Augustine of Hippo - Confessions

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

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
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 know not.

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
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
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
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
I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.

Augustine of Hippo
I read there [in "certain books of the Platonists"] that God the Word was born "not of flesh nor of blood, nor of the will of man, nor the will of the flesh, but of God." But, that "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" — I found this nowhere there.

Augustine of Hippo
And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here.

Augustine of Hippo
What, then, is time? 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.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
Already I had learned from thee that because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true; nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false. Nor, again, is it necessarily true because rudely uttered, nor untrue because the language is brilliant. Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like town-made or rustic vessels — both kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
You command continence; give what you command, and command what you will.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

Augustine of Hippo
And I entered and beheld with the eye of my soul... the Light Unchangeable... He that knows the Truth, knows what that Light is; and he that knows It, knows Eternity.

Augustine of Hippo
Every day my conscience makes confession relying on the hope of Your mercy as more to be trusted than its own innocence.

Augustine of Hippo
The people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered.

Augustine of Hippo
The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.

Augustine of Hippo
The past increases by the diminution of the future, until by the consumption of the future, all is past.

Augustine of Hippo
The weakness of little children's limbs is innocent, not their souls.

Augustine of Hippo
Give what you command, and command what you will. You impose continency on us.

Augustine of Hippo
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.

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
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.

Augustine of Hippo
In the usual course of study I had come to a book of a certain Cicero.

Augustine of Hippo
Although it is part of my nature, I cannot understand all that I am. This means, then, that the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely. But where is that part of it which it does not itself contain?

Augustine of Hippo