Le bonheur, c’est continuer à désirer ce que l’on a déjà.

Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so...

The good man is free, even if he is a slave. The evil man is a slave, even if he is a king.

You are not blamed for your unwilling ignorance, but because you fail to ask about what you do not know…. For no one is prevented from leaving behind the disadvantage of ignorance and seeking the...

But in their turn, before the hour comes, let them listen also to what the Apostle says to them: ‘You were once darkness, and now youa re light in the Lord’ (Eph 5:8). Let them...

Celui qui se perd dans sa passion perd moins que celui qui perd sa passion.

Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our...

…a man is not in any difficulty in making a reply according to his faith … to those who try to defame our Holy Scripture. … when they produce from any of their books a...

Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.

Can human folly harbour a more arrogant or ungrateful thought than the notion that whereas God makes man beautiful in body, man makes himself pure in heart?

For it is one thing to see the Land of Peace from a wooded ridge, and yet another to walk the road that leads to it.

Sin is looking for the right thing in the wrong place.

For in our hope we are saved.

The throne of wisdom is the soul of the righteous, that is, wisdom sits on the soul of the righteous as on her chair, as on her throne, and there judges whatever she judges.

The reader of these reflections of mine on the Trinity should bear in mind that my pen is on the watch against the sophistries of those who scorn the starting-point of faith, and allow themselves...

But perhaps there are insensitive hearts, still incapable of receiving this Light because the weight of their sins prevents them from seeing it. Let them not imagine that they Light is absent because they do...

His knowledge is not like ours, which has three tenses: present, past, and future. God’s knowledge has no change or variation.

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.