Too late came I to love you, O Beauty both so ancient and so new! Too late came I to love you - and behold you were with me all the time . . .
Saint AugustineWhere your pleasure is, there is your treasure: where your treasure, there your heart; where your heart, there your happiness
Saint AugustineI was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.
Saint AugustineReally great things, when discussed by little men, can usually make such men grow big.
Saint AugustineLove God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.
Saint AugustineThe Sacraments are the salvation of those who use them rightly, and the damnation of those who misuse them.
Saint AugustineEvery day my conscience makes confession relying on the hope of Your mercy as more to be trusted than its own innocence.
Saint AugustineWhat you are must always displease you, if you would attain to that which you are not.
Saint AugustineSo 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.
Saint AugustineTwo cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self; the heavenly by the love of God.
Saint AugustineWhen large numbers of people share their joy in common, the happiness of each is greater because each adds fuel to the other's flame.
Saint AugustineIt is indeed better (as no one ever could deny) that men should be led to worship God by teaching, than that they should be driven to it by fear of punishment or pain; but it does not follow that because the former course produces the better men, therefore those who do not yield to it should be neglected. For many have found advantage (as we have proved, and are daily proving by actual experiment), in being first compelled by fear or pain, so that they might afterwards be influenced by teaching, or might follow out in act what they had already learned in word.
Saint AugustineWicked sons do not have the Holy Ghost in the same way as do beloved sons, and yet they do have Baptism. So, too, heretics do not have the Church as Catholics have, even though they have Baptism.
Saint AugustineMiracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.
Saint AugustineEven in waging war, cherish the spirit of peace-maker; that, by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantages of peace.
Saint AugustineThere is nothing more serious than the sacrilege of schism because there is no just cause for severing the unity of the Church.
Saint AugustineHe who commends the nature of the soul as the supreme good, and condemns the nature of the flesh as evil, at once both carnally desires the soul, and carnally flies the flesh, because he feels thus from human vanity, not from divine truth.
Saint AugustineWhat can be more excellent than prayer; what is more profitable to our life; what sweeter to our souls; what more sublime, in the course of our whole life, than the practice of prayer!
Saint AugustineTo my God a heart of flame; To my fellow man a heart of love; To myself a heart of steel.
Saint AugustineThe good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.
Saint AugustineWonderful is the depth of thy words, whose surface is before us, gently leading on the little ones: and yet a wonderful deepness, O my God, a wonderful deepness. It is awe to look into it; even an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love.
Saint AugustineLove is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
Saint Augustine