Augustine Hippo Quotes

#1. I held my heart back from positively accepting anything, since I was afraid of another fall, and in this condition of suspense I was being all the more killed.

Augustine Of Hippo

#2. Always add, always walk, always proceed; neither stand still, nor go back, nor deviate; he that standeth still proceedeth not; he goeth back that continueth not; he deviateth that revolteth; he goeth better that creepeth in his way than he that moveth out of his way.

Augustine Of Hippo

#3. Just as truly as the Confessions are the autobiography of St. Augustine, The City of God is the autobiography of the Church written by the most Catholic of her great saints.

Augustine Of Hippo

#4. Love is ever new because it never groweth old.

Augustine Of Hippo

#5. In their perverted way all humanity imitates you. Yet they put themselves at a distance from you and exalt themselves against you. But even by thus imitating you they acknowledge that you are the creator of all nature and so concede that there is no palace where one can entirely escape from you.

Augustine Of Hippo

#6. It is no less impossible for us not to taste as bitter the death of those whose life for us was such a source of sweetness.

Augustine Of Hippo

#7. Whither do I call Thee, since I am in Thee? or whence canst Thou enter into

Augustine Of Hippo

#8. I was inflamed to love, and seek, and obtain, and hold, and embrace, not some sect, but wisdom itself-whatever it was.

Augustine Of Hippo

#9. We were born in a Jewish world, as part of a Jewish faith tradition. We had to translate ourselves into the neo-Platonic thinking Greek world; that took us about 400 years. Then, finally a man named Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, recast Christianity in terms of neo-Platonic thought.

John Shelby Spong

#10. For the human race is, more than any other species, at once social by nature and quarrelsome by perversion.

Augustine Of Hippo

#11. The only object which ought to be enjoyed is the triune God, who is our highest good and our true happiness.

Augustine Of Hippo

#12. He who has no tomb has the sky for his vault.

Augustine Of Hippo

#13. For no one ought to consider anything as his own, except perhaps what is false. All truth is of Him who says, "I am the truth." [1715] For what have we that we did not receive? and if we have received it, why do we glory, as if we had not received it? [1716]

Augustine Of Hippo

#14. It is not that we keep His commandments first and that then He loves but that He loves us and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace which is revealed to the humble but hidden from the proud.

Augustine Of Hippo

#15. Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants as to willing what he has heard from you.

Augustine Of Hippo

#16. The good man is free, even if he is a slave. The evil man is a slave, even if he is a king.

Augustine Of Hippo

#17. I probably felt more resentment for what I personally was to suffer than for the wrong they were doing to anyone and everyone. But at that time I was determined not to put up with badly behaved people more out of my own interest than because I wanted them to become good people.

Augustine Of Hippo

#18. Believe that you may understand,

Saint Augustine

#19. i understand that i understand

Augustine Of Hippo

#20. Our hearts have been made for you, O God, and they shall never rest until they rest in you.

Augustine Of Hippo

#21. For no one should consider anything his own, except perhaps a lie, since all truth is from Him who said, I am the truth.

Augustine Of Hippo

#22. Thus the quarrel that arose between Remus and Romulus demonstrated the division of the earthly city against itself; while the conflict between Cain and Abel displayed the hostility between the two cities themselves, the City of God and the city of men. Thus

Augustine Of Hippo

#23. What do you think you are doing by infesting the whole world? Because I do it with one puny boat, I am called a pirate; because you do it with a great fleet, you are called an emperor.

Augustine Of Hippo

#24. For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall?

Augustine Of Hippo

#25. Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself?

Augustine Of Hippo

#26. This disease of curiosity.

Augustine Of Hippo

#27. I heard Your voice from on high. I am the food of the fully grown. Grow and you will feed on me. And you will not change Me into you, like the food of flesh eats. But you will be changed into Me.

Augustine Of Hippo

#28. Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good!

Augustine Of Hippo

#29. I will plant my feet on that step where my parents put me as a child, until self-evident truth comes to light.

Augustine Of Hippo

#30. Lord Jesus, don't let me lie when I say that I love you ... and protect me, for today I could betray you.

Augustine Of Hippo

#31. When we transform our old life and give our spirit a new image, we find it hard and tiring to turn back from the darkness of earthly passions to the serene calm of the divine light. We thus ask God to help us that a complete conversion may be brought about in us.

Augustine Of Hippo

#32. This, then, is true liberty: the joy that comes in doing what is right. At the same time, it is also devoted service in obedience to righteous precept.

Augustine Of Hippo

#33. Pray as though everything depends on God. And work as if everything depends on you.

Augustine Of Hippo

#34. The wicked make all God's good works serve evil purposes but the person of good will, to the contrary, makes the evil doings of the wicked serve good purposes.

Augustine Of Hippo

#35. The soul which is led by God and His wisdom, rather than by bodily concupiscence, will certainly never consent to the desire aroused in its own flesh by another's lust.

Augustine Of Hippo

#36. Though I was retreating from the Truth, I appeared to myself to be going toward it because I did not yet know that evil with nothing but the privation of good.

Augustine Of Hippo

#37. I cannot grasp all that I am.

Augustine Of Hippo

#38. The world is a book, and he who does not travel reads only a page.

Augustine Of Hippo

#39. My questioning was my attentive spirit,
and their reply, their beauty.

Augustine Of Hippo

#40. God gives where he finds empty hands.

Augustine Of Hippo

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

Augustine Of Hippo

#42. Sorrow is permitted human beings, but it is not to be desired if we would be like You, Lord God. For You, who love souls far more purely than we and feel a perfect pity for others, are wounded, yet without sorrow. How can we be like You in this?

Augustine Of Hippo

#43. It is a higher glory ... to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with the sword, and to procure or maintain peace by peace, not by war.

Augustine Of Hippo

#44. The world is a great book ... they who never stir from home read only a page.

Augustine Of Hippo

#45. There is a joy that brings true happiness, but it is not given to the ungodly. It is only for those who love You for Your own sake. That joy is to know You as You are. This is the happy life, to rejoice in You, of You, and for You.

Augustine Of Hippo

#46. Prayer is the key that opens heaven; the favors we ask descend upon us the very instant our prayers ascend to God.

Augustine Of Hippo

#47. To whatever the soul of man turns, unless toward God, it cleaves to sorrow, even though the things outside God and outside itself to which it turns may be things of beauty.

Augustine Of Hippo

#48. it is grace that makes us fulfil the law, and causes nature to be liberated from the dominion of sin.

Augustine Of Hippo

#49. Only one possibility remains: the movement by which the will turns from enjoying the Creator to enjoying his creatures belongs to the will itself.

Augustine Of Hippo

#50. To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.

Augustine Of Hippo

#51. If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.

Augustine Of Hippo

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

Augustine Of Hippo

#53. For what is the self-complacent man but a slave to his own self-praise.

Augustine Of Hippo

#54. For every man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points to the lust of the flesh.

Augustine Of Hippo

#55. No one will make a good end to the life into which he is born unless he is born again before he ends it.

Augustine Of Hippo

#56. A thing is good and pleasant only because it is connected to Him. Use it apart from its Source, and it will come to taste bitter. Since the good thing is His, how can it remain worth loving if you forsake Him to get it?

Augustine Of Hippo

#57. Hence a 'bishop' who has set his heart on a position of eminence rather than an opportunity for service should realize that he is no bishop. So

Augustine Of Hippo

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

Augustine Of Hippo

#59. Evidently there is difficulty, real difficulty, in learning a foreign language at all, as if it sprinkled all the sweet flavor of the Greek mythical stories with a foul taste.

Augustine Of Hippo

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

Augustine Of Hippo

#61. The world is a book, and those who don't travel only read one page.

Augustine Of Hippo

#62. He that is jealous is not in love.

Augustine Of Hippo

#63. Lavish spending cloaks the dark side of generosity

Augustine Of Hippo

#64. O God, who is ever at work and ever at rest. May I be ever at work and ever at rest.

Augustine Of Hippo

#65. The happy life is this - to rejoice to thee, in thee, and for thee.

Augustine Of Hippo

#66. Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.

Augustine Of Hippo

#67. 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.

Augustine Of Hippo

#68. Now in my opinion it is certainly a complete mistake to suppose that no narrative of events in this type of literature has any significance beyond the purely historical record; but it is equally rash to maintain that every single statement in those books is a complex of allegorical meanings. That

Augustine Of Hippo

#69. What grace is meant to do is to help good people, not to escape their sufferings, but to bear them with a stout heart, with a fortitude that finds its strength in faith.

Augustine Of Hippo

#70. The past times that you think were good, are good because they are not yours here and now.

Augustine Of Hippo

#71. He that becomes protector of sin shall surely become its prisoner.

Augustine Of Hippo

#72. The throne of wisdom is the soul of the righteous, that is, wisdom sits on the soul of the righteous as on her chair, as on her throne, and there judges whatever she judges.

Augustine Of Hippo

#73. For the will cannot be forced into such iniquity by anything superior or equal to it, since that would be unjust; or by anything inferior to it, since that is impossible.

Augustine Of Hippo

#74. 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.

Augustine Of Hippo

#75. He who loves the coming of the Lord is not he who affirms that it is far off, nor is it he who says it is near, but rather he who, whether it be far off or near, awaits it with sincere faith, steadfast hope, and fervent love.

Augustine Of Hippo

#76. You are not the mind itself. For You are the Lord God of the mind. All these things are liable to change, but You remain immutable above all things.

Augustine Of Hippo

#77. God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.

Augustine Of Hippo

#78. Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.

Augustine Of Hippo

#79. God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to permit no evil to exist.

Augustine Of Hippo

#80. He who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice nor love the vice because of the man.

Augustine Of Hippo

#81. If you understood him, it would not be God.

Augustine Of Hippo

#82. So you see how endlessly futile and fruitless it would be if we wanted to refute their objections every time they obstinately resolved not to think through what they say but merely to speak, just so long as they contradict our arguments in any way they can.

Augustine Of Hippo

#83. Trust the past to God's mercy, the present to God's love, and the future to God's providence.

Augustine Of Hippo

#84. Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.

Augustine Of Hippo

#85. The weakness then of infant limbs, not its will, is its innocence.

Augustine Of Hippo

#86. If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.

Augustine Of Hippo

#87. See, heaven and earth exist, they cry aloud that they are made, for they suffer change and variation.

Augustine Of Hippo

#88. But no one doth well against his will, even though what he doth, be well.

Augustine Of Hippo

#89. I am no more than a child, but my Father lives for ever and I have a Protector great enough to save me.

Augustine Of Hippo

#90. That joy is to know You as You are. This is the happy life, to rejoice in You, of You, and for You. This is the happy life, and there is no other.

Augustine Of Hippo

#91. People go to admire lofty mountains, and huge breakers at sea, and crashing waterfalls, and vast stretches of ocean, and the dance of the stars, but they leave themselves behind out of sight.

Augustine Of Hippo

#92. For in our hope we are saved.

Augustine Of Hippo

#93. Their irreligious pride makes them withdraw from you and eclipse your great light from reaching themselves. They can foresee a future eclipse of the sun, but do not perceive their own eclipse in the present.

Augustine Of Hippo

#94. Time was also (as an infant) I knew no Latin; but this I learned without fear or suffering, by mere observation, amid the caresses of my nursery and jests of friends, smiling and sportively encouraging me.

Augustine Of Hippo

#95. Love and say it with your life.

Augustine Of Hippo

#96. And yet, will we ever come to an end of discussion and talk if we think we must always reply to replies? For replies come from those who either cannot understand what is said to them, or are so stubborn and contentious that they refuse to give in even if they do understand.

Augustine Of Hippo

#97. What great good, then, we are to expect and hope from participating in his divinity, when even his distress calms us and his weakness strengthens us.

Augustine Of Hippo

#98. Let such a person rejoice even to ask the question, "What does this mean?" Yes, let him rejoice in that, and choose to find by not finding rather than by finding fail to find you.

Augustine Of Hippo

#99. Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in you." -St. Augustine of Hippo

Augustine Of Hippo

#100. The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.

Augustine Of Hippo