Saint Augustine

“Your wisdom should be without pride.”

“The most venerable, clearly understood, enlightened, and reliable constant in the world is not only that we want to be happy, but that we want only to be so. Our very nature requires it of us.”

“When the king asked him what he meant by infesting the sea, the pirate defiantly replied:The same as you do when you infest the whole world;but because I do it with a little ship I am called a robber,and because you do it with a great fleet, you are an emperor.”

“How high a price we pay for the burden of habit! I am fitted for life here where I do not want to be, I want to live there but am unfit for it, and on both counts I am miserable.”

“By and by never comes.”

“It is love that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds.”

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

“Fill yourselves first and then only will you be able to give to others.”

“In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty.”

“Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.”

“It is not in virtue of its liberty that the human will attains to grace, it is much rather by grace that it attains to liberty.”

“He indeed possesses the Character imposed on him, but he wanders as a renegade.”

“When [men] go to war, what they want is to impose on their enemies the victor's will and call it peace.”

“No eulogy is due to him who simply does his duty and nothing more.”

“If the future and the past really exist, where are they?”

“A free curiosity is more effective in learning than a rigid discipline.”

“Do not wander far and wide but return into yourself. Deep within man there dwells the truth.”

“For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next...They are set up on the course of their existence, and the faster they climb towards its zenith, the more they hasten towards the point where they exist no more.”

“I had a clear idea about what time is till I was asked to explain it and ceased to understand it altogether as soon as I began explaining it.”

“The arrogance is not greatness but swelling; and the swelling seems big but it's not healthy.”

“Consequently, if the republic is the weal of the people, and there is no people if it be not associated by a common acknowledgment of right, and if there is no right where there is no justice, then most certainly it follows that there is no republic where there is no justice.”

“Moral character is assessed not by what a man knows but by what he loves”

“Solvitur ambulando . . . it is solved by walking.”

“So give to the poor; I'm begging you, I'm warning you, I'm commanding you, I'm ordering you.”

“Dilige et quod vis fac. (Love and then what you will, do.)”

“It seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all.”

“Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”

“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”

“O Master, make me chaste, but not yet!”

“A marriage without children is the world without the sun.”

“The human race is inquisitive about other people's lives, but negligent to correct their own.”

“It is human to err, but it is devilish to remain willfully in error.”

“Nothing conquers except truth and the victory of truth is love.”

“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.”

“The playthings of our elders are called business.”

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

“To withhold forgiveness is to take poison and expect the unforgiven to die.”

“What difference, if you are mistaken? For if I am mistaken, I am. For he who is not, assuredly cannot be mistaken; and therefore I am, if I am mistaken. Therefore because I am if I am mistaken, how am I mistaken that I am, when it is sure that I am, if I am mistaken.”

“If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.”

“To seek the highest good is to live well.”

“The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communion: Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest.”

“I make bold to say that it is profitable for the proud to fall, in order that they may be humbled in that for which they have exalted themselves.”

“Hope has two lovely daughters, anger and courage.”

“Men go forth to marvel at the height of mountains, and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves. Variant: Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by.”

“I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love...I sought what I might love, in love with loving.”

“Try as they may to savor the taste of eternity, their thoughts still twist and turn upon the ebb and flow of things in past and future time. But if only their minds could be seized and held steady, they would be still for a while and, for that short moment, they would glimse the splendor of eternity, which is forever still.”

“Never judge a philosophy by its abuse.”

“You wish to be great, begin from the least. You are thinking to construct some mighty fabric in height; first think of the foundation of humility. And how great soever a mass of building one may wish and design to place above it, the greater the building is to be, the deeper does he dig his foundation.”

“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.”

“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.”