What the Theologians Say 4

Aurelius Augustinus, more commonly known as ‘St. Augustine of Hippo,’ or often simply ‘Augustine’ ] (354–430 C.E.): was a Christian Neoplatonist, a North African Bishop, and a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. Augustine is one of the main figures who helped to merge the Greek philosophical tradition and the Judeo-Christian religious and scriptural traditions. Augustine’s authority and thought came to exert a pervasive and enduring influence even up to the present day.

Here are some of his most well-known quotes:

To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement.

Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.

Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants as to willing what he has heard from you.

The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.

Give me chastity and continence, but not just yet!

Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.

The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.

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.

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.

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.

I held my heart back from positively accepting anything, since I was afraid of another fall, and in this condition of suspense I was being all the more killed.

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

What are kingdoms without justice? They're just gangs of bandits.

I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.

The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.