The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. (City of God, Book 19)

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...

Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.

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...

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...

Lord Jesus, don’t let me lie when I say that I love you…and protect me, for today I could betray you.

Humility raises us not by human arrogance but by divine grace.

if we are wayfarers who want to return home, then we must see the world as a means of transportation (terestibus vel marinis vehiculis) and always remember to distinguish the means and ends.

The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.

He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.

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.

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.

If you understood him, it would not be God.

There are many going afar to marvel at the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the long courses of great rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the movements of the stars, yet...

A wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens.

God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.

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...

For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall?

What should you, O man, do, you who seek your own glory whenever you do anything good, while when you do something bad, you figure out ways to blame God.

You have truly gained the mastery of the very stronghold of philosophy, Mother. For without doubt only for lack of words you did not elaborate on this subject as did Tullius [Cicero], whose words will...

It’s not in the book or in the writer that readers discern the truth of what they read; they see it in themselves, if the light of truth has penetrated their minds.

There are wolves within, and there are sheep without.

All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good. But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is the Creator of it. Thus the good in created things...

This is pride when the soul abandons Him to Whom it ought to cleave as its end and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it becomes its own satisfaction.

We speak, but it is God who teaches.

Every good man resists others in those points in which he resists himself.

Man himself is a great deep, whose very hairs Thou numberest, O Lord, and they fall not to the ground without Thee. And yet are the hairs of his head easier to be numbered than...

For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a...

What madness, to love a man as something more than human! I lived in a fever, convulsed with tears and sighs that allowed me neither rest nor peace of mind. My soul was a burden,...

It was foul, and I loved it. I loved to perish. I loved my own — not that for which I erred, but the itself. Base, falling from Your firmament to utter destruction — not...

It is indeed a song of steps. And as I have often said to you, these steps are not made to descend but to ascend. The questioner wishes then to ascend; and where does he...

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...

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

For such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that, even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else, from boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal,...

Thus, every entity, even if it is a defective one, in so far as it is an entity, is good. In so far as it is defective, it is evil.

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....

What do I love when I love my God?

There could be nothing more fortunate for human affairs than that by the mercy of God they who are endowed with true piety of life if they have the skill for ruling people should also...

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

Moral character is assessed not by what a man knows but by what he loves

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

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...

Prayer is the key that opens heaven; the favors we ask descend upon us the very instant our prayers ascend to God.

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...

A sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart. Nay, even idolatry is ample evidence of this fact.

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

The deformity of Christ forms you. If he had not willed to be deformed, you would not have recovered the form which you had lost. Therefore he was deformed when he hung on the cross....

In this universe, even what is called evil, when it is rightly ordered and kept in its place, commends the good more eminently, since good things yield greater pleasure and praise when compared to the...

That vague and wandering opinion of Deity is declared by an apostle to be ignorance of God:

What is a valley of tears? He was scourged, covered with spittle, crowned with thorns, nailed to the cross. From this valley of tears you must ascend. But ascend where? ‘In the beginning was the...