Saint Augustine Quotes
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Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood.
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Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.
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Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio. What, then, is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobodyasksme; but if Iamasked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.
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It is not that we keep His commandments first and that then He loves but that He loves us and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace which is revealed to the humble but hidden from the proud.
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Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.
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Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.
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The same thing which is now called Christian religion existed among the ancients. They have begun to call 'Christian' the true religion which existed before.
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Keep on adding, keep on walking, keep on progressing: do not delay on the road, do not go back, do not deviate.
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By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.
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And so, lastly, does the very name of "Catholic", which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house.
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We enjoy some gratification when our good friends die; for though their death leaves us in sorrow, we have the consolatory assurance that they are beyond the ills by which in this life even the best of people are broken down or corrupted.
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Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.
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Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart.
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Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.
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This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.
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The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
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Now the Apostle, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says, "Knowledge inflates: but love edifies." The only correct inerpretation of this saying is that knowledge is valuable when charity informs it. Without charity, knowledge inflates; that is, it exalts man to an arrogance which is nothing but a kind of windy emptiness.
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He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.
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If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
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Did my infancy succeed another age of mine that dies before it? Was it that which I spent within my mother's womb?... And what before that life again, O God of my joy, was I anywhere or in any body?
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Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.
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The fellow who eggs you on to avenge yourself will rob you of what you were going to say - as we forgive our debtors . When you have forfeited that, all your sins will be held against you; absolutely nothing is forgiven.
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The wicked exist in this world either to be converted or that through them the good may exercise patience.
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This world's a bubble.