Quotes by Saint Augustine

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.

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.

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.

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need the remainder is needed by others.

God is best known in not knowing him.

I found thee not, O Lord, without, because I erred in seeking thee without that wert within.

The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.

My mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradictory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that light was wherein it was bathed... And thus, with the flash of one hurried glance, it attained to the vision of That Which Is.

What I needed most was to love and to be loved, eager to be caught. Happily I wrapped those painful bonds around me; and sure enough, I would be lashed with the red-hot pokers or jealousy, by suspicions and fear, by burst of anger and quarrels.

The greatest evil is physical pain.

Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.

Faith is to believe what you do not see the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

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.

O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.

Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.

I want my friend to miss me as long as I miss him.