124 Quotes by Augustine of Hippo

Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.

It’s not in the book or in the writer that readers discern the truth of what they read; they see it in themselves, if the light of truth has penetrated their minds.

How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose..! You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place.... O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.

it is a higher glory... to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with the sword, and to procure or maintain peace by peace, not by war.

Time takes no holiday. It does not roll idly by, but through our senses works its own wonders in the mind. Time came and went from one day to the next; in its coming and its passing it brought me other hopes and other memories. [quoted in Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, p. 54]

Augustine taught that true freedom is not choice or lack of constraint, but being what you are meant to be. Humans were created in the image of God. True freedom, then, is not found in moving away from that image but only in living it out.

Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self; the heavenly by the love of God.

Let the Lord your God be your hope – seek for nothing else from him, but let him himself be your hope. There are people who hope from him riches or perishable and transitory honours, in short they hope to get from God things which are not God himself.

So the will's desire for death is not a desire for nonexistence, but a desire for peace. When someone wrongly believes that he will not exist, he desires by nature to be at peace; that is, he desire to exist in a higher degree.