Saint Augustine Quotes

The verdict of the world is conclusive.

The desire for fame tempts even noble minds.

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

You called and shouted and burst my deafness. You flashed, shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors, and I drew in breath and panted for You. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.

For, as it is written in the book of the Prophets: 'And the angel that spoke in me, said to me...' He does not say, 'Spoke to me' but 'Spoke in me'.

Repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt.

Make me a captive Lord, then I shall be truly free.

A Christian should be an Alleluia from head to foot

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.

So give to the poor; I'm begging you, I'm warning you, I'm commanding you, I'm ordering you.

It is not in virtue of its liberty that the human will attains to grace, it is much rather by grace that it attains to liberty.

For I did not know that the soul needs to be enlightened by light from outside itself, so that it can participate in truth, because it is not itself the nature of truth.

In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you, they would have not been at all.

I inquired what wickedness is, and I didn't find a substance, but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance - You, O God - towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matters.

... at the beginning of the human race the woman was made of a rib taken from the side of the man while he slept; for it seemed fit that even then Christ and His Church should be foreshadowed in this event. For that sleep of the man was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the Cross, was pierced with a spear, and there flowed from it blood and water, and these we know to be the sacraments by which the Church is built up.

Just think of the illimitable abundance and the marvelous loveliness of light, or of the beauty of the sun and moon and stars.

The Kingdom of Heaven, O man, requires no other price than yourself. The value of it is yourself. Give yourself for it and you shall have it.

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

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

Whoever is still seeking for miracles so that he may believe is himself a wonder, who does not believe while the world around him does.

Hope has two lovely daughters, anger and courage.

If But for the Mercy of my Lord, that my paradise becomes a woman's hell.

Ex Malo Bounum (good out of evil).

Poltinus the Platonist proves by means of the blossoms and leaves that from the Supreme God, whose beauty is invisible and ineffable, Providence reaches down to the things of earth here below. He points out that these frail and mortal objects could not be endowed with a beauty so immaculate and so exquisitely wrought, did they not issue from the Divinity which endlessly prevades with its invisible and unchanging beauty all things.

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.

A wanton eye is a messenger of an unchaste heart.

Every morning you put on your clothes to cover your nakedness and protect your body from inclement weather. Why don't you also clothe your soul with the garment of faith? Remember each morning the truths of your creed, and look at yourself in the mirror of your faith. Otherwise, your soul will soon be naked with the nakedness of oblivion.

Who can control this when its appetite is aroused? No one! In the very movement of this appetite, then, it has no "mode" that responds to the decisions of the will ... Yet what he wishes he cannot accomplish ... In the very movement of the appetite, it has no mode corresponding to the decision of the will.

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.

Humility is first, second and third in Christianity.

Lord, teach me to know you, and to know myself.

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

Mary heard God's word and kept it, and so she is blessed. She kept God's truth in her mind, a nobler thing than carrying his body in her womb.

I have said before, and I shall say again, that I write this book for love of your love.

I do not doubt that all those who have received Baptism anywhere and from whomever do have Baptism, as long as it was consecrated with the words of the Gospel and they received it without pretence on their part and with some degree of faith. However, it would not avail them for their spiritual salvation if they were lacking in that charity by which they might be implanted in the Catholic Church.

Nobody should ever doubt that in the washing of rebirth (Titus 3:5) absolutely all sins, from the least to the greatest, are altogether forgiven.

O Sacrament of Love! O sign of Unity! O bond of Charity! He who would have Life finds here indeed a Life to live in and a Life to live by.

It is human to err, but it is devilish to remain willfully in error.

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.

Lust indulged became habit, and habit unresisted became necessity.

The world being unworthy to receive the Son of God directly from the hands of the Father, he gave his Son to Mary for the world to receive him from her.

When I seek you, my God, I seek a blessed life. I shall seek you, so that my soul may live.

If you are pleased with what you are, you have stopped already. If you say, "It is enough," you are lost. Keep on walking, moving forward, trying for the goal.

Because God has made us for Himself, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.

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.

Do not believe yourself healthy. Immortality is health; this life is a long sickness.

The entire most beautiful order of things that are very good, when their measures have been accomplished, is to pass away.

For in our hope we are saved.