St. Augustine Quotes

Nothing so casts down the manly mind from it's height as the fondling of women and those bodily contacts which belong to the married state.

Lord, thou madest us for thyself, and we can find no rest till we find rest in thee.

Let no one flatter himself; of himself he is Satan. Let man take sin, which is his own, and leave righteousness with God.

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.

Though in the order of nature angels rank above men, yet, by scale of justice, good men are of greater value than bad angels.

Unjust laws aren't laws at all.

Who would not shudder if he were given the choice of eternal death or life again as a child ? Who would not choose to die ?

What is held by the whole Church, and that not as instituted by Councils, but as a matter of invariable custom, is rightly held to have been handed down by authority.

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

War should we waged without love of violence, cruelty, or enmity.

Dilige et quod vis fac. (Love and then what you will, do.)

We are and we know we are and we love to be it and know it.

I asked the whole frame of the world about my God; and he answered, I am not He, but He made me.

Wicked 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.

When you choose to focus on today and all the possibilities that lie ahead you automatically release your grip on yesterday. Layers of the past gradually fall away and you are soon set free

It is the function of perfection to make one know one's imperfection.

He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.

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

Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself?

I fell away from you, my God, and I went astray, too far astray from you, the support of my youth, and I became to myself a land of want.

Often the contempt of vainglory becomes a source of even more vainglory, for it is not being scorned when the contempt is something one is proud of.

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

By the fall a poison was handed to mankind through a woman [Eve], by the Redemption man was given salvation also through a woman [Mary].

God will cleanse your sins if you yourself are dissatisfied with yourself and will keep on changing until you are perfect.

The reward of patience Is patience.

We were ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent; we are set free by the foolishness of God .

Let our lives be good, and the times are good. We make our times; such as we are, such are the times.

Humility is first, second and third in Christianity.

There is no greater invitation to love than loving first.

No one reaches the kingdom of Heaven except by humility

All plenty which is not my God is poverty to me.

Nothing conquers except truth and the victory of truth is love.

It is said that there is no salvation outside the Church. Who denies this? And therefore whatever things of the Church are had outside the Church do not avail unto salvation.

Why then be perverted and follow thy flesh? Be it converted and follow thee.

If we tread our vices under our feet, we make of them a ladder by which to rise to higher things.

Then assuredly the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time.

Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.

Even 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.

You are what you love.

They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them.

By means of corporal and temporal things we may comprehend the eternal and the spiritual.

The wicked have told me of things that delight them, but not such things as your law has to tell.

I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love...I sought what I might love, in love with loving.

Every city is a living body.

Do not say that you have chaste minds if you have unchaste eyes, because an unchaste eye is the messenger of an unchaste heart.

He who made thee is made in thee. He is made in thee through whom you were made.... Give milk, O mother, to him who is our food; give milk to the bread that comes down from heaven.

Don't go outside; get back to yourself, in the inner man lies the Truth.

I make bold to say that it is profitable for the proud to fall, in order that they may be humbled in that for which they have exalted themselves.

The Gods occupy the loftiest regions, men the lowest, the demons the middle region...They have immortality of body, but passions of the mind in common with men.

Tolle, lege: take up and read.