Inspirational Quotes by Augustine

“O Lord our God, under the shadow of Your wings let us hope in Your custody. Carry us when we are little. Bear us when our hair is white and we cry out in infirmity. When You grasp us, the grip is firm. When we try to sustain ourselves, the grasp is feeble. The only good we can know rests in You. When we turn from the good, You push us aside until we return. Oh, Lord, turn us, lest we be overturned. Be the good in us that is not corrupted. You are our incorruptible good. In You we do not fear that there will be no home to return to if we wander off. While we are away, You preserve our mansion with a patience that stretches into eternity.”

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

“Trust the past to God's mercy, the present to God's love and the future to God's providence.”

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

“We have wandered far from God; and if we wish to return to our Father's home, this world must be used, not enjoyed, that so the invisible things of God may be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,—that is, that by means of what is material and temporary we may lay hold upon that which is spiritual and eternal.”

“Faith will falter if the authority of holy scripture is shaken; and if faith falters, love itself decays. For if someone lapses in his faith, he inevitably lapses in his love as well, since he cannot love what he does not believe to be true.”

“Between temporal and eternal things there is this difference: a temporal thing is loved more before we have it, and it begins to grow worthless when we gain it, for it does not satisfy the soul, whose true and certain rest is eternity; but the eternal is more ardently loved when it is acquired than when it is merely desired.”

“Further, all men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you. For, suppose that you had a great deal of some commodity, and felt bound to give it away to somebody who had none, and that it could not be given to more than one person; if two persons presented themselves, neither of whom had either from need or relationship a greater claim upon you than the other, you could do nothing fairer than choose by lot to which you would give what could not be given to both. Just so among men: since you cannot consult for the good of them all, you must take the matter as decided for you by a sort of lot, according as each man happens for the time being to be more closely connected with you. Book 1, Chapter 28 - How we are to decide whom to aid”

“However alarming, however distressing self-knowledge may be, better that than the tremendous evils of self-ignorance."--Caird.”

“They were angry with their Lord in behalf of their idols, they who even if they were angry with their slave on their idol's account, were to be condemned. For their slave was better than their idol: for God made their slave, the carpenter made their idol. They were so angry in their idol's behalf, that they feared not to be angry with their Lord.”

“even in pressing straits the word of God is not bound, not even in preachers who are bound.”

“Le bonheur, c'est continuer à désirer ce que l'on a déjà.”

“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.”

“That vague and wandering opinion of Deity is declared by an apostle to be ignorance of God:”

“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.”

“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.”

“How stupid man is to be unable to restrain feelings in suffering the human lot! That was my state at that time. So I boiled with anger, sighed, wept, and was at my wits’ end. I found no calmness, no capacity for deliberation. I carried my lacerated and bloody soul when it was unwilling to be carried by me. I found no place where I could put it down. There was no rest in pleasant groves, nor in games or songs, nor in sweet-scented places, nor in exquisite feasts, nor in the pleasures of the bedroom and bed, nor, finally, in books and poetry.”

“If the things of this world delight you, praise God for them but turn your love away from them and give it to their Maker, so that in the things that please you you may not displease him.”

“I didn't know that evil doesn't exist except as the absence of good up to the point of annihilation”

“Where shall I go, beyond the bounds of heaven and earth, that God may come to me, since He has said: Heaven and earth do I fill.”