, ut scilicet non uere dicamus tempus esse, nisi quia tendit non esse? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
908:This being so, when the good and the wicked suffer alike, the identity of their sufferings does not mean that there is no difference between them. Though the sufferings are the same, the sufferers remain different. Virtue and vice are not the same, even if they undergo the same torment. The fire which makes gold shine makes chaff smoke; the same flail breaks up the straw, and clears the grain; and oil is not mistaken for lees because both are forced out by the same press. In the same way, the violence which assails good men to test them, to cleanse and purify them, effects in the wicked their condemnation, ruin, and annihilation. Thus the wicked, under pressure of affliction, execrate God and blaspheme; the good, in the same affliction, offer up prayers and praises. This shows that what matters is the nature of the sufferer, not the nature of the sufferings. Stir a cesspit, and a foul stench arises; stir a perfume, and a delightful fragrance ascends. But the movement is identical. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
909:God becomes all to thee; for He is to thee the whole of these things which thou lovest. If thou regardest things visible, neither is God bread, nor is God water, nor is God this light, nor is He garment nor house. For all these are things visible, and single separate things. What bread is, water is not; and what a garment is, a house is not; and what these things are, God is not, for they are visible things. God is all this to thee: if thou hungerest, He is bread to thee; if thou thirstest, He is water to thee; if thou art in darkness, He is light to thee: for He remains incorruptible. If thou art naked, He is a garment of immortality to thee, when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. All things can be said of God, and nothing is worthily said of God. Nothing is wider than this poverty of expression. Thou seekest a fitting name for Him, thou canst not find it; thou seekest to speak of Him in any way soever, thou findest that He is all. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
910:Do they desire to join me in thanksgiving when they hear how, by your gift, I have come close to you, and do they pray for me when they hear how I am held back by my own weight? ...A brotherly mind will love in me what you teach to be lovable, and will regret in me what you teach to be regrettable. This is a mark of a Christian brother's mind, not an outsider's--not that of 'the sons of aliens whose mouth speaks vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity' (Ps. 143:7 f.). A brotherly person rejoices on my account when he approves me, but when he disapproves, he is loving me. To such people I will reveal myself. They will take heart from my good traits, and sigh with sadness at my bad ones. My good points are instilled by you and are your gifts. My bad points are my faults and your judgements on them. Let them take heart from the one and regret the other. Let both praise and tears ascend in your sight from brotherly hearts, your censers. ...But you Lord...Make perfect my imperfections ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
911:O highest and best, most powerful, most all-powerful, most merciful and most just, most deeply hidden and most nearly present, most beautiful and most strong, constant yet incomprehensible, changeless yet changing all things, never new, never old, making all things new, bringing the proud to decay and they know it not: always acting and always at rest, still gathering yet never wanting; upholding, filling and protecting, creating, nourishing, and bringing to perfection; seeking, although in need of nothing. You love, but with no storm of passion; you are jealous, but with no anxious fear; you repent, but do not grieve; in your anger calm; you change your works, but never change your plan; you take back what you find and yet have never lost; never in need, you are yet glad of gain; never greedy, yet still demanding profit on your loans; to be paid in excess, so that you may be the debtor, and yet who has anything which is not yours? You pay back debts which you never owed and cancel debts without losing anything. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
912:Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
913:Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
914:Como era miserável e como procesdestes para que sentisse a minha desgraça, naquele dia em que me preparava para declamar louvores ao imperador! Neles mentiria muito, e os que o sabiam apoiavam o mentiroso!
Meu coração agitava-se com estes cuidados e ardia na febre dos pensamentos corrompidos, quando, ao passar por um bairro em Milão, reparei num pobre mendigo, já ébrio, julgo eu, mas humorístico e alegre. Gemi e falei aos meus amigos que me acompanhavam das muitas angústias provenientes das nossas loucuras. Com todos os esforços [...] só queríamos chegar à alegria segura, aonde já tinha chegado, primeiro de nós, aquele mendigo e aonde nunca talvez, chegaríamos. Dirigia-me para aquilo mesmo que ele já alcançara com poucas moedas pedidas de esmola, isto é, para a alegria e felicidade temporal, dando voltas e rodeios trabalhosos.
Não possuía o ébrio, é certo a alegria verdadeira. Mas, com tais ambições, eu a buscava muito mais falsamente. Ele, com certeza, andava alegre e eu preocupado; ele vivia seguro e eu cheio de inquietações. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
915: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 came into the Virgin's womb where the human creation was married to him, so that mortal flesh should not for ever be mortal. Coming forth from thence 'as a bridegroom from his marriage bed, he bounded like a giant to run his course' (Ps 18:6). He did not delay, but ran crying out loud by his words, deeds, death, life, descent, and ascent—calling us to return to him. And he has gone from our sight that we should 'return to our heart' (Isa 46:8) and find him there. He went away and behold, here he is. He did not wish to remain long with us, yet he did not abandon us. He has gone to that place which he never left, 'for the world was made by him' (John 1:10); and he was in the world, and 'came into this world to save sinners' (1 Tim. 1:15). To him my soul is making confession, and 'he is healing it, because it was against him that it sinned' (Ps.40:5). ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
916:Eres tú, Señor, el que me juzgas. Ningún hombre conoce lo íntimo del hombre sino el espíritu del hombre que está en él. Con todo, todavía hay en el hombre algunas cosas que el mismo espíritu del hombre no entiende. Solo tú, Señor, sabes todas sus cosas, porque le has hecho. Algo sé yo de ti que desconozco de mí, aunque también me desprecie en tu presencia y me tenga por tierra y ceniza. Cierto que en esta vida no te vemos cara a cara sino en un espejo y de forma borrosa. Por lo mismo, mientras peregrino lejos de ti, estoy más cerca de mí que de ti. Pero si sé que no hay alteración en ti, mientras que yo no acierto a saber qué tentaciones podré resistir y cuáles no. Mi esperanza estriba en que eres fiel, que no permitirás que seamos tentados más allá de nuestras fuerzas, antes bien, con la tentación nos darás modo de poderla resistir con éxito. Confesaré, pues, lo que sé de mí. También confesaré lo que no sé de mí. Porque incluso lo que sé de mí, sólo lo sé porqué tú me iluminas. Y lo que desconozco de mí no lo sabré hasta que mis tinieblas se conviertan en luz de mediodía en tu presencia. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
917:What art Thou then, my God? What, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord?or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong; stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet lacking nothing; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things. Thou lovest, without passion; art jealous, without anxiety; repentest, yet grievest not; art angry, yet serene; changest Thy works, Thy purpose unchanged; receivest again what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing in gains; never covetous, yet exacting usury. Thous receivest over and above, that Thou may owe; and who hath ought that is not Thine? Thou payest debts, owing nothing; remittest debts, losing nothing. And what have I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what saith any man when he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to he who speaketh not, since mute are even the most eloquent. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
918:In this universe, even what is called evil, when it is rightly ordered and kept in its place, commends the good more eminently, since good things yield greater pleasure and praise when compared to the bad things. For the Omnipotent God, whom even the heathen acknowledge as the Supreme Power over all, would not allow any evil in his works, unless in his omnipotence and goodness, as the Supreme Good, he is able to bring forth good out of evil. What, after all, is anything we call evil except the privation of good? In animal bodies, for instance, sickness and wounds are nothing but the privation of health. When a cure is effected, the evils which were present (i.e., the sickness and the wounds) do not retreat and go elsewhere. Rather, they simply do not exist any more. For such evil is not a substance; the wound or the disease is a defect of the bodily substance which, as a substance, is good. Evil, then, is an accident, i.e., a privation of that good which is called health. Thus, whatever defects there are in a soul are privations of a natural good. When a cure takes place, they are not transferred elsewhere but, since they are no longer present in the state of health, they no longer exist at all. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
919: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 unseen, and unless they are believed, we cannot attain to the happy life, which is nothing less than life eternal. It is a question whether we ought to argue with those who profess themselves ignorant not only about the eternity yet to come but also about their present existence, for they [the Academics] even argue that they do not know what they cannot help knowing. For no one can 'not know' that he himself is alive. If he is not alive, he cannot 'not know' about it or anything else at all, because either to know or to 'not know' implies a living subject. But, in such a case, by not positively affirming that they are alive, the skeptics ward off the appearance of error in themselves, yet they do not make errors simply by showing themselves alive; one cannot err who is not alive. That we live is therefore not only true, but it is altogether certain as well. And there are many things that are thus true and certain concerning which, if we withhold positive assent, this ought not to be regarded as a higher wisdom but actually a sort of dementia. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
920:La curiosidad parece tratar de alcanzar el cultivo de la ciencia, siendo tú quien conoce en sumo grado todas las cosas. Hasta la misma ignorancia y la estupidez se cubren con el nombre de sencillez e inocencia, porque no hallan nada más sencillo que tú; ¿y qué más inocente que tú, que aun el daño que reciben los malos les viene de sus malas obras? La flojera desea hacerse pasar por descanso; pero ¿qué descanso cierto hay fuera del Señor? El lujo desea ser llamado saciedad y abundancia; pero tú solo eres la plenitud y la abundancia indeficiente de eterna suavidad. El derroche se oculta bajo el aspecto de generosidad; pero sólo tú eres el verdadero y generosísimo dador de todos los bienes. La avaricia quiere poseer muchas cosas; pero tú solo las posees todas. La envidia compite por la excelencia; pero ¿qué hay más excelente que tú? La ira busca la venganza; ¿y qué venganza más justa que la tuya? El temor se espanta de las cosas repentinas e insólitas, contrarias a lo que uno ama y desea tener seguro; mas ¿qué en ti de nuevo o repentino?, ¿quién hay que te arrebate lo que amas? y ¿en dónde sino en ti se encuentra la firme seguridad? La tristeza se abate con las cosas perdidas, con que solía gozarse la codicia, y no quisiera se le quitase nada, como nada se te puede quitar a ti. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
921:And in the universe, even that which is called evil, when it is regulated and put in its own place, only enhances our admiration of the good; for we enjoy and value the good more when we compare it with the evil. For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance,—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
922:Theft is punished by Your law, O Lord, and by the law written in men's hearts, which iniquity itself cannot blot out. For what thief will suffer a thief? Even a rich thief will not suffer him who is driven to it by want. Yet had I a desire to commit robbery, and did so, compelled neither by hunger, nor poverty through a distaste for well-doing, and a lustiness of iniquity. For I pilfered that of which I had already sufficient, and much better. Nor did I desire to enjoy what I pilfered, but the theft and sin itself. There was a pear-tree close to our vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was tempting neither for its colour nor its flavour. To shake and rob this some of us wanton young fellows went, late one night (having, according to our disgraceful habit, prolonged our games in the streets until then), and carried away great loads, not to eat ourselves, but to fling to the very swine, having only eaten some of them; and to do this pleased us all the more because it was not permitted.Behold my heart, O my God; behold my heart, which You had pity upon when in the bottomless pit. Behold, now, let my heart tell You what it was seeking there, that I should be gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved to perish. I loved my own error— not that for which I erred, but the error itself. Base soul, falling from Your firmament to utter destruction— not seeking anything through the shame but the shame itself! ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
923:For certainly your desire for peace, and prosperity, and plenty is not prompted by any purpose of using these blessings honestly, that is to say, with moderation, sobriety, temperance, and piety; for your purpose rather is to run riot in an endless variety of sottish pleasures, and thus to generate from your prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a thousand-fold more disastrous than the fiercest enemies. It was such a calamity as this that Scipio, your chief pontiff, your best man in the judgment of the whole senate, feared when he refused to agree to the destruction of Carthage, Rome's rival; and opposed Cato, who advised its destruction. He feared security, that enemy of weak minds, and he perceived that a wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens. And he was not mistaken: the event proved how wisely he had spoken. For when Carthage was destroyed, and the Roman republic delivered from its great cause of anxiety, a crowd of disastrous evils forthwith resulted from the prosperous condition of things. First concord was weakened, and destroyed by fierce and bloody seditions; then followed, by a concatenation of baleful causes, civil wars, which brought in their train such massacres, such bloodshed, such lawless and cruel proscription and plunder, that those Romans who, in the days of their virtue, had expected injury only at the hands of their enemies, now that their virtue was lost, suffered greater cruelties at the hands of their fellow-citizens. The lust of rule, which with other vices existed among the Romans in more unmitigated intensity than among any other people, after it had taken possession of the more powerful few, subdued under its yoke the rest, worn and wearied. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
924: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 seek to be feared, yet who is to be feared but God alone: from His power what can be wrested away, or when or where or how or by whom? The caresses by which the lustful seduce are a seeking for love: but nothing is more caressing than Your charity, nor is anything more healthfully loved than Your supremely lovely, supremely luminous Truth. Curiosity may be regarded as a desire for knowledge, whereas You supremely know all things. Ignorance and sheer stupidity hide under the names of simplicity and innocence: yet no being has simplicity like to Yours: and none is more innocent than You, for it is their own deeds that harm the wicked. Sloth pretends that it wants quietude: but what sure rest is there save the Lord? Luxuriousness would be called abundance and completeness; but You are the fullness and inexhaustible abundance of incorruptible delight. Wastefulness is a parody of generosity: but You are the infinitely generous giver of all good. Avarice wants to possess overmuch: but You possess all. Enviousness claims that it strives to excel: but what can excel before You? Anger clamours for just vengeance: but whose vengeance is so just as Yours? Fear is the recoil from a new and sudden threat to something one holds dear, and a cautious regard for one’s own safety: but nothing new or sudden can happen to You, nothing can threaten Your hold upon things loved, and where is safety secure save in You? Grief pines at the loss of things in which desire delighted: for it wills to be like to You from whom nothing can be taken away. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
925:For the good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world's happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness. Yet often, even in the present distribution of temporal things, does God plainly evince His own interference. For if every sin were now visited with manifest punishment, nothing would seem to be reserved for the final judgment; on the other hand, if no sin received now a plainly divine punishment, it would be concluded that there is no divine providence at all. And so of the good things of this life: if God did not by a very visible liberality confer these on some of those persons who ask for them, we should say that these good things were not at His disposal; and if He gave them to all who sought them, we should suppose that such were the only rewards of His service; and such a service would make us not godly, but greedy rather, and covetous. Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
926:I recall how miserable I was, and how one day you brought me to a realization of my miserable state. I was preparing to deliver a eulogy upon the emperor in which I would tell plenty of lies with the object of winning favor with the well-informed by my lying; so my heart was panting with anxiety and seething with feverish, corruptive thoughts. As I passed through a certain district in Milan I noticed a poor beggar, drunk, as I believe, and making merry. I groaned and pointed out to the friends who were with me how many hardships our idiotic enterprises entailed. Goaded by greed, I was dragging my load of unhappiness along, and feeling it all the heavier for being dragged. Yet while all our efforts were directed solely to the attainment of unclouded joy, it appeared that this beggar had already beaten us to the goal, a goal which we would perhaps never reach ourselves. With the help of the few paltry coins he had collected by begging this man was enjoying the temporal happiness for which I strove by so bitter, devious and roundabout a contrivance. His joy was no true joy, to be sure, but what I was seeking in my ambition was a joy far more unreal; and he was undeniably happy while I was full of foreboding; he was carefree, I apprehensive. If anyone had questioned me as to whether I would rather be exhilarated or afraid, I would of course have replied, "Exhilarated"; but if the questioner had pressed me further, asking whether I preferred to be like the beggar, or to be as I was then, I would have chosen to be myself, laden with anxieties and fears. Surely that would have been no right choice, but a perverse one? I could not have preferred my condition to his on the grounds that I was better educated, because that fact was not for me a source of joy but only the means by which I sought to curry favor with human beings: I was not aiming to teach them but only to win their favor. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
927:All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good. But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is the Creator of it. Thus the good in created things can be diminished and augmented. For good to be diminished is evil; still, however much it is diminished, something must remain of its original nature as long as it exists at all. For no matter what kind or however insignificant a thing may be, the good which is its 'nature' cannot be destroyed without the thing itself being destroyed. There is good reason, therefore, to praise an uncorrupted thing, and if it were indeed an incorruptible thing which could not be destroyed, it would doubtless be all the more worthy of praise. When, however, a thing is corrupted, its corruption is an evil because it is, by just so much, a privation of the good. Where there is no privation of the good, there is no evil. Where there is evil, there is a corresponding diminution of the good. As long, then, as a thing is being corrupted, there is good in it of which it is being deprived; and in this process, if something of its being remains that cannot be further corrupted, this will then be an incorruptible entity [natura incorruptibilis], and to this great good it will have come through the process of corruption. But even if the corruption is not arrested, it still does not cease having some good of which it cannot be further deprived. If, however, the corruption comes to be total and entire, there is no good left either, because it is no longer an entity at all. Wherefore corruption cannot consume the good without also consuming the thing itself. Every actual entity [natura] is therefore good; a greater good if it cannot be corrupted, a lesser good if it can be. Yet only the foolish and unknowing can deny that it is still good even when corrupted. Whenever a thing is consumed by corruption, not even the corruption remains, for it is nothing in itself, having no subsistent being in which to exist. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
928:Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion [quoting 1 Tim 1:7]. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
929:Unor astfel de oameni ma voi arta asa cum sunt
5. Dar cu ce folos vor ei lucrul acesta? Doresc cumva sa ma felicite, dupa ce vor fi aflat cit de mult m-am apropiat de Tine prin darul pe care Tu mi l-ai dat, si sa se roage pentru mine cind vor fi aflat cit de mult zabovesc sub povara greutatii mele? Ma voi arata lor, celor care sint in acest fel. Caci, o, Dumnezeule al meu, nu e putin lucru ca tie sa ti se aduca multumiri de catre multi dintre noi si sa-Ti se adreseze multe rugaciuni pentru noi.
Sufletul lor fratesc sa iubeasca in mine ceea ce Tu le arati ca merita sa fie iubit, si sa deplinga ceea ce Tu le arati ca trebuie sa fie deplins. Acest lucru sa-l realizeze acel suflet fratesc, nu un altul din afara, nu al altor fii, a caror
gura a grait desertaciune si a caror dreaptat este dreapta nedreptatii , ci sufletul acela fratesc, care, atunci cind
ma aproba, se bucura de mine; dar care, atunci cind ma dezaproba, se intristeaza de mine: deoarece, fie ca ma aproba, fie ca ma dezaproba, acela ma iubeste. Unor asemenea oameni ma voi arata: cei care isi potrivesc
respiratia cu mine in cele bune ale mele si care suspina cu mine in cele rele. Or, bunurile mele sint rinduielile Tale si darurile Tale; iar relele mele sint pacatele mele si judecatile Tale; sa-si potriveasca respiratia cu mine in
unele, si sa suspine cu mine in celelalte, si cintul de preamarire si plinsul sa se urce pina la Tine din inimile fratesti, cadelnitele Tale. Iar Tu, o, Doamne, desfatat de mireasma templului Tau cel sfint, ai mila de mine dupa
mare mila Ta , pentru numele Tau si, neparasind nicidecum cele pe care deja le-ai inceput, pune capat
neajunsurilor mele.
6. Acesta este rostul marturisirilor mele, nu in ce fel voi fi fost eu, ci in ce fel sint acum, intrucit nu numai in fata Ta ma marturisesc intr-o tainica preamarire plina de cutremur si intr-o tainica jale plina de speranta, ci ma
marturisesc chiar in urechile fiilor oamenilor care cred in Tine, ei, partasii bucuriilor mele si ai destinului meu muritor, in urechile concetatenilor mei si in ale celor care calatoresc cu mine in lumea aceasta, ale celor care au fost inaintea mea si ale celor care vin dupa mine, in ale tuturor celor ce-mi urmeaza pasii, si devin partasi la calea
mea.
Acestia sint robii Tai, fratii mei, cei pe care Tu ai voit sa-i numesti fiii Tai, stapinii mei, cei carora Tu ai poruncit sa le slujesc, daca vreau sa traiesc cu Tine si din Tine. Si cuvintul acesta al Tau ar fi fost putin pentru mine, daca
el m-ar fi instruit vorbind doar, si nu ar fi mers inaintea mea lucrind. Iar eu fac acest lucru prin fapte si prin vorbe, savarsesc asta sub acoperamintul aripilor Tale ; sub amenintarea unei primejdii prea mari, daca sufletul
meu n-ar fi fost pus sub acoperamintul aripilor Tale si daca slabiciunea mea nu Ti-ar fi cunoscuta. Eu sint mititel, dar Tatal meu traieste vesnic, si Ocrotitorul meu este potrivit pentru mine: caci acelasi este si Cel Care m-a nascut si Cel Care ma pazeste. Tu insuti esti toate bunurile mele, Tu, CeL Atotputernic, Tu CeL Care esti cu
mine inainte ca eu sa fiu cu Tine. Asadar, ma voi arata unor astfel de oameni, carora Tu imi poruncesti sa le slujesc, nu cum am fost eu cindva, ci in ce fel am fost pina acum si inca sint. De altfel, nici eu nu ma judec pe
mine insumi ; deci in felul acesta sa fiu ascultat. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
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