The collection / 182 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 392 AD

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

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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02c. 392 AD

There is no sin unless through a man's own will, and hence the reward when we do right things also of our own

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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03c. 392 AD

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

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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04c. 392 AD

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.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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05c. 392 AD

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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06c. 392 AD

...a man is not in any difficulty in making a reply according to his faith ... to those who try to defame our Holy Scripture. ... when they produce from any of their books a theory contrary to Scripture ... either we shall have some ability to demonstrate that it is absolutely false, or at least we ourselves will hold it so without any shadow of a doubt. ...let us choose [the doctrine] which appears as certainly the meaning intended by the author. ... For it is one thing to fail to recognize the primary meaning of the writer, and another to depart from the norms of religious belief.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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07c. 392 AD

He was not utterly unskilled in handling his own lack of training, and he refused to be rashly drawn into a controversy about those matters from which there would be no exit nor easy way of retreat. This was an additional ground for my pleasure. For the controlled modesty of a mind that admits limitations is more beautiful than the things I was anxious to know about.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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08c. 392 AD

Humility raises us not by human arrogance but by divine grace.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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09c. 392 AD

What should you, O man, do, you who seek your own glory whenever you do anything good, while when you do something bad, you figure out ways to blame God.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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10c. 392 AD

It is indeed a song of steps. And as I have often said to you, these steps are not made to descend but to ascend. The questioner wishes then to ascend; and where does he wish to ascend if not to heaven? What does this mean—to ascend to heaven? Does he wish to ascend so as to be in the heavens with the sun, the moon, and the stars? Far from that! But there is in heaven an eternal Jerusalem where the angels, our co-citizens, are. From these co-citizens we on earth are estranged. In this exile we sigh; in the city we shall have joy.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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11c. 392 AD

I was still unteachable, being inflated with the novelty of heresy.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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12c. 392 AD

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.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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13c. 392 AD

This is pride when the soul abandons Him to Whom it ought to cleave as its end and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it becomes its own satisfaction.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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14c. 392 AD

The reader of these reflections of mine on the Trinity should bear in mind that my pen is on the watch against the sophistries of those who scorn the starting-point of faith, and allow themselves to be deceived through an unseasonable and misguided love of reason.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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15c. 392 AD

Lavish spending cloaks the dark side of generosity

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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16c. 392 AD

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 / quote

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17c. 392 AD

He cannot have God for his Father who will not have the Church for his mother.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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18c. 392 AD

You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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19c. 392 AD

A sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart. Nay, even idolatry is ample evidence of this fact.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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20c. 392 AD

True inner righteousness does not judge according to custom but by the measure of the most perfect law of God Almighty by which the mores of various places and times were adapted to those places and times.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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21c. 392 AD

The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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22c. 392 AD

I 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.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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23c. 392 AD

The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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24c. 392 AD

Behold, now, how foolish it is, in so great an abundance of the truest opinions which can be extracted from these words, rashly to affirm which of them Moses particularly meant; and with pernicious contentions to offend charity itself, on account of which he hath spoken all the things whose words we endeavour to explain!

Augustine of Hippo / quote

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