The Confessions of Saint Augustine
Translation by John K. Ryan
Quotes I Liked
“Lord, Grant me to know and understand which is first, to call upon you or to praise you, and also which is first, to know you or to call upon you? But how does one who does not know you call upon you? For one who does not know you might call upon another instead of you. Or must you rather be called upon so that you may be known? Yet how shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe without a preacher?”
“Since I do indeed exist, and yet would not be unless you were in me, why do I beg that you come to me?”
“You fill all things, and you fill them with your entire self. But since all things cannot contain you in your entirety, do they contain a part of you, and do all things simultaneously contain the same part? Or do single things contain single parts, greater things containing greater parts and smaller things smaller parts? Is one part of you greater, therefore, and another smaller? Or are you entire in all places, and does no one thing contain you in your entirety?”
“You love, but are not inflamed with passion; you are jealous, yet are free from care; you repent, but do not sorrow; you grow angry, but remain tranquil. You change your works, but do not change your plan; you take back what you find, although you never lost it; you are never in want, but you rejoice in gain; you are never covetous, yet you exact usury.”
“Who will help me, so that you will come into my heart and inebriate it, to the end that I may forget my evils and embrace you, my one good?”
“I do not know when I came into what I may call a mortal life or a living death.”
“You fashioned me in time.”
“Lord, you who live forever and in whom nothing dies –since before the beginning of the ages, and before anything that can even be called ‘before,’ you are, and you are God and Lord of all that you have created.”
“Do you laugh at me for questioning you of such things?”
“Who has the art and power to make himself?”
“In you, being and life are not different things.”
“You have made man, but the sin that is in him you have not made.”
“Yet we sinned by writing, reading and thinking over our lessons less than was required of us.”
“I would not have learned anything unless forced to it.”
“It is plain that for learning a language free interest has greater power than frightening constraint.”
“I was far from your face in the darkness of my passions.”
“I shunned sadness, rejection and ignorance.”
“What was there to bring me delight except to love and be loved?”
“I wandered farther away from you, and you let me go.”
“You were always present to aid me… so that I might seek after pleasure that was free from disgust, to the end that, when I could find it, it would be in none but you, Lord.”
“Why do I tell these things? It is that I myself and whoever else reads them may realize from what great depths we must cry unto you.”
“But I willed to commit theft, and I did so, not because I was driven to it by any need, unless it were by poverty of justice, and dislike of it, and by a glut of evildoing.”
“We did this to do what pleased us for the reason that it was forbidden.”
“There is splendor in beautiful bodies.”
“Worldly honor, and the power to command others have their own appeal, and from them issues greed for revenge.”
“Sins are committed when, out of an immoderate liking for them [desires, things, etc.], since they are the least goods, desert the best and highest goods, which are you, O Lord our God, and your truth and your law. These lower goods have their delights, but none such as my God, who has made all things, for in him the just man finds delight, and he is the joy of the upright of heart.”
“But now, O Lord my God, I seek out what was in that theft to give me delight, and lo, there is no loveliness in it… such loveliness as there is in justice and prudence, or in man’s mind and memory, and senses and vigorous life, nor that with which the stars are beautiful, or the land and sea filled with their living kinds, which by new birth replace those that die, nor even that flawed and shadowy beauty found in the vices that deceive us.”
“Pride imitates loftiness of mind.”
“What does ambition seek except honor and glory, while you alone are to be honored above else and glorious forever.”
“Curiosity pretends to be a desire for knowledge.”
“Ignorance itself and folly are cloaked over with the names of simplicity and innocence.”
“Sloth seeks rest as it were, but what sure rest is there apart from the Lord?”
“Luxury of life desires to be called plenty and abundance; you are the fullness and the unfailing plenty of incorruptible pleasure.”
“Prodigality casts but the shadow of liberality.”
“Avarice desires to posses many things, and you posses all things.”
“Envy contends for excellence: what is more excellent than you?”
“Anger seeks vengeance: who takes more vengeance with more justice than you?”
“Fear shrinks back at sudden and unusual things threatening what it loves, and is on watch for its own safety.”
“Sadness wastes away over things now lost in which desire once took delight.”
“I confess that you have forgiven all my sins, both those which I have done by my own choice and those which, under your guidance I have not committed.”
“Yet alone, by myself, I would not have done it [theft.]”
“It is shameful not to be shameless.”
“He who enters into You enters into the Joy of his Lord, and he shall have no fear, and he shall posses his soul most happily in him who is the supreme good.”
“I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love, and by a more hidden want I hated myself for wanting little.”
“For there was a hunger within me from a lack of that inner food, which is Yourself, my God.”
“My soul did not grow healthy, but it was ulcered over, and it cast outside itself and its misery was avid to be scratched by the things of sense, things that would not be loved if they lacked all soul. To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and all the more if I enjoyed my loved one’s body.”
“O Lord God, you love our souls with a purity of love more deep and wide than that we have for ourselves.”
“Such was my life, but was it truly life, my God?”
“Evil is the privation of a good.”
“I did not know that true interior justice, which judges not according to custom but by the most righteous law of almighty God.”
“Vicious deeds which are contrary to nature, are everywhere detested and punished.”
“God, ruler of all creation, be obeyed without hesitation.”
“Crimes where there is a lust to do injury, either by abusive language or by violence… can be for the sake of revenge, as in the case of enemy against enemy, or for the sake of gaining some external profit, as in the case of the bandit against the traveler; or for the sake of escaping evil, as with a man who is an object of fear; or out of envy, as when a less fortunate man envies another who is happier, or when a man who has prospered in some fashion fears he will be equaled by another, or regrets that the other is already such; or out of sheer pleasure at another’s evil, as with those looking at gladiators of those who play jokes on them. These are the chief kinds of iniquity, and they spring forth from lust for power, of the eyes or of sensuality, whether from one of these, or two, or all three together.”
“What you take vengeance on is what men inflict on themselves, for even when they sin against you, they do evil to their own souls.”
“Man’s iniquity lies to itself, whether by corrupting and perverting their own nature, which you have set in order, or by an immoderate use of things permitted to men, or with regard to things not granted to them by a burning lust for that use which is contrary to nature. Or they are held guilty for raging in mind and word against you and for kicking against the goad, or when they break the limits of human society and boldly rejoice in their own private schemes and sects.”
“There are certain things that seems like vice or crime, but are not sins, because they neither offend You, our Lord God, nor human society.”
“For without you, what am I to myself but the leader of my own
destruction?”
“It is good not to abuse your mercy by seeking a freedom to sin, and to
remember the words of the Lord, ‘Behold, you are made whole; sin no more, lest
some worse thing happen to you.’”
“Friendship cannot be true unless you solder it together among those who
cleave to one another by the charity poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit,
who is given to us.”
“Wretched is every soul that is bound fast by friendship for mortal
things, that is torn asunder when it loses them, and then first feels the
misery by which it is wretched even before it loses those things.”
“I marveled that other men should live, because he, whom I have loved as
if he would never die, was dead. I marveled more that I, his second self could
live when he was dead. Well has someone said of his friend that he is half of
his soul. For I thought that my soul and his soul were but one soul in two
bodies. Therefore, my life was a horror to me, because I would not live as but
a half. Perhaps because of this I feared to die, lest he whom I had loved so
much should wholly die.”
“Time does not take time off, nor does it turn without purpose through
our senses: it works wondrous effects in our minds.”
“Blessed is the man who loves you, and his friend in you, and his enemy for
your sake. For he alone loses no dear one to whom all are dear in him who is
lost.”
“Convert us and show us your face, O God and we shall be saved.”
“If you find pleasure in bodily things, praise God for them, and direct
your love to their maker, lest because of things that please you, you may
displease Him.”
“If you find pleasure in souls, let them be loved in God.”
“Rest in Him, and you will in truth have rest.”
“Crimes are committed, if the mind’s disposition for vigorous action
becomes vicious and rises up in an insolent and disordered manner, and deeds of
shame are done if that affection in the soul to drink in carnal pleasures is
left unchecked.”
“What more proud, than for me to assert in my strange madness that I am
by nature what you are?”
“My mutable nature had gone astray of its own accord and to err was now
its punishment.”
“What did good gifts profit me if I did not put them to good use?”
“For since you are our strength, then it is strength indeed; but when it
is our own, then it is but weakness.”
“Let my soul praise you, so that it may love you, and let it confess your
mercies before you, so that it may praise you.”
“Where was I, when I sought you? You were before me, but I had departed
even from myself, and I did not find myself, much less you.”
“Unhappy is the man who knows all this, but does not know you; happy is
he who knows you, even if he does not know such things.”
“More beautiful than all those things I desired to know is the modest
mind that admits its own limitations.”
“Where would I have gone, I if I had then left this world, except into
the fire and torment that were worthy of my deeds, according to the truth of
your dispensation?”
“…You did this in the order in which you had predestined it to be done.”
“I loved to excuse myself, and to accuse I know not what other being that
was present with me but yet was not yet I. But in truth I was the whole being,
and my own impiety had divided me against myself.”
“I wished to meditate upon my God, but I did not know how to think of him
except as a vast corporeal mass, for I thought that anything not a body was
nothing whatsoever. This was the greatest and almost the sole cause of my
inevitable error.”
“But I walked in darkness, and upon a slippery way, and I sought for you outside myself, but I did not find you, the God of my heart.”
“But You most High and most near at hand, most secret and most present, in whom there are no members, some greater and others smaller, who are everywhere whole and entire, who are never confined in place, and who surely are not in our corporeal shape, you have yet made man to your own image. And behold, from head to toe, he is contained in space!”
“Your truth endures forever and lacks nothing.”
“I now began to believe that in no wise would you have given such surpassing authority throughout the whole world to that Scripture, unless you wished that both through it you be believed in and through it you be sought.”
“I noticed a poor beggar; he was, I believe, already drunk, as he was making jokes and feeling high.”
“It does make indeed make a difference where a man finds his joy. This I know, and the joy from hope and faith are incomparably greater than such an empty thing.”
“I was teaching rhetoric there [Carthage] at a public school.”
“…and You taught him to put his trust not in himself but in You.”
“In what state shall we leave this world? Where must we learn what we have neglected here? Or rather, must we not endure punishment for our negligence?”
“From day to day I deferred to live in you, but on no day did I defer to die in myself.”
“The will’s free decision is the cause of our doing evil, and Your just judgment is the cause of our suffering evil.”
“I was absolutely certain when I willed a thing or refused to will it that it was I alone who willed or refused to willed. Already I was beginning to see that therein lay the cause of my sin. I saw that what I did against my will was something done to me, rather than something I actually did. I concluded that it was not my fault, but my punishment, but I quickly confessed that I was not punished unjustly, for I thought of you as being just.”
“Who made me? Was it not you, my God, who are not merely good, but goodness itself? Why then do I will evil, and do not will the good?”
“Who has placed this in me and engrafted in me this seedbed of bitterness, since I have been fashioned whole and entire by my most sweet God? If the devil is the author, whence comes the devil itself? If he by his own perverse will was changed from a good angel into a devil, whence came that evil will in him by which he became a devil, when the whole angel was made by a supremely good creator?”
“There never has been, nor will there be, a soul able to conceive anything better than you.”
“Behold God, and behold what God has created! God is good. Most mightily and most immeasurably does he surpass these things. But being good, he has created good things. Behold how he encircles and fills all things! Where then is evil, and whence and by what means has it crept in here? What is its root, and what is its seed? Or has it no being whatsoever? Why then do we shun and fear what does not exist? If we fear it, without cause, that very fear is evil. By it our stricken hearts are goaded and tortured, and that evil is all the more serious in so far as what we fear does not exist, and still we are fearful of it. Therefore, either there is an evil that we fear, or the fact that we fear is itself an evil. Whence, therefore, is evil, since God the good has made all these things good? He, the greater, the supreme good, has made these lesser goods, yet both creator and all created things are good. Whence comes evil? Was there a certain evil matter, out of which he made these things?”
“Being thus admonished to return to myself, under your leadership I entered into my inmost being.”
“I heard your voice from on high: ‘I am the food of grown men. Grow, and you shall feed upon me. You will not change me into yourself, as you change food into flesh, but you will be changed into me.”
“For that truly exists which endures unchangeably.”
“But it is good for me to adhere to my God, for if I do not abide in him, neither will I be able to abide in myself.”
“If things are deprived of all good whatsoever, they will not exist at all.”
“Evil is not a substance, for if it were a substance, it would be good.”
“I found that iniquity is not a substance. It is perversity of will, twisted away from the supreme substance, yourself, Oh God.”
“I sought for a way of gaining strength sufficient for me to have joy in you, but I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is over all things, God blessed forever.”
“Who shall deliver me from the body of this death, unless it is by Your grace through Jesus Christ our lord.”
“Nowhere you depart from us, and we scarcely return to you.”
“When lust is served it becomes habit, and when habit is not resisted, it becomes necessity.”
“It is better to give up to God’s love than to our own desires.”
“’Give me chastity and continence, but not yet!’ for I feared that you would hear me quickly, and quickly you would heal me of that disease of lust which I wished to have satisfied rather than extinguished.”
“Do not abandon in any way what you have begun in me, but rather make perfect my imperfections.”
“There is a joy that is not granted to the wicked, but only to those who worship you for your own sake, and for whom you yourself are pure joy.”
“So great an honor have you given to my memory as to abide within it.”
“Since I am not yet filled with You, I am a burden to myself.”
“Many and great are those infirmities of mine, many they are and great, but more potent is your medicine.”
“We could think that your Word is far from Union with men, and we could despair or ourselves, unless he had been ‘made flesh and dwelt among us.’”
“Lord, since eternity is yours, are you ignorant of the things that I say to you, or do you see only at a certain time what is done in time?”
“When we confess to you our miseries and your mercies upon us, we lay bare before you our condition, so that you may set us wholly free. For you have begun to do this so that we may cease to be wretched in ourselves and become happy in you.”
“May I never fall into error in my reading of them [the Scriptures], may I never deceive others by misuse of them!”
“There was no ‘then’ when there was no time.”
“If nothing were passing away there would be no past time, and if nothing were coming there would be no future time, and if nothing existed there would be no present time.”
“If the present time was always present, and never became the past, it would no longer time but eternity. Therefore if the present, so as to be time, must be constituted that it passes into the past, how can we say that it is, since the cause of its being is the fact that it will cease to be? Then can’t we truly say that it is time, only because it tends towards non-being? ”
“The past no longer exists and the future is not yet in being. Therefore we should not say, ‘It is long,’ but we should rather say of the past, ‘it was long,’ and of the future, ‘it will be long.’”
“If any point of time can be conceived that can no longer be divided into even the most minute parts of a moment, that alone it is which may be called the present.”
“Do we measure a longer time by a shorter one, just as we measure the length of a rod by the length of a cubit?”
“I am, because of your goodness, which proceeded all that you made me to be, and all out of which you made me.”
“…Those on whom your Spirit is said to rest he causes to rest upon himself.”
“…Your incorruptible and immutable will, itself sufficient in itself unto itself, was borne upon that life which you made.”
“I would [like] that men reflect upon these certain things within themselves… I speak of these three: to be, to know, and to will. For I am, and I know and I will: I am a knowing and a willing being, and I know that I am, and that I will, and I will to be and to know.”
“Just as it [the soul] cannot of itself enlighten itself, so it cannot of itself be sufficient to itself.”
“By command of you, its Lord God, our soul germinates works of mercy according to its kind.”