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When [men] go to war, what they want is to impose on their enemies the victor's will and call it peace.
Saint Augustine -
God will not suffer man to have a knowledge of things to come for if he had prescience of his prosperity, he would be careless and if understanding of his adversity, he would be despairing and senseless
Saint Augustine
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O Sacrament of Love! O sign of Unity! O bond of Charity! He who would have Life finds here indeed a Life to live in and a Life to live by.
Saint Augustine -
Longing desire prayeth always, though the tongue be silent. If thou art ever longing, thou art ever praying.
Saint Augustine -
I too have sworn heedlessly and all the time, I have had this most repulsive and death-dealing habit. I'm telling your graces; from the moment I began to serve God , and saw what evil there is in forswearing oneself, I grew very afraid indeed, and out of fear I applied the brakes to this old, old, habit.
Saint Augustine -
Just as it is agreed that we all wish to be happy, so it is that we all wish to be wise, since no one without wisdom is happy.
Saint Augustine -
Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen. He either permits it to happen, or He brings it about Himself.
Saint Augustine -
Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.
Saint Augustine
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I acknowledge Thee, Lord of heaven and earth, and praise Thee for my first rudiments of being, and my infancy, whereof I remember nothing; for Thou hast appointed that man should from others guess much as to himself; and believe much on the strength of weak females.
Saint Augustine -
A man may lose the good things of this life against his will; but if he loses the eternal blessings, he does so with his own consent.
Saint Augustine -
And I entered and beheld with the eye of my soul... the Light Unchangeable... He that knows the Truth, knows what that Light is; and he that knows It, knows Eternity.
Saint Augustine -
Our life is a gymnasium of desire.... When Christians say "God," what do we wish to express? This word is all that we yearn for."
Saint Augustine -
Two works of mercy set a person free: Forgive and you will be forgiven, and give and you will receive.
Saint Augustine -
We take for granted the slow miracle whereby water in the irrigation of a vineyard becomes wine. It is only when Christ turns water into wine, in a quick motion, as it were, that we stand amazed.
Saint Augustine
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What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction
Saint Augustine -
Christ held Himself in His hands when He gave His Body to His disciples saying: 'This is My Body.' No one partakes of this Flesh before he has adored it.
Saint Augustine -
And I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, seeing He saith this of the Holy Spirit, Whom except we have, we can neither love God, nor keep His commandments?
Saint Augustine -
Chastity, or cleanness of heart, holds a glorious and distinguished place among the virtues, because she, alone, enables man to see God; hence Truth itself said, 'Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.'
Saint Augustine -
Beware of despairing about yourself: you are commanded to put your trust in God, and not in yourself.
Saint Augustine -
The sky and the earth and the waters and the things that are in them, the fishes, and the birds and the trees are not evil. All these are good; it is evil men who make this evil world.
Saint Augustine
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Heaven forbid that we should believe in such a way as not to accept or seek reasons, since we could not even believe if we did not possess rational souls.
Saint Augustine -
Who else is it who calls us back from the death of error, except the life that does not know death, and the wisdom which, needing no light, enlightens minds which are in darkness, that wisdom by which the whole world, even to the leaves of trees drifting in the wind, is governed?
Saint Augustine -
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.
Saint Augustine -
If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven.
Saint Augustine