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...

What great good, then, we are to expect and hope from participating in his divinity, when even his distress calms us and his weakness strengthens us.

The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam

Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether...

it is a higher glory… to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with the sword, and to procure or maintain peace by peace, not by war.

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas,at the long course of the rivers,at the vast compass of the ocean,at the circular motion of the stars,and...

When consent takes the form of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is called desire. When consent takes the form of enjoying the things we wish, this is called joy.

Desiderium sinus cordis

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...