Augustine of Hippo Quotes

252 Sourced Quotes

What tigress is there that does not purr over her young ones, and fawn upon them in tenderness?

Augustine of Hippo
We made bad use of immortality, and so ended up dying; Christ made good use of mortality, so that we might end up living.

Augustine of Hippo
If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them, and turn back thy love upon their Maker; lest in these things which please thee, thou displease. If souls please thee, be they loved in God: for they too are mutable, but in Him they are firmly established.

Augustine of Hippo
Temperance is a disposition that restrains our desires for things which it is base to desire.

Augustine of Hippo
Why is it that we remember with difficulty and without difficulty forget? Learn with difficulty and without difficulty remain ignorant?

Augustine of Hippo
Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale?... A gang is a group of men... in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention. If this villainy... acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues people, it then openly arrogates to itself the title of kingdom.

Augustine of Hippo
Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms.

Augustine of Hippo
The wicked have told me of things that delight them, but not such things as your law has to tell.

Augustine of Hippo
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? whither can God come into me, God who made heaven and earth? is there, indeed, O Lord my God, aught in me that can contain thee?

Augustine of Hippo
Who else is it who calls us back from the death of error, except the life that does not know death, and the wisdom which, needing no light, enlightens minds which are in darkness, that wisdom by which the whole world, even to the leaves of trees drifting in the wind, is governed?

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
A free curiosity is more effective in learning than a rigid discipline.

Augustine of Hippo
Samson crushed himself and his enemies to death beneath the ruins of a building. He can only be excused on the grounds that the Spirit of the Lord, who wrought miracles through him, had bidden him to do so. But, apart from such men excepted by the command of a just law in general or of God, the very Source of justice, in a special case, any one who kills a human being, himself or another, is guilty of murder.

Augustine of Hippo
My love for you, Lord, is not an uncertain feeling, but a matter of concious certainty. With your word you pierced my heart, and I loved you. But heaven and earth and everything in them on all sides tell me to love you.

Augustine of Hippo
It is He who gave to this intellectual nature free-will of such a kind, that if he wishes to forsake God his blessedness, misery should forthwith result.

Augustine of Hippo
For when God said, "Let there be light, and there was light," if we are justified in understanding in this light the creation of the angels, then certainly they were created partakers of the eternal light which is the unchangeable Wisdom of God, by which all things were made, and whom we call the only-begotten Son of God.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
For I did not know that the soul needs to be enlightened by light from outside itself, so that it can participate in truth, because it is not itself the nature of truth.

Augustine of Hippo
Not all, nor even a majority, are saved... They are indeed many, if regarded by themselves, but they are few in comparison with the far larger number of those who shall be punished with the devil.

Augustine of Hippo
The human race is inquisitive about other people's lives, but negligent to correct their own.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build on the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all. Thus a man supported by faith, hope, and charity, with an unshaken hold upon them does not need the scriptures... And many live by these three things in solitude without books.

Augustine of Hippo
It is not with respect to our convenience or discomfort, but with respect to their own nature that the creatures are glorifying to their Artificer.

Augustine of Hippo
For so it is, O Lord my God, I measure it! But what it is I measure, I do not know.

Augustine of Hippo
We enjoy some gratification when our good friends die; for though their death leaves us in sorrow, we have the consolatory assurance that they are beyond the ills by which in this life even the best of people are broken down or corrupted.

Augustine of Hippo
Just think of the illimitable abundance and the marvelous loveliness of light, or of the beauty of the sun and moon and stars.

Augustine of Hippo
Let him who desires to be harsh in making demands upon his debtors consider that he is God's debtor.

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

Augustine of Hippo
Where Scripture speaks of the world's creation, it is not plainly said whether or when the angels were created; but if mention is made, it is implicit under the name of "heaven," when it is said, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Augustine of Hippo