Do not believe yourself healthy. Immortality is health; this life is a long sickness.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Immortality
Punishment is justice for the unjust.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Punishment
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.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Soul
Blessedness consists in the accomplishment of our desires, and in our having only regular desires.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Happiness
In as much as love grows in you,
so in you beauty grows.
For love
is the beauty of the soul.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Love, Feelings
When we read a book, our most essential trait – imagination – is given the opportunity to soar.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Imagination
The people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Victory
Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Life and Living
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.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Feelings, Friends, Friendship
Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Charity
Patience is the companion of wisdom.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Patience, Wisdom
It is human to err, but it is devilish to remain willfully in error.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Failures, Mistakes
I asked the whole frame of the world about my God; and he answered, “I am not He, but He made me.”
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Creation
He that is not jealous is not in love.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Jealousy
Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Habits, Habit
It is the function of perfection to make one know one’s imperfection.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Perfection
Should you ask me, What is the first thing in religion?. I should reply, The first, second, and third thing therein—nay, all—is humility.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Humility
The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Courage, Honesty
Do you wish to rise?. Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds?. Lay first the foundation of humility.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Leaders, Humility, Leadership
Poetry is devil’s wine.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Wine
Drunkenness is a flattering devil, a sweet poison, a pleasant sin, which whosoever hath, hath not himself, which whosoever doth commit, doth not commit sin, but he himself is wholly sin.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Drunkenness
God had one Son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Adversity, Trials
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.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Time Management, Time
The argument is at an end.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Arguments
We make a ladder of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Faults
People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Wonder, People, Journeys, Self-Discovery, Reflection
Consequently, if the republic is the weal of the people, and there is no people if it be not associated by a common acknowledgment of right, and if there is no right where there is no justice, then most certainly it follows that there is no republic where there is no justice.
—Augustine of Hippo
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.
—Augustine of Hippo
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.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Experience
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.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Belief
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Jerome Greek Priest
- Thomas Aquinas Italian Catholic Priest
- John Chrysostom Archbishop of Constantinople
- Soren Kierkegaard Danish Philosopher, Theologian
- Friedrich Schleiermacher German Theologian
- G. K. Chesterton English Journalist
- Paul Tillich German-American Theologian
- John Macquarrie British Theologian
- Sigrid Undset Norwegian Novelist
- Karl Barth Swiss Protestant Theologian
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