Inspirational Quotes by Augustine of Hippo (Roman-African Christian Philosopher)

Inspirational Quotations by Augustine of Hippo (Roman-African Christian Philosopher)

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was a Christian philosopher and theologian. This bishop of the City of Hippo was an important figure in the evolution of pagan attitudes into Christian philosophy.

Born in Tagaste in the Roman province of Numidia in North Africa, now Algeria, to a pagan father and a Christian mother, Augustine converted to Christianity at the age of 31 under the influence of Bishop Ambrose of Milan. Augustine desired a quiet life of philosophizing about theology and writing books. However, when he moved to the port town of Hippo to establish a monastery, he was required to take over the duties of the local bishop. He regretted that he had to spend much time delivering sermons and running a parish instead of writing.

Saint Augustine is known today for his two major works, The Confessions (397–400 CE,) and The City of God (426 CE,) the latter written after the fall of Rome to the Barbarians in 410 CE. In The Confessions, one of the first memoirs of Western literature, Augustine scrutinized his earlier life—the sins he had committed—crying over a fictional character in a poem, stealing pears from a neighbor’s tree, sexual fantasies and exploits, long relationship with a concubine, and so forth. His meditations on his emotional development and the growth of his soul in the context of his own pagan experience are often seen as an argument for Roman Catholicism.

Saint Augustine is also remembered for his philosophies about the notion of original sin—he asserted that all humans are born sinful because they are descended from Adam and Eve, who committed the first sin.

Soon after his death of Augustine, the City of Hippo was destroyed by Vandals. Augustine’s library survived, and all his ideas about resisting pagan influences became church doctrine. His urging that all Christian churches follow the central church in Rome was responsible for preventing the Christian faith from breaking up into separate churches during the medieval period.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Augustine of Hippo

The world is a great book, of which they who never stir from home read only a page.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Travel

The people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Victory

He who is filled with love is filled with God himself.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Love

The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Merit, Humility

I want my friend to miss me as long as I miss him.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Friends and Friendship

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Love, God

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

Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Grace

Love, and do what you like.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Love, Simplicity, Time Management, Value of Time, Simple Living

Suspicion is the poison of true friendship.
—Augustine of Hippo

There is one case of death-bed repentance recorded, that of the penitent thief, that none should despair; and only one that none should presume.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Repentance

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.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Love, Feelings

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.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Beauty

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Evil, Freedom

No one hates his body.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Body

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.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Love, Feelings

Our hearts have been made for you, O God, and they shall never rest until they rest in you.
—Augustine of Hippo

They the hazers or eversores were rightly called Overturners, since they had themselves been first overturned and perverted, tricked by those same devils who were secretly mocking them in the very acts by which they amused themselves in mocking and making fools of others.
—Augustine of Hippo

To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of things eternal; to knowledge, the rational apprehension of things temporal.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Knowledge, Wisdom

By and by never comes.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Tomorrow, The Future

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Faith

Nothing whatever pertaining to godliness and real holiness can be accomplished without grace
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Accomplishment

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

It is the function of perfection to make one know one’s imperfection.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Perfection

When we read a book, our most essential trait – imagination – is given the opportunity to soar.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Imagination

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: Friendship, Feelings, Friends

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, Journeys, People, Reflection, Self-Discovery

Purity of soul cannot be lost without consent.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Truth

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: Feelings, Love

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.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Forgiveness

Humble wedlock is far better than proud virginity.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Marriage

Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Forgiveness

Wouldst thou have thy flesh obey thy spirit? Then let thy spirit obey thy God. Thou must be governed, that thou may’st govern.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Self-Control

Blessedness consists in the accomplishment of our desires, and in our having only regular desires.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Happiness

Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe, that thou mayest understand.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Belief, Faith, Understanding

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.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Humility

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfection.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Perfect, Perfection

To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Sin

The argument is at an end.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Arguments

Before God can deliver us we must undeceive ourselves.
—Augustine of Hippo
Topics: Repentance