Saint Augustine Quotations

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

Patience is the companion of wisdom.

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.

Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.

Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.

O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.

We make a ladder for ourselves of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

We cannot pass our guardian angel's bounds, resigned or sullen, he will hear our sighs.

Passion is the evil in adultery. If a man has no opportunity of living with another man's wife, but if it is obvious for some reason that he would like to do so, and would do so if he could, he is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act.

Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.

The desire is thy prayers; and if thy desire is without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing. The continuance of your longing is the continuance of your prayer.

Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart.

He that is jealous is not in love.

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.

O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.

What I needed most was to love and to be loved, eager to be caught. Happily I wrapped those painful bonds around me; and sure enough, I would be lashed with the red-hot pokers or jealousy, by suspicions and fear, by burst of anger and quarrels.

It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.

Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.

A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.

Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again.

If two friends ask you to judge a dispute, don't accept, because you will lose one friend; on the other hand, if two strangers come with the same request, accept because you will gain one friend.

It is not the punishment but the cause that makes the martyr.

The same thing which is now called Christian religion existed among the ancients. They have begun to call 'Christian' the true religion which existed before.

No eulogy is due to him who simply does his duty and nothing more.

Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.

The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.

By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.

Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others.

Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.

There is something in humility which strangely exalts the heart.

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

My mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradictory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that light was wherein it was bathed... And thus, with the flash of one hurried glance, it attained to the vision of That Which Is.

Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood.

To seek the highest good is to live well.

We are certainly in a common class with the beasts; every action of animal life is concerned with seeking bodily pleasure and avoiding pain.

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it.

I want my friend to miss me as long as I miss him.

It seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all.

Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.

The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light; although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted.

Repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt.

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

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?

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.

If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times.

Don't you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.

Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt.

Blessedness consists in the accomplishment of our desires, and in our having only regular desires.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away. -Ronald Reagan In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.

He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.

Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.

We make ourselves a ladder out of our vices if we trample the vices themselves underfoot.

The soul, which is spirit, can not dwell in dust; it is carried along to dwell in the blood.

God is best known in not knowing him.

The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?

There is no possible source of evil except good.

In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty.

If we did not have rational souls, we would not be able to believe.

Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.

I found thee not, O Lord, without, because I erred in seeking thee without that wert within.

Oh Lord, give me chastity, but do not give it yet.

Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by.

God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed.

God will not suffer man to have a knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity, he would be careless; and if understanding of his adversity, he would be despairing and senseless

We make a ladder of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.

To Carthage I came, where there sang all around my ears a cauldron of unholy loves.

Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.

You aspire to great things? Begin with little ones.

Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.

People travel to marvel at the mountains, seas, rivers and stars; and they pass right by themselves without astonishment.

And behold you were within me,and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.

There is a God-shaped vacuum in every man that only Christ can fill.

God is more truly imagined than expressed, and He exists more truly than He is imagined.

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.

Since God is the highest good, he would not allow any evil to exist in his works unless his omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.

The will is truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and sins.

Love and say it with your life.

Give me yourself, O my God, give yourself back to me. Lo, I love you, but if my love is too mean, let me love more passionately. I cannot gauge my love, nor know how far it fails, how much more love I need for my life to set its course straight into your arms, never swerving until hidden in the covert of your face. This alone I know, that without you all to me is misery, woe outside myself and woe within, and all wealth but penury, if it is not my God.

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

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.

What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction

God's love is unconditional. Be sure that yours is too!

Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.

To touch God a little with our mind is a great blessing, to grasp him is impossible.

The Old (Testament) is in the New (Testament) revealed, the New is in the Old concealed.