Augustine of Hippo Quotes

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

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

Augustine of Hippo
If a shameless woman expects to be defiled and then dies of her fierce love because you do not consent, will chastity also be homicide?

Augustine of Hippo
He who created you without you will not justify you without you.

Augustine of Hippo
When large numbers of people share their joy in common, the happiness of each is greater because each adds fuel to the other's flame.

Augustine of Hippo
For if it is not lawful to take the law into our own hands and slay even a guilty person, whose death no public sentence has warranted. Then certainly he who kills himself is a homicide, and so much the guiltier of his own death as he was more innocent of that offence for which he doomed himself to die.

Augustine of Hippo
It is love that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds.

Augustine of Hippo
The members of Christ, many though they be, are bound to one another by the ties of charity and peace under the one Head, who is our Saviour Himself, and form one man. Often their voice is heard in the Psalms as the voice of one man; the cry of one is as the cry of all, for all are one in One.

Augustine of Hippo
It is salutary for us to learn to hold cheap such things, be they good or evil, as attach indifferently to good men and bad, and to covet those good things which belong only to good men, and flee those evils which belong only to evil men.

Augustine of Hippo
Time is like a river made up of events which happen, and its current is strong; no sooner does anything appear than it is swept away.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
Just as it is agreed that we all wish to be happy, so it is that we all wish to be wise, since no one without wisdom is happy.

Augustine of Hippo
When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful.

Augustine of Hippo
Fortitude is the disposition of soul which enables us to despise all inconveniences and the loss of things not in our power.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the formula teach me?

Augustine of Hippo
Sin is to a nature what blindness is to an eye. The blindness of 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 misforture.

Augustine of Hippo
At the beginning of the human race the woman was made of a rib taken from the side of the man while he slept; for it seemed fit that even then Christ and His Church should be foreshadowed in this event. For that sleep of the man was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the Cross, was pierced with a spear, and there flowed from it blood and water, and these we know to be the sacraments by which the Church is built up.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
No one indeed believes anything unless he has first thought that it it to be believed.

Augustine of Hippo
For what is the self-complacent man but a slave to his own self-praise.

Augustine of Hippo
As it happens usually to him that having had experience of a bad physician, is fearful afterwards to trust himself with a good [physician].

Augustine of Hippo
Hear, O God. Alas, for man's sin! So saith man, and Thou pitiest him; for Thou madest him, but sin is in him Thou madest not. Who remindeth me of the sins of my infancy? for in Thy sight none is pure from sin, not even the infant whose life is but a day upon the earth.

Augustine of Hippo
If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood.

Augustine of Hippo
He who falls, falls by his own will, and he who stands, stands by God's will.

Augustine of Hippo
Then assuredly the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time.

Augustine of Hippo
Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.

Augustine of Hippo