Augustine of Hippo Quotes

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.

God grants us not always what we ask so as to bestow something preferable.

Even the straws under my knees shout to distract me from prayer

Though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.

The happy life is this - to rejoice to thee, in thee, and for thee.

Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.

He that becomes protector of sin shall surely become its prisoner.

It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.

This joy in God is not like any pleasure found in physical or intellectual satisfaction. Nor is it such as a friend experiences in the presence of a friend. But, if we are to use any such analogy, it is more like the eye rejoicing in light.

Trust the past to God's mercy, the present to God's love, and the future to God's providence.

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he lives so as to make happiness impossible.

Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.

Variation on the middle sentence: A thing is not necessarily false because it is badly expressed, nor true because it is expressed magnificently.

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

A person can do other things against his will, but belief is possible only in one who is willing.