Quotes From "Confessions" By Augustine Of Hippo

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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. Augustine Of Hippo
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks...
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It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living. JeanJacques Rousseau
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I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted..without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed..The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart. JeanJacques Rousseau
Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our...
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Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee. Augustine Of Hippo
What do I love when I love my God?
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What do I love when I love my God? Augustine Of Hippo
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Life is a misery, death an uncertainty. Suppose it steals suddenly upon me, in what state shall I leave this world? When can I learn what I have here neglected to learn? Or is it true that death will cut off and put an end to all care and all feeling? This is something to be inquired into. But no, this cannot be true. It is not for nothing, it is not meaningless that all over the world is displayed the high and towering authority of the Christian faith. Such great and wonderful things would never have been done for us by God, if the life of the soul were to end with the death of the body. Why then do I delay? Why do I not abandon my hopes of this world and devote myself entirely to the search for God and for the happy life? . Augustine Of Hippo
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For you [God] are infinite and never change. In you 'today' never comes to an end: and yet our 'today' does come to an end in you, because time, as well as everything else, exists in you. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. And since your years never come to an end, for you they are simply 'today'..But you yourself are eternally the same. In your 'today' you will make all that is to exist tomorrow and thereafter, and in your 'today' you have made all that existed yesterday and for ever before. Augustine Of Hippo
8
So finally we tumble into the abyss, we ask God why he has made us so feeble. But, in spite of ourselves, He replies through our consciences: 'I have made you too feeble to climb out of the pit, because i made you strong enough not to fall in. JeanJacques Rousseau
Free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous...
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Free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. Nevertheless, the free ranging flux of curiosity is channeled by discipline under Your Law. Augustine Of Hippo
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I probably felt more resentment for what I personally was to suffer than for the wrong they were doing to anyone and everyone. But at that time I was determined not to put up with badly behaved people more out of my own interest than because I wanted them to become good people. Augustine Of Hippo
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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 Of Hippo
12
Do they desire to join me in thanksgiving when they hear how, by your gift, I have come close to you, and do they pray for me when they hear how I am held back by my own weight?. .A brotherly mind will love in me what you teach to be lovable, and will regret in me what you teach to be regrettable. This is a mark of a Christian brother's mind, not an outsider's--not that of 'the sons of aliens whose mouth speaks vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity' (Ps. 143:7 f.). A brotherly person rejoices on my account when he approves me, but when he disapproves, he is loving me. To such people I will reveal myself. They will take heart from my good traits, and sigh with sadness at my bad ones. My good points are instilled by you and are your gifts. My bad points are my faults and your judgements on them. Let them take heart from the one and regret the other. Let both praise and tears ascend in your sight from brotherly hearts, your censers..But you Lord..Make perfect my imperfections. Augustine Of Hippo
There are times when I am so unlike myself that...
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There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character. JeanJacques Rousseau
Oh! that I might repose on Thee! Oh! that Thou...
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Oh! that I might repose on Thee! Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good? Augustine Of Hippo
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But I was immobilized–less by another’s static imposition than by my own static will. For the enemy had in thrall my power to choose, which he had used to make a chain for binding me. From bad choices an urge arises; and the urge, yielded to, becomes a compulsion; and the compulsion, unresisted, becomes a slavery–each link in this process connected with the others, which is why I call it a chain–and that chain had a tyrannical grip around me. The new will I felt stirring in me, a will to 'give you free worship' and enjoy what I yearned for, my God, my only reliable happiness, could not break away from the will made strong by long dominance. Two wills were mine, old and new, of the flesh, of the spirit, each warring on the other, and between their dissonances was my soul disintegrating. Augustine Of Hippo
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My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it. It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide. But who is to rid it of these things? There is no one but you. Augustine Of Hippo
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For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall? Augustine Of Hippo
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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. Augustine Of Hippo
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How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity. Augustine Of Hippo
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You never depart from us, but yet, only with difficulties do we return to You. Augustine Of Hippo
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You are not the mind itself. For You are the Lord God of the mind. All these things are liable to change, but You remain immutable above all things. Augustine Of Hippo
22
The sword wears out its sheath, as it is sometimes said. That is my story. My passions have made me live, and my passions have killed me. What passions, it may be asked. Trifles, the most childish things in the world. Yet they affected me as much as if the possessions of Helen, or the throne of the Universe, had been at stake. JeanJacques Rousseau
23
I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace. But that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything in the world. I should have rejoiced if the earth had swallowed me up and stifled me in the abyss. But my invincible sense of shame prevailed over everything. It was my shame that made me impudent, and the more wickedly I behaved the bolder my fear of confession made me. I saw nothing but the horror of being found out, of being publicly proclaimed, to my face, as a thief, as a liar, and slanderer. JeanJacques Rousseau
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The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them. Augustine Of Hippo
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The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind commands the hand to move, and it so easy that one hardly distinguishes the order from its execution. Yet mind is mind and hand is body. The mind orders the mind to will. The recipient of the order is itself, yet it does not perform it. Augustine Of Hippo
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I inquired what wickedness is, and I didn't find a substance, but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance — You oh God — towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matter. Augustine Of Hippo
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I fell away from you, my God, and I went astray, too far astray from you, the support of my youth, and I became to myself a land of want. Augustine Of Hippo
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He was not utterly unskilled in handling his own lack of training, and he refused to be rashly drawn into a controversy about those matters from which there would be no exit nor easy way of retreat. This was an additional ground for my pleasure. For the controlled modesty of a mind that admits limitations is more beautiful than the things I was anxious to know about. Augustine Of Hippo
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Often the contempt of vainglory becomes a source of even more vainglory, for it is not being scorned when the contempt is something one is proud of. Augustine Of Hippo
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You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run. Augustine Of Hippo
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A sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart. Nay, even idolatry is ample evidence of this fact. Augustine Of Hippo
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The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder. Augustine Of Hippo
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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. Augustine Of Hippo
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The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity. Augustine Of Hippo
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Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or to whom should I cry, save Thee? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and therefore do I speak. Augustine Of Hippo
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That vague and wandering opinion of Deity is declared by an apostle to be ignorance of God: Augustine Of Hippo
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Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous. JeanJacques Rousseau
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Every day my conscience makes confession relying on the hope of Your mercy as more to be trusted than its own innocence. Augustine Of Hippo
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Idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men. Augustine Of Hippo
40
There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing. Augustine Of Hippo
41
We are inflamed, by Thy Gift we are kindled; and are carried upwards; we glow inwardly, and go forwards. We ascend Thy ways that be in our heart, and sing a song of degrees; we glow inwardly with Thy fire, with Thy good fire, and we go; because we go upwards to the peace of Jerusalem: for gladdened was I in those who said unto me, We will go up to the house of the Lord. There hath Thy good pleasure placed us, that we may desire nothing else, but to abide there for ever. Augustine Of Hippo