Augustine of Hippo - Love Quotes

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I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new!

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
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
To Carthage I came, where all about me resounded a caldron of dissolute loves.

Augustine of Hippo
Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow. Thou mayest say, "I love only God, God the Father." Wrong! If Thou lovest Him, thou dost not love Him alone; but if thou lovest the Father, thou lovest also the Son. Or thou mayest say, "I love the Father and I love the Son, but these alone; God the Father and God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ who ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, the Word by whom all things were made, the Word who was made flesh and dwelt amongst us; only these do I love." Wrong again! If thou lovest the Head, thou lovest also the members; if thou lovest not the members, neither dost thou love the Head.

Augustine of Hippo
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. … Even he that does not as yet believe in Christ … love him, and love him with fraternal love. He is not yet thy brother, but love him precisely that he may be thy brother.

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
The mind itself, its love of itself and it knowledge of itself are a kind of trinity.

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
The dove loves even when it attacks; the wolf hates even when it flatters.

Augustine of Hippo
Beauty grows in you to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul's beauty.

Augustine of Hippo
Too late came I to love thee, O thou Beauty both so ancient and so fresh, yea too late came I to love thee. And behold, thou wert within me, and I out of myself, where I made search for thee.

Augustine of Hippo
The dove loves when it quarrels; the wolf hates when it flatters.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
Incomprehensible and immutable is the love wherewith God loves. He did not begin to love us only on the day we were reconciled to Him by the blood of His Son; He loved us before the world was made, that we too might become His sons together with His Only-begotten Son, long before we had any existence....

Augustine of Hippo
For God loves to save and not to condemn; therefore is he patient with evil, that out of evil good may be brought.

Augustine of Hippo
When I, who conduct this inquiry, love something, then three things are found: I, what I love, and the love itself. … There are, therefore three things: the lover, the beloved and the love.

Augustine of Hippo
The moral conscience is a truly primitive faculty; it is a particular manner of feeling which corresponds to the goodness of moral actions, as taste is a manner of feeling which corresponds to beauty. Love men, immolate error.

Augustine of Hippo
Love, and He will draw near; love, and He will dwell within you.

Augustine of Hippo
Though absent from our eyes, Christ our Head is bound to us by love. Since the whole Christ is Head and body, let us so listen to the voice of the Head that we may also hear the body speak.
He no more wished to speak alone than He wished to exist alone, since He says: Behold, I am with you all days, unto the consummation of the world (Matt. 28:20). If He is with us, then He speaks in us, He speaks of us, and He speaks through us; and we too speak in Him.

Augustine of Hippo
There is no love without hope, no hope without love, and neither love nor hope without faith.

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
But it isn't just a matter of faith, but of faith and works. Each is necessary. For the demons also believe — you heard the apostle — and tremble (Jas 2:19); but their believing doesn't do them any good. Faith alone is not enough, unless works too are joined to it: Faith working through love (Gal 5:6), says the apostle.

Augustine of Hippo
O eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity! You are my God; to you I sigh by day and by night. And when I first knew you, you raised me up so that I could see that there was something to see and that I still lacked the ability to see it. And you beat back the weakness of my sight, blazing upon me with your rays, and I trembled in love and in dread...

Augustine of Hippo