Augustine Of Hippo Quotes

“For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since
he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered
yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he
being dead. Well said one of his friend, "Thou half of my soul"; for
I felt that my soul and his soul were "one soul in two bodies": and
therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved.
And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved
should die wholly.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“It is not reason which turns the young man from God; it is the flesh. Skepticism but provides him with the excuses for the new life he is leading.”
― Aurelius Augustine

“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.”
― Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine

“how shall we be beautiful? By loving the One who is always beautiful. The more love grows in you, the more beauty grows: for love itself is the beauty of the soul.”
― Augustine of Hippo

“I am no more than a child, but my Father lives for ever and I have a Protector great enough to save me.”
― Augustine of Hippo

“Come, O Lord, and stir our hearts. Call us back to yourself. Kindle your fire in us.”
― Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions of Saint Augustine of Hippo

“If physical objects please you, praise God for them, but turn back your love to their Creator, lest, in those things which please you, you displease Him.

If souls please you, let them be loved in God; for in themselves they are mutable, but in Him firmly established — without Him they would simply cease to exist.

Book 4: Chapter 12”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“Augustine [of Hippo] knew the power and the danger of idolatry and celebrity. And he knew the danger of both was first to permit the idolater to offload the duty of thinking onto their idol. And second to seduce the celebrity, in turn, into thinking his fans have nothing insightful to say. That treatment of a fellow human, a fellow christian, would be not the achievement of theology but the avoidance of it. And he went out of his way in his life and in his words to forestall such approaches.”
― Charles T. Mathewes, Books that Matter: The City of God

“To fall in love with God is the greatest romance;
to seek Him the greatest adventure;
to find Him, the greatest human achievement.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo

“Whoever were the inventors of such tales, whether fact or fiction, or facts concerning others and fictitiously attributed to Jove, words fail to express what a low opinion these fable-mongers must have formed of human nature to assume that men could endure such lies with patience.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“As a spirit, a conscious person endowed with free will, every man has, through faith and grace, a unique 'existential' relation to God, and few since St. Augustine have described this relation more profoundly than Kierkegaard. But every man has a second relation to God which is neither unique nor existential: as a creature composed of matter, as a biological organism, is related by necessity to the God who created that universe and saw that it was good, for the laws of nature to which, whether he likes it or not, he must conform are of divine origin.
And it is with this body, with faith or without it, that all good works are done.

(W.H. Auden)
(The Poet's Prose)”
― Alan Jacobs, Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant