β
The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.
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Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.
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Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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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 past, it would not be time, but eternity.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
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 love. Let us run.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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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.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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Tolle, lege: take up and read.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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You are my Lord, because You have no need of my goodness.
β
β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
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 actual condition even before it loses them.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
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.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.
β
β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
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.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
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 execution. Yet mind is mind and hand is body. The mind orders the mind to will. The recipient of the order is itself, yet it does not perform it.
β
β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer β Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus β Tragedies
4. Sophocles β Tragedies
5. Herodotus β Histories
6. Euripides β Tragedies
7. Thucydides β History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates β Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes β Comedies
10. Plato β Dialogues
11. Aristotle β Works
12. Epicurus β Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid β Elements
14. Archimedes β Works
15. Apollonius of Perga β Conic Sections
16. Cicero β Works
17. Lucretius β On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil β Works
19. Horace β Works
20. Livy β History of Rome
21. Ovid β Works
22. Plutarch β Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus β Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa β Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus β Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy β Almagest
27. Lucian β Works
28. Marcus Aurelius β Meditations
29. Galen β On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus β The Enneads
32. St. Augustine β On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt NjΓ‘l
36. St. Thomas Aquinas β Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri β The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer β Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci β Notebooks
40. NiccolΓ² Machiavelli β The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus β The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus β On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More β Utopia
44. Martin Luther β Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. FranΓ§ois Rabelais β Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin β Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne β Essays
48. William Gilbert β On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes β Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser β Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon β Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare β Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei β Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler β Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey β On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes β Leviathan
57. RenΓ© Descartes β Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton β Works
59. MoliΓ¨re β Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal β The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens β Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza β Ethics
63. John Locke β Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine β Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton β Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz β Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67. Daniel Defoe β Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift β A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve β The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley β Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope β Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu β Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire β Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding β Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson β The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
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β
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading)
β
The happy life is this - to rejoice to thee, in thee, and for thee.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions (The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century))
β
Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants as to willing what he has heard from you.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
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 thee.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions (The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century))
β
For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next...They are set up on the course of their existence, and the faster they climb towards its zenith, the more they hasten towards the point where they exist no more.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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Every day my conscience makes confession relying on the hope of Your mercy as more to be trusted than its own innocence.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
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.
β
β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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Ignorance and stupidity are given the names of simplicity and innocence...Idleness appears as desire for a quiet life.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine (Paraclete Essentials))
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Do not abandon what You have begun in me, but go on to perfect all that remains unfinished.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
β
In words which can still bring tears to the eyes, St. Augustine describes the desolation into which the death of his friend Nebridius plunged him (Confessions IV, 10). Then he draws a moral. This is what comes, he says, of giving oneβs heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away.
β
β
C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
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Lord give me chastity and self control - but not yet.
β
β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of Saint Augustine (Annotated Christianity theology in Middle Age and Reformation): 13 Christianity religious books from the Middle Age of the sinful and immoral life)
β
O God, who is ever at work and ever at rest. May I be ever at work and ever at rest.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions (The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century))
β
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 in you. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. And since your years never come to an end, for you they are simply 'today'...But you yourself are eternally the same. In your 'today' you will make all that is to exist tomorrow and thereafter, and in your 'today' you have made all that existed yesterday and for ever before.
β
β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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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.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
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 misery.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
Why, then, do I set before You an ordered account of so many things? it's certainly not through me that You know them. But I'm stirring up love for You in myself and in those who read this so that we may all say, great is the Lord and highly worthy to be praised. I tell my story for love of Your love.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love itself; and I sought for something to love, since I loved nothing.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Premium Edition - Illustrated)
β
I inquired what wickedness is, and I didn't find a substance, but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance β You oh God β towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matter.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
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 didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
a thing is good and pleasant only because it is connected to Him. Use it apart from its Source, and it will come to taste bitter. Since the good thing is His, how can it remain worth loving if you forsake Him to get it?
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
β
I heard Your voice from on high. "I am the food of the fully grown. Grow and you will feed on me. And you will not change Me into you, like the food of flesh eats. But you will be changed into Me.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
I probably felt more resentment for what I personally was to suffer than for the wrong they were doing to anyone and everyone. But at that time I was determined not to put up with badly behaved people more out of my own interest than because I wanted them to become good people.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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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
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Augustine of Hippo
β
And if all could with one voice be asked whether they wished to be happy, there is no doubt they would all answer that they would. And this would not be possible unless the thing itself, which we call "happiness", were held in memory.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions (The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century))
β
That joy is to know You as You are. This is the happy life, to rejoice in You, of You, and for You. This is the happy life, and there is no other.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
β
Fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum
est cor nostrum donec
resquiescat
in Te.
(You have made us for you, and our heart is in turmoil until it finds its rest in you)
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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To confess, then, is to praise and glorify God; it is an exercise in self-knowledge and true humility in the atmosphere of grace and reconciliation.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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Every where the greater joy is ushered in by the greater pain.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
β
But what do I love when I love my God? Not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love Him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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. . . I would learn to discern and distinguish the difference between presumption and confession, between those who see what the goal is but not how to get there and those who see the way which leads to the home of bliss, not merely as an end to be perceived but as a realm to live in.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St Augustine)
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O that men would know themselves to be men; and that he that glorieth would glory in the Lord.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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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 by my own weight? ...A brotherly mind will love in me what you teach to be lovable, and will regret in me what you teach to be regrettable. This is a mark of a Christian brother's mind, not an outsider's--not that of 'the sons of aliens whose mouth speaks vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity' (Ps. 143:7 f.). A brotherly person rejoices on my account when he approves me, but when he disapproves, he is loving me. To such people I will reveal myself. They will take heart from my good traits, and sigh with sadness at my bad ones. My good points are instilled by you and are your gifts. My bad points are my faults and your judgements on them. Let them take heart from the one and regret the other. Let both praise and tears ascend in your sight from brotherly hearts, your censers. ...But you Lord...Make perfect my imperfections
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Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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If you find physical pleasure in earthly experiences, use the occasion to praise God for these gifts. Turn your love not on the pleasures but toward their Maker.3 Otherwise, the things that please you will cause you to displease. Love those souls that please you, but love them in God.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
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Late have I loved you, O beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!
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Augustine of Hippo
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The weakness then of infant limbs, not its will, is its innocence.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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O crooked paths! Woe to the audacious soul, which hoped, by forsaking Thee, to gain some better thing!
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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In You we do not fear that there will be no home to return to if we wander off. While we are away, You preserve our mansion with a patience that stretches into eternity.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
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No doubt, then, that a free curiosity has more force in our learning these things, than a frightful enforcement.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
β
What did it profit that I read the greatest human ideas of the so-called βliberal artsβ in the books I got hold of. My thinking was enslaved to corrupt desires, so what difference did it make that I could read and understand these books? I delighted in learning, but I had no divine context for what my mind picked up. I had no foundation to discern what is true or certain. I was standing with my back to the light, so that the things that should be illuminated were in shadow, even though they were in front of my face.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
β
God in heaven will hear your prayers, and will answer them. He has never failed, if a man has been honest in his petitions and honest in his confessions. Let your faith beget patience. God is never in a hurry, said St. Augustine, because He has all eternity to work.
β
β
Dwight L. Moody (Men of the Bible)
β
It was a day when I was preparing a speech to be delivered in praise of the Emporor; there would be a lot of lies in the speech and they would be applauded by those who knew that they were lies."
The Confessions of St. Augustine
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β
Rex Warner (The Confessions of Saint Augustine)
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Every soul is wretched that becomes bound in friendship to perishable things. The soul is torn apart when the thing loved is lost. The wretchedness was perhaps always there, masked by the beloved thing that has been stripped away.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
β
When I come across one or other of my fellow Christians ignorant of astronomy, believing what is not so, I calmly look on, not thinking him the worse for mistaking the place or order of created things, so long as he holds nothing demeaning to you, Lord, the creator of all those things. But he is worse off if he holds that his error is a matter of religious faith, and persists stubbornly in the error. His faith is still a weak thing in its cradle, needing the milk of a mothering love, until the youth grows up and cannot be the play-thing, any more, of every doctrinal wind that blows.
But one who ventures on the role of teacher, of leader and ruler of those under his spell, whose followers heed him not as a man only but as your very Spirit -- what are we to make of him when he is caught purveying falsehoods? Should we not reject and despise such madness?
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Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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Thou art every where, Whom no place encompasseth! and Thou alone art near, even to those that remove far from Thee. Let them then be turned, and seek Thee; because not as they have forsaken their Creator, hast Thou forsaken Thy creation.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
β
Theft is punished by Your law, O Lord, and by the law written in men's hearts, which iniquity itself cannot blot out. For what thief will suffer a thief? Even a rich thief will not suffer him who is driven to it by want. Yet had I a desire to commit robbery, and did so, compelled neither by hunger, nor poverty through a distaste for well-doing, and a lustiness of iniquity. For I pilfered that of which I had already sufficient, and much better. Nor did I desire to enjoy what I pilfered, but the theft and sin itself. There was a pear-tree close to our vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was tempting neither for its colour nor its flavour. To shake and rob this some of us wanton young fellows went, late one night (having, according to our disgraceful habit, prolonged our games in the streets until then), and carried away great loads, not to eat ourselves, but to fling to the very swine, having only eaten some of them; and to do this pleased us all the more because it was not permitted.Behold my heart, O my God; behold my heart, which You had pity upon when in the bottomless pit. Behold, now, let my heart tell You what it was seeking there, that I should be gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved to perish. I loved my own errorβ not that for which I erred, but the error itself. Base soul, falling from Your firmament to utter destructionβ not seeking anything through the shame but the shame itself!
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
But what do I love, when I love You? Not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time. Not the brightness of the light, so welcome to our eyes, Nor sweet melodies of varied songs, Nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments and spices. Not manna and honey, nor the embrace of arms in fleshly pleasure. None of these I love when I love my God. Yet this love is a kind of light and melody and fragrance and meat and embrace. When I love my God, the light, melody, fragrance, meat, and embrace is experienced by my inner man. Love shines into my soul, where space cannot contain it. Love speaks with sound that does not fade into silence with time. Its smells are not dispersed in breath, and its tastes do not grow stale. Love clings, and its satisfaction does not break my connection to the experience. This is it which I love, when I love my God.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
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Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good!
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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Not yet did I love, and I loved to love. I sought what I should love, loving to love.
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β
The Confession of St. Augustine
β
Seek what ye seek; but it is not there where ye seek. Ye seek a blessed life in the land of death; it is not there. For how should there be a blessed life where life itself is not?
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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My weight is my love. Wherever I am carried, my loves is carrying me.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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Towards the end of his lifeβ¦St Augustine confessed that Christianity was βa religion of threats and bribes unworthy of wise menβ β Tony Bushby (The Bible Fraud) The man who finally discovers
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β
Michael Tsarion (The Irish Origins of Civilization, Volume Two: Akhenaton, the Cult of Aton & Dark Side of the Sun)
β
behold, I return in distress and panting after Thy fountain. Let no man forbid me! of this will I drink, and so live. Let me not be mine own life; from myself I lived ill, death was I to myself; and I revive in Thee.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
β
Weaned from all passing fancies, let my soul praise You, O God, Creator of all. You did not allow my soul to remain attached to corruptible things with the glue of love, attached to what my senses find pleasing. For things we are attached to go where they will, then they cease, leaving the lover torn with corrupted longings.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
β
The theater enchanted me with its images of my own miseries. Its plays added fuel to my fire. What makes someone want to be made sad? Why behold doleful tragedies, vicariously experiencing what does not have to be suffered? Yet the spectator wants to feel sorrow at the stories, and this very anguish is pleasure. This seems to be wretched insanity.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
β
I notice that a man seldom mentions what he had supposed to be his most idiosyncratic sensations without receiving from at least one (often more) of those present the reply, βWhat! Have you felt that too? I always thought I was the only one.β The book aims at telling the story of my conversion and is not a general autobiography, still less βConfessionsβ like those of St. Augustine or Rousseau. This means in practice that it gets less like a general autobiography as it goes on.
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β
C.S. Lewis (Surprised by Joy: The shape of my early life)
β
He was not utterly unskilled in handling his own lack of training, and he refused to be rashly drawn into a controversy about those matters from which there would be no exit nor easy way of retreat. This was an additional ground for my pleasure. For the controlled modesty of a mind that admits limitations is more beautiful than the things I was anxious to know about.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
β
O Lord our God, under the shadow of Your wings let us hope in Your custody. Carry us when we are little. Bear us when our hair is white and we cry out in infirmity. When You grasp us, the grip is firm. When we try to sustain ourselves, the grasp is feeble. The only good we can know rests in You. When we turn from the good, You push us aside until we return. Oh, Lord, turn us, lest we be overturned. Be the good in us that is not corrupted. You are our incorruptible good. In You we do not fear that there will be no home to return to if we wander off. While we are away, You preserve our mansion with a patience that stretches into eternity.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
β
Let not the proud speak evil of me; because I meditate on my ransom,
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not:
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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The lost life of those who die becomes the death of those still living.
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Augustine of Hippo (Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo)
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For if we play shepherd to the wind, we find pasture for the devils, because by straying from the truth we give them food for laughter and fill their cup of pleasure.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Autobiography of a Christian Saint and Early Church Father)
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The Church is not a hotel for saints, it is a hospital for sinners.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions: The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century)
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Be not conformed to the world. Contain yourselves from it: the soul lives by avoiding what it dies by affecting.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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a living soul; that is, a soul made continent in Thy Word, by Thy Evangelists, by following the followers of Thy Christ.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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The man who serves you best is the one who is less intent on hearing from you what he wills to hear from you than on shaping his will according to what he hears from you.
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β
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Autobiography of a Christian Saint and Early Church Father)
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And behold, you were within and I outside and it was there that I sought you [but you were not].
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Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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We must understand then, that even though God doesn't always give us what we want, he always gives us what we need for our salvation
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β
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo)
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Our enemies can often correct our faults by their disparagement, just ad the flattery of friends can corrupt us.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Autobiography of a Christian Saint and Early Church Father)
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What is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to a questioner, I don't know. But at any rate this much I dare affirm I know: that if nothing passes, there would be no past time; if nothing were approaching, there would be no future time; if nothing were, there would be no present time.
But the two times, past and future, how can they be, since the past is no more and the future is not yet? On the other hand, if the present were always present and never flowed away into the past, it would not be time at all, but eternity. But if the present is only time, because it flows away into the past, how we can say that it is? For it is, only because it will cease to be. Thus we can affirm that time is only in that it tends towards not-being.
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Augustine of Hippo
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Grant thereof a space for our meditations in the hidden things of Thy law, and close it not against us who knock. For not in vain wouldest Thou have the darksome secrets of so many pages written;
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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Though you hale my body to that place, and there set me, can you force me also to turn my mind or my eyes to those shows? I shall then be absent while present, and so shall overcome both you and them.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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But you do not search out our faults ruthlessly, and because of this we hope and believe that one day we shall find a place with you. Yet if any man makes a list of his deserts, what would it be but a list of your gifts?
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Autobiography of a Christian Saint and Early Church Father)
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I had prayed to you for chastity and said "give me chastity and continence, but not yet." For I was afraid that you would answer my prayer at once and cure me too soon of the disease of kust, which I wanted satisfied, not quelled.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Autobiography of a Christian Saint and Early Church Father)
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I would conceive matter absolutely without form; and I could not; for sooner could I imagine that not to be at all, which should be deprived of all form, than conceive a thing betwixt form and nothing, neither formed, nor nothing, a formless almost nothing
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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For, Thou art righteous, O Lord, but we have sinned and committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and Thy hand is grown heavy upon us, and we are justly delivered over unto that ancient sinner, the king of death; because he persuaded our will to be like his will whereby he abode not in Thy truth.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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The idea of solvitur ambulando (in walking it will be solved) has been around since St. Augustine, but well before that Aristotle thought and taught while walking the open-air parapets of the Lyceum. It has long been believed that walking in restorative settings could lead not only to physical vigor but to mental clarity and even bursts of genius, inspiration (with its etymology in breathing) and overall sanity. As French academic Frederic Gros writes in A Philosophy of Walking, itβs simply βthe best way to go more slowly than any other method that has ever been found.β Jefferson walked to clear his mind, while Thoreau and Nietzsche, like Aristotle, walked to think. βAll truly great thoughts are conceived while walking,β wrote Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols. And Rousseau wrote in Confessions, βI can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.β Scotland
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Florence Williams (The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative)
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I deserted truth for worldly things and the night closed over me, but even then, even in my darkness, I continued to love you, o Truth. I wandered away, but I remembered you. I heard your voice at my back, calling me to return, though I was scarcely able to hear it in the uproar raised by men who would not li e at peace with you.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Autobiography of a Christian Saint and Early Church Father)
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Her faithful heart grabbed hold of each promise, and she always continued praying, urging You to be faithful to what You had shown her, as if it were Your signed contract. For You establish a trust relationship with those who have experienced Your eternal mercy. You have forgiven all their sins and they look to You to keep all Your promises.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
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The reason why that grief had penetrated me so easily and deeply was that I had poured out my soul on to the sand by loving a person sure to die as if he would never die. The greatest source of repair and restoration was the solace of other friends, with whom I loved what I loved as a substitute for you; and this was a vast myth and a long lie.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions)
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O Lord, I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant, and the son of Thy handmaid: Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder. I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of Let my heart and my tongue praise Thee; yea, let all my bones say, O Lord, who is like unto Thee? Let them say, and answer Thou me, and say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Who am I, and what am I? What evil have not been either my deeds, or if not my deeds, my words, or if not my words, my will? But Thou, O Lord, are good and merciful, and Thy right hand had respect unto the depth of my death, and from the bottom of my heart emptied that abyss of corruption. And this Thy whole gift was, to nill what I willed, and to will what Thou willedst.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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I could weep over the death Dido brought upon herself out of love for Aeneas, yet I shed no tears over the death I brought upon myself by not loving you. O God, you are the light of my heart, bread for the inward mouth of my soul, the virtue wedded to my mind and the innermost recesses of my thought; yet I did not love you, and breaking my troth I strayed away from you.
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Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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I need the wisdom, reasoning, and apologetics of C. S. Lewis, though some of his theological beliefs are different from mine. I need the preaching and charisma of Charles Spurgeon, though his view of baptism is different from mine. I need the resurrection vision of N. T. Wright and the theology of Jonathan Edwards, though their views on church government are different from mine. I need the passion and prophetic courage of Martin Luther King Jr., the cultural intelligence of Soong-Chan Rah, and the Confessions of St. Augustine, though their ethnicities are different from mine. I need the justice impulse and communal passion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, though his nationality is different from mine. I need the spiritual thirst and love drive of Brennan Manning and the prophetic wit of G. K. Chesterton, though both are Roman Catholics and I am a Protestant. I need the hymns and personal holiness of John and Charles Wesley, though some of their doctrinal distinctives are different from mine. I need the glorious weakness of Joni Eareckson Tada, the spirituality of Marva Dawn, the trusting perseverance of Elisabeth Elliot, the long-suffering spirit of Amy Carmichael, the transparency of Rebekah Lyons, the thankfulness of Ann Voskamp, the Kingdom vision of Amy Sherman, and the integrity of Patti Sauls, though their gender is different from mine. As St. Augustine reputedly said, βIn nonessentials, liberty.β To this we might add, βIn nonessentials, open-minded receptivity.β We Christians must allow ourselves to be shaped by other believers. The more we move outside the lines of our own traditions and cultures, the more we will also be moving toward Jesus.
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Scott Sauls (Jesus Outside the Lines: A Way Forward for Those Who Are Tired of Taking Sides)
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Thou madest the artificer his body, Thou the mind commanding the limbs, Thou the matter whereof he makes any thing; Thou the apprehension whereby to take in his art, and see within what he doth without; Thou the sense of his body, whereby, as by an interpreter, he may from mind to matter, convey that which he doth, and report to his mind what is done; that it within may consult the truth, which presideth over itself, whether it be well done or no.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine)
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Even at that age I already believed in you, and so did my mother and the whole of my household except for my father. But, in my heart, he did not gain the better of my mother's piety and prevent me from believing in Christ just because he still disbelieved himself. For she did all that she could for me to see that you, my God, should be a father to me rather than he. In this you helped her to turn the scales against her husband, whom she always obeyed because by obeying him she obeyed your law, thereby showing greater virtue than he did.
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Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
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My eyes sought him everywhere, but they did not see him; and I hated all places because he was not in them, because they could not say to me, βLook, he is coming,β
And I marveled that other mortals went on living since he whom I had loved as if he would never die was now dead. And I marveled all the more that I, who had been a second self to him, could go on living when he was dead. Someone spoke rightly of his friend as being βhis soulβs other halfβ--for I felt that my soul and his soul were but one soul in two bodies. Consequently, my life was now a horror to me because I did not want to live as a half self. But it may have been that I was afraid to die, lest he should then die wholly whom I had so greatly loved.
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Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St Augustine)