But if you do not wish to die of thirst in the desert, drink charity. This is the fountain the Lord has willed to place here, lest we faint on the way, and we shall...

A Christian should be an Alleluia from head to foot

I was still unteachable, being inflated with the novelty of heresy.

For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity.

In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.

how shall we be beautiful? By loving the One who is always beautiful. The more love grows in you, the more beauty grows: for love itself is the beauty of the soul.

Tanto è il potere che ha sulla mia carne un’illusione, un’immagine della mia mente, che quando dormo delle false visioni acquistano su di me una forza di suggestione quale da sveglio non hanno neppure quelle...

There is no sin unless through a man’s own will, and hence the reward when we do right things also of our own will.”(Against Fortunatus)

Every day my conscience makes confession relying on the hope of Your mercy as more to be trusted than its own innocence.

Hence to be happy is nothing but not to be in need, that is, to be wise. But if you seek what wisdom is, reason has already explained and declared this as far as presently...

When I come to be united to thee with all my being, then there will be no more pain and toil for me, and my life shall be a real life, being wholly filled by...

Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself?

… the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord.

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,...

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...

It is not that we keep His commandments first and that then He loves but that He loves us and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace which is revealed to the humble...

The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.

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 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...

The world is a book, and those who don’t travel only read one page.

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...

This disease of curiosity.

This, therefore, is the complete satisfaction of souls, that is, the happy life: to know precisely and perfectly Him through whom you are led into the truth, the nature of the truth you enjoy, and...

The happy life is this – to rejoice to thee, in thee, and for thee.

Hence, you see your faith, you see your doubt, you see your desire and will to learn, and when you are induced by divine authority to believe what you do not see, you see at...

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

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.

[Y]ou are not ashamed of your sin [in committing adultery] because so many men commit it. Man’s wickedness is now such that men are more ashamed of chastity than of lechery. Murderers, thieves, perjurers, false...

For dismissed by You from Paradise, and having taken my journey into a far country, I cannot by myself return, unless Thou meetest the wanderer: for my return has throughout the whole tract of this...

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...

Christ is not valued at all, unless he is valued above all.

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...

Love the sinner and hate the sin.

He that becomes protector of sin shall surely become its prisoner.

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...

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

When it happens that I am more moved by the song than the thing which is sung, I confess that I sin in a manner deserving punishment

credo ut intelligam. (i believe so i can understand).

He cannot have God for his Father who will not have the Church for his mother.

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.

It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.

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...

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.

Our hearts have been made for you, O God, and they shall never rest until they rest in you.

This, then, is true liberty: the joy that comes in doing what is right. At the same time, it is also devoted service in obedience to righteous precept.

Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again.

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.

True inner righteousness does not judge according to custom but by the measure of the most perfect law of God Almighty by which the mores of various places and times were adapted to those places...

There can only be two basic loves… the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self unto the forgetfulness and denial of God.

God bids you not to commit lechery, that is, not to have sex with any woman except your wife. You ask of her that she should not have sex with anyone except you — yet...