Saint Augustine Quotes

“We make ourselves a ladder out of our vices if we trample the vices themselves underfoot.”

“We should never use the truth to wound.”

“...But we enjoyed playing games and were punished for them by men who played games themselves. However, grown-up games are known as 'business' and even though boys' games are much the same, they are punished for them by their elders. No one pities either the boys or the men, though surely we deserve pity, for I cannot believe that a good judge would approve of the beatings I received as a boy on the ground that my games delayed my progress in studying subjects which would enable me to play a less creditable game later in life.”

“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.”

“We are too weak to discover the truth by reason alone”

“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.”

“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms.”

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

“The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave.”

“Temperance is a disposition that restrains our desires for things which it is base to desire.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.”

“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.”

“The one who is good, is free even being a slave; the one who is bad remains a slave even being a king.”

“Why is it that man desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would by no means suffer?”

“He that is jealous is not in love.”

“Never judge a philosophy by its abuse.”

“While the best men are guided by love, most mean are still goaded by fear.”

“You cannot attain to charity except through humility.”

“Between urine and filth we are born.”

“I count myself one of the number of those who write as they learn and learn as they write.”

“War should we waged without love of violence, cruelty, or enmity.”

“One never errs more safely than when one errs by too much loving the truth.”

“Yet we must say something when those who say the most are saying nothing.”