Augustine of Hippo Quotes

252 Sourced Quotes

Every good and true Christian should understand that wherever he may find the truth it is his Lord's.

Augustine of Hippo
Therefore, give to the poor. I beg you, I admonish you, I charge you, I command you to give.

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

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

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

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

Augustine of Hippo
You have enemies. For who can live on this earth without them? Take heed to yourselves: love them. In no way can your enemy so hurt you by his violence, as you hurt yourself if you love him not.

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

Augustine of Hippo
Why then be perverted and follow thy flesh? Be it converted and follow thee.

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