Saint Augustine Quotes
-
It is easy to want things from the Lord and yet not want the Lord Himself, as though the gift could ever be preferable to the Giver.
-
Do not be afraid to throw yourself on the Lord! He will not draw back and let you fall! Put your worries aside and throw yourself on him; He will welcome you and heal you.
-
Let him who desires to be harsh in making demands upon his debtors consider that he is God’s debtor.
-
Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much.
-
My mother spoke of Christ to my father, by her feminine and childlike virtues, and, after having borne his violence without a murmur or complaint, gained him at the close of his life to Christ.
-
Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.
-
Though in the order of nature angels rank above men, yet, by scale of justice, good men are of greater value than bad angels.
-
To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of eternal things; to knowledge, the rational knowledge of temporal things.
-
Why is it that man desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would by no means suffer?
-
The one who is our very Life descended into our world, and bore our death, and slew it with the abundance of His own life. Thundering, He called out to us to return to Him in heaven.
-
There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.
-
Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure: where your treasure, there your heart; where your heart, there your happiness
-
Great are those two gifts, wisdom and continence: wisdom, forsooth, whereby we are formed in the knowledge of God; continence whereby we are not conformed to this world.
-
If you are pleased with what you are, you have stopped already. If you say, "It is enough," you are lost. Keep on walking, moving forward, trying for the goal.
-
Such is the strength of the burden of habit. Here I have the power to be but do not wish it. There I wish to be but lacks the power. On both grounds, I'm in misery.
-
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.
-
God will cleanse your sins if you yourself are dissatisfied with yourself and will keep on changing until you are perfect.
-
Mary heard God's word and kept it, and so she is blessed. She kept God's truth in her mind, a nobler thing than carrying his body in her womb.
-
God in his omnipotence could not give more, in His wisdom He knew not how to give more, in His riches He had not more to give, than the Eucharist.
-
That your enemies have been created is God's doing; that they hate you and wish to ruin you is their own doing. What should you say about them in your mind? "Lord be merciful to them, forgive them their sins, put the fear of God in them, change them!" You are loving in them not what they are, but what you would have them to become.
-
For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared.
-
The Sacraments are the salvation of those who use them rightly, and the damnation of those who misuse them.
-
In the house of God there is never ending festival; the angel choir makes eternal holiday; the presence of God's face gives joy that never fails.
-
Consequently, heretics and schismatics, separated from the unity of this Body, are able to receive the same Sacrament, but with no benefit to themselves; indeed, more to their own harm, in that they are judged the more severely rather than being liberated.