Confessions
by Saint Augustine
(Penguin, 1961)
Greatness is all the more admirable if it is achieved against odds.
Page 11.
Whatever his vices, they were not without compensating virtues.
Page 11.
Whatever other sins he felt himself bound to confess, unkindness to others was not one of them.
Page 11.
The terms in which he writes of his sinful past are unnecessarily harsh.
Page 12.
He was … trying to make out a case against himself before an audience which was predisposed to believe him a saintly man. When he wrote the Confesisions he already had a considerable reputation for sanctity.
Page 12.
As literature, the Scriptures compared poorly with the polished prose of Cicero.
Page 12.
In flesh of all sorts very few traces of the light-element were present, and for this reason meat was not to be eaten by a good Manichee. Light was present in greater quantities in vegetable matter, which could therefore be eaten.
Page 13.
They were forbidden to marry, because the act of procreation was construed as collusion with these powers.
Page 14.
It seems incredible that a man of Saint Augustine’s intellectual calibre could have been taken in by these fantastic theories, but the Manichees’ plausible explanation of the problem of evil and his own inability to think of God except as a material being combined to win him over.
Page 14.
He was introduced to the philosophy of the Neo-Platonists and their books helped him towards a conception of the spiritual nature of God. At the same time he began to understand that evil results from man’s misuse of free will. This was the beginning of conversion.
Page 14.
Some commentators are content to point out that the first nine books describe Saint Augustine’s search for the truth, while the last three contain his thoughts upon its meaning after he has found it.
Page 15.
In the first place, it is a confession of the writer’s sin and error, in the second a recognition of God’s goodness and truth. … In the third place, because he has been saved from error and the truth has been made clear to him, Saint Augustine offers praise to God and thanks him for his mercy. He is led from confession of sin to confession of faith and finally to confession of God’s glory.
Page 16.
Saint Augustine frequently combines passages from Scripture, not only with one another, but also with sentences of his own.
Page 17.
In 40 came the sack of Rome by Alaric and the Goths. This was the occasion which inspired Augustine to write City of God (De civitate Dei), his great work in twenty-two books, begun in 413 and completed in 426. The fall of the city after a thousand years, during which no foreign invader had penetrated its walls, was attributed by many to loss of faith in the pagan gods, whose cult had recently been largely suppressed by the joint emperors Gratian and Theodosius. The disaster was hailed as a direct consequence of the spread of Christianity, and this was a challenge which Augustine could not ignore. After disapproving the claim that the prosperity of man depended upon the propitiation for a miscellaneous array of gods, he went on the define the Christian answer to the religious, philosophical, and political problems of the world and its government.
Page 20.
Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you.
Page 21.
Those who look for the Lord will cry out in praise of him, because all who look for him shall find him, and when they find him they will praise him.
Page 21.
I should be null and void and could not exist at all, if you, my God, were not in me.
Page 22.
You are the most hidden from us and yet the most present amongst us, the most beautiful and yet the most strong, ever enduring and yet we cannot comprehend you. You are unchangeable and yet you change all things.
Page 23.
We give abundantly to you so that we may deserve a reward; yet which of us has anything that does not come from you?
Page 23.
Even those who are most gifted with speech cannot find words to describe you.
Page 23.
Why do I mean so much to you, that you should command me to love you?
Page 24.
When I came into the world all the comforts which your mercy provides were there ready for me.
Page 25.
You, my God, are the source of all good.
Page 25.
You, Lord, life for ever and nothing in you dies, because you have existed from before the very beginning of the ages, before anything that could be said to go before.
Page 26.
Can it be that any man has skill to fabricate himself?
Page 26.
You made man, but you did not make sin in him.
Page 27.
In your sight no man is free from sin, not even a child who has lived only one day on earth.
Page 27.
If babies are innocent, it is not for lack of will to do harm, but for lack of strength.
Page 28.
You, O Lord my God, gave me my life and my body when I was born.
Page 28.
We enjoyed playing games and were punished for them by men who played games themselves. However, grown-up games are known as ‘business’, an even though boys’ games are much the same, they are punished for them by their elders
Page 30.
Even at that age I already believed in you, and so did my mother and the whole household except for my father. But, in my heart, he did not gain the getter 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 to see that you, my God, should be a Father to me rather than he.
Page 32.
What a person does against his will is not to his own credit, even if what he does is good in itself.
Page 33.
I was a great sinner for so small a boy.
Page 33.
Every soul that sins brings its own punishment upon itself.
Page 33.
What can be more pitiful than an unhappy wretch unaware of his own sorry state?
Pages 33-34.
To love this world is to break troth with you, yet men applaud and are ashamed to be otherwise.
Page 34.
It was wrong of me as a boy to prefer empty romances to more valuable studies.
Page 34.
We learn better in a free spirit of curiosity than under fear and compulsion.
Page 35.
I can speak and write, read and count, and I want these things to be used to serve you, because when I studied other subjects you checked me and forgave me the sins I committed by taking pleasure in such worthless things.
Page 36.
We are carried away by custom to our own undoing and it is hard to struggle against the stream.
Page 36.
I squandered the brains you gave me on foolish delusions.
Page 37.
The soul that is blinded by wicked passions is far from you and cannot see your face.
Page 38.
I won praise from the people whose favour I sought, for I thought that the right way to lie was to do as they wished.
Page 39.
There was nothing I could less easily endure, nothing that made me quarrel more bitterly than to find others cheating me as I cheated them.
Page 40.
Commanders and kings may take the place of tutors and schoolmasters, nuts and balls and pet birds may give way to money and estates and servants, but these same passions remain with us while one stage of life follows upon another, just as more severe punishments follow upon the schoolmaster’s cane.
Page 40.
My sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in him but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.
Pages 40-41.
I should not even exit if it were not by your gift.
Page 41.
As I grew to manhood I was inflamed with desire for a surfeit of hell’s pleasures. Foolhardy as I was, I ran wild with lust that was manifold and rank.
Page 43.
I was pleased with my own condition and anxious to be pleasing in the eyes of men.
Page 43.
I could not distinguish the clear light of true love from the murk of lust. Love and lust together seethed within me.
Page 43.
Your almighty power is not far from us, even when we are far from you.
Page 44.
Where was I then and how far was I banished from the bliss of your house in that sixteenth year of my life? This was the age at which the frenzy gripped me and I surrendered myself entirely to lust, which your law forbids but human hearts are not ashamed to sanction. My family made no effort to safe me from my fall by marriage. Their only concern was that I should learn how to make a good speech and how to persuade others by my words.
Page 44.
Your ears will surely listen to the cry of a penitent heart which lives the life of faith.
Page 45.
I was so blind to the truth that among my companions I was ashamed to be less dissolute than they were. For I heard them bragging of their depravity and the greater the sin the more they gloried in it, so that I took pleasure in the same vices not only for the enjoyment of what I did but also for the applause I won.
Page 46.
Nothing deserves to be despised more than vice; yet I gave in more and more to vice simply in order not to be despised.
Page 46.
I was given a free rein to amuse myself beyond the strict limits of discipline, so that I lost myself in many kinds of evil ways.
Page 47.
I was willing to steal, and steal I did, although I was not compelled by any lack.
Page 47.
There was a pear-tree near our vineyard, loaded with fruit that was attractive neither to look at nor to taste. Late one night a band of ruffians, myself included, went off to shake down the fruit and carry it away, for we had continued our games out of doors until well after dark, as was our pernicious habit. We took away an enormous quantity of pears, not to eat them ourselves, but simply to throw them to the pigs.
Page 47.
The evil in me was foul, but I loved it.
Page 47.
Cruelty is the weapon of the powerful, used to make others fear them.
Page 49.
I went to Carthage, where I found myself in the midst of a hissing cauldron of lust.
Page 55.
I began to look around for some object for my love, since I badly wanted to love something. I had no liking for the safe path without pitfalls, for although my real need was for you, my God, who are the food of the soul, I was not aware of this hunger. I felt no need for the food that does not perish, not because I had had my fill of it, but because the more I was starved of it the les palatable it seemed.
Page 55.
To love and to have my love returned was my heart’s desire, and it would be all the sweeter if I could also enjoy the body of the one who loved me.
Page 55.
I was much attracted by the theatre, because the plays reflected my own unhappy plight and were tinder to my fire.
Page 55.
In those unhappy days I enjoyed the pans of sorrow. I always looked for things to wring my heart and the more tears an actor caused me to shed by his performance on the state, even though he was portraying the imaginary distress of others, the ore delightful and attractive I found it.
Page 57.
Men are so blind that they even take pride in their blindness.
Page 58.
The allowance which my mother paid me was supposed to be spent on putting an edge on my tongue. I was now in my nineteenth year and she supported me, because my father had died two years before.
Page 59.
There are people for whom philosophy is a means of misleading others, for they misuse its great name, its attractions, and its integrity to give colour and gloss to their own errors.
Page 59.
I made up my mind to examine the holy Scriptures and see what kind of books they were.
Page 60.
It is surely true that as the child grows these books grow with him. But I was too proud to call myself a child. I was inflated with self-esteem, which made me think myself a great man.
Page 60.
Your spiritual works are greater than these material things, however brightly they may shine in the sky.
Page 61.
You are the life of souls, the life of lives. You live, O Lire of my soul because you are life itself immutable.
Page 62.
I tried to find you, not through the understanding of the mind, by which you meant us to be superior to the beasts, but through the senses of the flesh.
Page 62.
I did not know that God is a spirit, a being without bulk and without limbs defined in length and breadth. … It cannot, therefore, be everywhere entirely whole, as a spirit is and as God is.
Page 63.
It is the nature of time to change.
Page 64.
The relationship which we ought to have with God is itself violated when our nature, of which he is the Author, is desecrated by perverted lust.
Page 65.
Many of the things we do may therefore seem wrong to men but are approved in the light of your knowledge, and many which men applaud are condemned in your eyes. This is because the appearance of what we do is often different from the intention with which we do it.
Page 67.
No society is right and good unless it obeys you.
Page 67.
You sent down your help from above and rescued my soul from the depths of this darkness because my mother, our faithful servant, wept to you for me, shedding more tears for my spiritual death then other mothers shed for the bodily death of a son.
Page 68.
From the nineteenth to the twenty-eighth year of my life, I was led astray myself and led others astray in my turn. … We loved the idle pastimes of the stage and in self-indulgence we were unrestrained.
Page 71.
Without you I am my own guide to the brink of perdition.
Page 71.
What is any man, if he is only man?
Page 71.
Love of money had gained the better of me and for it I sold to others the means of coming off the better in debate.
Pages 71-72.
I had not learnt how to love you, for when I thought of you I imagined you as some splendid being, but entirely physical.
Page 72.
It is wrong to impose upon your readiness to forgive, taking it as licence to commit sin.
Page 73.
Though they cling together, no friends are true friends unless you, my God, bind them fast to one another through that love which is sown in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.
Page 75.
Let the ears of my heart move clos to your lips, and let me listen to you, who are the Truth, so that you may tell me why tears are sweet to the sorrowful.
Page 76.
I lived in misery, like every man whose soul is tethered by the love of things that cannot last and then is agonized to lose them.
Page 77.
I wondered that other men should live when he was dead, for I had loved him as though he would never die.
Page 77.
Time never stands still, nor does it idly pass without effect upon our feelings or fail to work its wonders on the mind. It came and went, day after day, and as it passed it filled me with fresh hope and new thought to remember.
Pages 78-79.
The grief I felt for the loss of my friend had struck so easily into my inmost heart simply because I had poured out my soul upon him, like water upon sand, loving a man who was mortal as though he were never to die.
Page 79.
Wherever the soul of man may turn, unless it turns to you, it clasps sorrow to itself.
Page 80.
Not all reach old age, but all alike must die.
Page 80.
The senses of the body are sluggish, because thy are the senses of flesh and blood. They are limited by their own nature.
Page 80.
In this world one thing passes away so that another may take its place and the whole be preserved I all its parts.
Page 81.
Whatever you feel through the senses of the flesh you only feel in part. It delights you, but it is only a part and you have no knowledge of the whole.
Page 81.
Our God … does not pass away, because there is none to take his place.
Page 81.
If the things of this world delight you, praise god for them gut turn your love away from them and give it to their Maker.
Page 82,
When he made the world he did not go away and leave it. By him it was created and in him it exists. Wherever we taste the truth, God is there.
Page 82.
Man is a great mystery, Lord. You even keep count of the hairs on his head and not one of them escapes your reckoning. Yet his hairs are more easily counted than his feelings and the emotions of his heart.
Page 84.
Sins of self-indulgence are committed when the soul fails to govern the impulses from which it derives bodily pleasure.
Page 86.
I was dragged down and down by the weight of my own pride.
Page 87.
I read and understood by myself all the books that I could find on the so-called liberal arts, for in those days I was a good-for-nothing and a slave to sordid ambitions.
Page 88.
If a man is quick to understand and his perception is keen, he has these gifts from you.
Page 89.
Our home is your eternity and it does not fall because we are away.
Page 90.
Accept my confessions, O Lord. They are a sacrifice offered by my tongue, for yours was the hand that fashioned it and yours the spirit that moved it to acknowledge you.
Page 91.
Clearly the wicked do not know that you are everywhere. But you are not bound within the limits of any place. You alone are always present, even to those who set themselves apart from you. Let them then turn back and look for you. They will find that you have not deserted your creatures as they have deserted their Creator.
Page 92.
A man who knows that he owns a tree and thanks you for the use he has of it, even though he does not know its exact height or the width of its spread, is better than another who measures it and counts all its branches, but nether owns it nor knows and loves its Creator.
Page 95.
It is sheer vanity for a man to profess his learning, even if it is well founded, whereas it is his duty to you, O God, to confess his sins.
Page 95.
Whenever I hear a brother Christian talk in such a way as to show that he is ignorant of these scientific matters and confuses one thing with another I listen with patience to his theories and think it no harm to him that he does not know the true facts about material things, provided that he holds no believes unworthy of you, O Lord, who are the Creator of them all. The danger lies in thinking that such knowledge is part and parcel of what he must believe to save his soul and in presuming to make obstinate declarations about things of which he knows nothing. Yet, when a man first enters the cradle of the faith, Charity, his mother, will show indulgence even to failings of this sort.
Page 96.
Neither did I think that a pleasant face and a gifted tongue were proof of a wise mind.
Page 97.
I have known men of another sort, who look on truth with suspicion and are unwilling to accept it if it is presented in fine, rounded phrases. But in your wonderful, secret way, my God, you had already taught me that a statement is not necessarily true because it is wrapped in fine language or false because it is awkwardly expressed.
Page 97.
The Manichean books are full of the most tedious fictions about the sky and the stars, the sun and the moon. I badly wanted Faustus to compare these with the mathematical calculations which I had studied in other books, so that I might judge whether the Manichean theories were more likely to be true or, at least, equally probable, but I now began to realize that he could not give me a detailed explanation.
Page 98.
Modesty and candour are finer equipment for the mind than scientific knowledge of the kind that I wished to possess.
Page 99.
You were letting my own desires carry me away on a journey that was to put an end to those same desires.
Page 101.
My sin was all the more incurable because I did not think myself a sinner.
Page 103.
It was principally the idea of the two masses of good and evil that held me fast and stifled me, for I was unable to conceive of any but material realities.
Page 106.
I began actively to set about the business of teaching literature and public speaking, which was the purpose for which I had come to Rome.
Page 106.
In Milan I found your devoted servant the bishop Ambrose. … Unknown to me, it was you who led me to him, so that I might knowingly be led by him to you.
Page 107.
I did not think that my own beliefs should be condemned simply because an equally good case could be made out for either side. For I though the Catholic side unbeaten but still not victorious.
Page 108.
God, Hope of my youth, where were you all this time? Where were you hiding from me?
Page 111.
My heart lies open before you, O Lord my God.
Page 113.
Although my mind was full of questions and I was restless to argue out my problems, I did not pour out my sorrows to you praying for your help.
Page 113.
I began to believe that you would never have infested the bible with such conspicuous authority in every land unless you had intended it to be the means by which we should look for you and believe in you.
Page 117.
I was eager for fame and wealth and marriage, but you only derided these ambitions. They caused me to suffer the most galling difficulties, but the less you allowed me to find pleasure in anything that was not yourself, the greater, I know was your goodness to me.
Page 118.
I know that it does matter why a man is happy. There is a world of difference between the joy of hope that comes from faith and the shallow happiness that I was looking for.
Page 119.
You use us all, whether we know it or not, for a purpose which is known to you, a purpose which is just.
Page 121.
Life is a misery and I do not know when death may come. If it steals upon me, shall I be in a fit state to leave this world?
Page 127.
God would never have done so much, such wonderful things for us if the life of the soul came to an end with the death of the body.
Page 127.
Time was passing and I kept delaying my conversion to you, my God. Day after day I postponed living in you, but I never put off the death which I died each day in myself. I longed for a life of happiness but I was frightened to approach it in its own domain; and yet, while I fled from it, I still searched for it. I thought it would be too much for me to bear if I were to be deprived of woman’s love.
Page 128.
The woman with whom I had been living was torn form my side as an obstacle to my marriage and this was a blow which crushed my heart to bleeding, because I loved her dearly. She went back to Africa, vowing never to give herself to any other man, and left with me the son whom she had borne me.
Page 131.
Because I was more a slave of lust than a true lover of marriage, I took another mistress, without the sanction of wedlock.
Page 131.
The wound that I had received when my first mistress was wrenched away showed no signs of healing.
Page 131.
True beauty is seen by the inner eye of the soul, not by the eye of the flesh.
Page 132.
The older I grew, the more disgraceful was my self-delusion. I could imagine no kind of substance except such as is normally seen by the eye.
Page 133.
I thought of you too, O Life of my life, as a great being with dimensions extending everywhere, throughout infinite space.
Page 134.
I still could not find a clear explanation, without complications, of the cause of evil. Whatever the cause might be, I saw that it was not to be found in any theory that would oblige me to believe that the immutable God was mutable.
Page 136.
I was quite sure that the theories of the Manichees were wrong. I repudiated these people with all my heart, because I could see that while they ere inquiring into the origin of evil they were full of evil themselves, since they preferred to think that yours was a substance that could suffer evil rather than that theirs was capable of committing it.
Page 136.
Once I had seen that the incorruptible is superior to the corruptible, I had to search for you in the light of this truth and make it the starting point of my inquiry into the origin of evil, that is, the origin of corruption, by which your substance cannot possibly be violated. For there is no means whatsoever y which corruption can injure our god, whether by an act of will, by necessity, or by chance.
Page 137.
Nothing, whatever its nature, exists except by reason of the very fact that you know it.
Page 137.
I was trying to find the origin of evil, but I was quite blind to the evil in my own method of research.
Page138.
Where then does evil come from, if God made all things and, because he is good, made them good too? It is true that the is the supreme Good, that he is himself a greater Good than these lesser goods which he created. But the Creator and all his creation are both good. Where then does evil come from?
Page 138.
There were many questions on which my beliefs were still indefinite and wavered from the strict rule of doctrine, yet my mind never relinquished the faith but drank it in more deeply day by day.
Page 139.
When predictions based on observations of the stars turn out to be true, it is a matter of luck, not of skill. When they turn out to be wrong, it is not due to lack of skill, but to the perversity of chance.
Page 142.
I was separated from you by the swelling of my pride, as though my cheeks were so puffed with conceit that they masked the sight of my eyes.
Page 144.
You saw me and it pleased you to transform all that was misshapen in me.
Page 144.
Some hold their heads so high in the clouds of learning that they do not hear him saying, Learn from me; I am gentle and humble of heart; and you shall find rest for your souls.
Page 145.
Under your guidance I entered into the depth of my soul.
Page 146.
I saw the Light that never changes casting its rays over the same eye of my soul, over my mind. It was not the common light of day that is seen by the eye of every living thing of flesh and blood, nor was it some more spacious light of the same sort, as if the light of day were to shine far, far brighter than it does and fill all space with a vast brilliance. What I saw was something quite, quite different f rom any light we know on earth. It shone above my mind, but not in the way that oil floats above water or the sky hangs over the earth. It was above me because it was itself the Light that made me, and I was below because I was made by it. All who know the truth know this Light, and all who know this Light know eternity. It is the Light that charity knows.
Pages 146-147.
When first I knew you, you raised me up so that I could see that there was something to be seen, but also that I was not yet able to see it.
Page 147.
We catch sight of the Truth, as he is known through his creation.
Page 147.
I considered all the other things that are of a lower order than yourself, and I saw that they have not absolute being in themselves, nor are they entirely without being. They are real in so far as they have their being from you, but unreal in the sense that they are not what you are. For it is only that which remains in being without change that truly is.
Page 147.
If things are deprived of all good, they cease to exist altogether to be; and this means that as long as they are, they are good. Therefore, whatever is, is good; and evil, the origin of which I was trying to find, is not a substance, because if it were a substance, it would be good.
Page 148.
Those who find fault with any art of your creation are bereft of reason.
Page 149.
Falsehood is nothing but the supposed existence of something which has no being.
Page 150.
When I asked myself what wickedness was, I saw that it was not a substance but perversion of the will when it turns aside from you.
Page 150.
I was not humble enough to conceive of the humble Jesus Christ as my God.
Page 152.
I thought of Christ, my Lord, as no more than a man of extraordinary wisdom, whom none could equal.
Page 152.
From what the Scriptures record of him, that is, that he ate and drank, that he slept and walked, that he was sometimes happy, sometimes sad, and that he preached his gospel, all I had learnt was that when your Word took human flesh, he must also have taken a human soul and a human mind.
Page 153.
It is indeed true that the refutation of heretics gives greater prominence to the tenets of your Church and the principles of sound doctrine.
Pages 153-154.
Paul teaches that he who sees ought not to boast as though what he sees, and even the power by which he sees, had not come to him by gift.
Page 155.
What is an to do in his plight? Who is to set him free form a nature thus doomed to death? Nothing else than the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Page 155.
I should have been glad to follow the right road, to follow our Saviour himself, but still I could not make up my mind to venture along the narrow path.
Page 157.
I saw that the Church was full, yet its members each followed a different path in the world.
Page 158.
I was still held firm in the bonds of woman’s love. Your apostle did not forbid me to marry, although he counselled a better state, wishing earnestly that all men should be as he was himself. But I was a weaker man and was tempted to choose an easier course, and this reason alone prevented me from reaching a decision upon my other problems.
Page 158.
There is no pleasure in eating and drinking unless it is preceded by the discomfort of hunger and thirst.
Page 162.
It is always the case that the greater the joy, the greater is the pain which precedes it.
Page 162.
You never depart from us, yet it is hard for us to return to you.
Page 163.
When large numbers of people share their joy in common the happiness of each is greater, because each adds fuel to the other’s flame. Moreover, when converts are well known, their example guides many others to salvation. Where they lead many are sure to follow.
Page 163.
The devil has a firmer hold on men in high places because of their pride in their rank and through them he keeps hold on many more because of the influence they wield.
Page 163.
The enemy held my will in his power and from it he had made a chain and shackled me. For my will was perverse and lust had grown from it, and when I gave in to lust habit was born, and when I did not resist the habit it became a necessity. These were the links which together formed what I have called my chain, and it held me fast in the duress of servitude.
Page 164.
No one wants to sleep for ever, for everyone rightly agrees that it is better to be awake.
Page 165.
The rule of sin is the force of habit, by which the mind is swept along and held fast even against its will, yet deservedly, because it fell into the habit of its own accord.
Page 165.
As a youth I had ben woefully at fault, particularly in early adolescence. I had prayed to you for chastity and said ‘Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.’
Page 169.
I had wandered on along the road of vice in the sacrilegious superstition of the Manichees, not because I thought that it was right, but because I preferred it to the Christina belief, which I did not explore as I ought but opposed out of malice.
Page 169.
There was a small garden attached to the house where we lodged. We were free to make use of it as well as the rest of the house because our host, the owner of the house, did not live there. I now found myself driven by the tumult in my breast to take refuge in this garden, where no one could interrupt that fierce struggle in which I was my own contestant, until it came to its conclusion. What the conclusion was to be you knew, O Lord, but I did not. Meanwhile I was beside myself with madness that would bring me sanity. I was dying a death that would bring me life. I knew the evil that was in me, but the good that was soon to be born in me I did not know. So I went out into the garden and Alypius followed at my hells. His presence was no intrusion on my solitude, and how could he leave me in that state? We sat down as far as possible from the house. I was frantic, overcome by violent anger with myself for not accepting your will and entering into your covenant. Yet in my bones I knew that this was what I ought to do. In my heart of hearts I praised it to the skies. And to reach this goal I needed no chariot or ship. I need not even walk as far as I had come from the house to the place where we sat, for to make the journey, and to arrive safely, no more was required than an act of will. But it must be a resolute and whole-hearted act of the will, not some lame wish which I kept turning over and over in my mind, so that I had to wrestle with itself, part of it trying to rise, part falling to the ground.
Pages 170-171.
My lower instincts, which had taken firm hold of me, were stronger than the higher, which were untried. And the closer I came to the moment which was to mark the great change in me, the more I shrank from it in horror. But it did not drive me back or turn me from my purpose: it merely left me hanging in suspense.
Page 175.
It occurred to me that tears were best shed in solitude.
Page 177.
All at once I heard the sing-song voice of a child in a nearby house. Whether it was the voice of a boy or a girl I cannot say, but again and again it repeated the refrain ‘Take it and read, take it and read’. … I stemmed my flood of tears and stood up, telling myself that this could only be a divine command to open my book of Scripture and read the first passage on which my eyes should fall. … I had put down the book containing Paul’s Epistles. I seized it and opened it, and in silence I read the first passage on which my eyes fell: Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, no in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites. I had no wish to read more and no need to do so. For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled.
Pages 177-178.
You converted me to yourself, so that I no longer desired a wife or placed any hope in this world but stood firmly upon the rule of faith.
Page 178.
Who am I? what kind of man am I? what evil have I not done? Or if there is evil that I have not done, what evil is there that I have not spoken? If there is any that I have not spoken, what evil is there that I have not willed to do?
Page 181.
All that you asked of me was to deny my own will and accept yours.
Page 181.
How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose and was now glad to reject!
Page 181.
I intended that young pupils who gave no thought to your law or your peace, but only to lies and the insane warfare of the courts, should no longer buy from my lips any weapon to arm their madness.
Page 182.
I had lost the ambition to make money, which had always helped me to bear the strain of teaching.
Page 183.
Praising you and full of joy I set out for the house in the country with all my friends and relations. Once we were there I began at last to serve you with my pen. The books I wrote are evidence of this.
Page 185.
I had learnt to tremble for my past, so that in future I might sin no more.
Page 187.
Those who try to find joy in things outside themselves easily vanish away into emptiness. They waste themselves on the temporal pleasures of the visible world.
Page 188.
You truly are the eternal God, because in you there is no change and in you we find the rest that banishes all our labour. For there is no other besides you and we need not struggle for other things that are not what you are.
Page 188.
You are the God who gives health to the body as well as to the soul.
Page 189.
When the autumn vacation was over, I notified the people of Milan that they must find another vendor of words for their students, because I had chosen to be your servant and also because the difficulty I had in breathing and the pain in my lungs made me unfit for the duties of a professor.
Page 189.
We took the boy Adeodatus, my natural son born of my sin. You had given him every gift. Although he was barely fifteen, there were many learned and respected men who were not his equals in intelligence. … You took him from this world early in life, and now I remember him without apprehension, for there was nothing in his childhood or his youth or in any part of his life which need make me fear for him.
Page 190.
We discussed where we could most usefully serve you and together we set out to return to Africa. While we were at Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, my mother died.
Page 192.
Our enemies can often correct our faults by their disparagement, just as the flattery of friends can corrupt us.
Page 194.
A man who loves his own kind ought not to be satisfied merely to refrain from exciting or increasing enmity between other men by the evil that he speaks; he should do his best to put an end to their quarrels by kind words. This was my mother’s way.
Page 196.
‘It does not matter where you bury my body. Do not let that worry you! All I ask of you is that, wherever you may be, you should remember me at the altar of the Lord.’
Page 199.
On the ninth day of her illness, when she was fifty-six and I was thirty-three, her pious and devoted soul was set free from the body.
Page 200.
If any man makes a list of his deserts, what would it be but a list of your gifts? If only men would know themselves for what they are!
Page 203.
Let me know you, for you are the God who knows me.
Page 207.
I wish to act in truth, making my confession both in my heat before you and in this book before the many who will read it.
Page 207.
O Lord, all that I am is laid bare before you.
Page 207.
Let all who are truly my brothers love in me what they know from your teaching to be worthy of their love, and let them sorrow to find in me what they know from your teaching to be occasion for remorse. … My true brothers are those who rejoice for me in their hearts when they find good in me, and grieve for me when they find sin. They are my true brothers, because whether they see good in me or evil, they love me still.
Page 209.
The good I do is done by you in me and by your grace.
Page 209.
Do not relinquish what you have begun, but make perfect what is still imperfect in me.
Page 210.
There is joy in my heart when I confess to you, yet there is fear as well; there is sorrow, and yet hope.
Page 210.
Heaven and earth and all that they contain proclaim that I should love you, and their message never ceases to sound in the ears of all mankind, so that there is no excuse for any not to love you.
Page 211.
I know that my soul is the better part of me, because it animates the whole of my body. It gives it life, and this is something that no body can give to another body. But God is even more. He is the Lire of the life of my soul.
Page 213.
I cannot understand all that I am. This means, then, that the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely.
Page 216.
We do not entirely forget what we remember that we have forgotten. If we had completely forgotten it, we should not even be able to look for what was lost.
Page 226.
We cannot therefore be certain that all men desire true happiness, because there are some who do not look for joy in you; and since to rejoice in you is the only true happiness, we must conclude that they do not desire true happiness.
Page 229.
True happiness is to rejoice in the truth, for to rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in you, O God, who are the Truth.
Page 229.
Man’s love of truth is such that when he loves something which is not the truth, he pretends to himself that what he loves is the truth, and because he hates to be proved wrong, he will not allow himself to be convinced that he is deceiving himself. So he hates the real truth for the sake of what he takes to his heart in its place. Men love the truth when it bathes them in its light: they hate it when it proves them wrong.
Pages 229-230.
All seek counsel of you. You reply to all at once, though the counsel each seeks is different. The answer you give is clear, but not all hear it clearly. All ask you whatever they wish to ask, but the answer they receive is not always what they want to hear. The man who serves you best is the one who is less intent on hearing from you what he wills to hear than on shaping his will according to what he hears from you.
Page 231.
Is not man’s life on earth a long, unbroken period of trial?
Page 232.
Give me the grace to do as you command, and command me to do what you will!
Page 233.
A man loves you so much the less if, besides you, he also loves something else which he does not love for your sake.
Page 233.
Set me on fire with your love!
Page 233.
By granting me more abundant grace you can even quench the fire of sensuality which provokes me in my sleep. More and more, O Lord, you will increase your gifts in me, so that my soul may follow me to you, freed from the concupiscence which binds it, and rebel no more against itself. By your grace it will no longer commit in sleep these shameful, unclean acts inspired by sensual images, which lead to the pollution of the body.
Page 234.
Health and enjoyment have not the same requirements, for what is sufficient for health is not enough for enjoyment, and it is often hard to tell whether the body, which must be cared for, requires further nourishment, or whether we are being deceived by the allurements of greed demanding to be gratified.
Page 235.
Even before we pray for them, all the good things that we have ever received have come from you. That we should later recognize that they came from you is also your gift.
Page 236.
When your commands are obeyed, it is from you that we receive the power to obey them.
Page 236.
I struggle daily against greed for food and drink. This is not an evil which I can decide once and for all to repudiate and never to embrace again, as I was able to do in the case of fornication.
Page 237.
Without committing myself to an irrevocable opinion, I am inclined to approve of the custom of singing in church, in order that by indulging the ears weaker spirits may be inspired with feelings of devotion. Yet when I find the singing itself more moving than the truth which it conveys, I confess that this is a grievous sin, and at those times I would prefer not to hear the singer.
Page 239.
The beauty which flows through men’s minds into their skilful hands comes from that Beauty which is above their souls and for which my soul sighs all day and night.
Page 241.
In addition to our bodily appetites, which make us long to gratify all our senses and our pleasures and lead to our ruin if we stay away from you by becoming their slaves, the mind is also subject to a certain propensity to use the sense of the body, not for self-indulgence of a physical kind, but for the satisfaction of its own inquisitiveness. This futile curiosity masquerades under the name of science and learning.
Page 241.
It is curiosity, too, which causes men to turn to sorcery in the effort to obtain knowledge for the same perverted purpose. And it even invades our religion, for we put God to the test when we demand signs and wonders from him, not in the hope of salvation, but simply for the love of the experience.
Page 242.
There is a third kind of temptation which, I fear, has not passed from me. Can it ever pass from me in all this life? It is the desire to be feared or loved by other men, simply for the pleasure that it gives me, though in such pleasure there is no true joy.
Page 244.
Give me the grace to do as you command, and command me to do what you will!
Page 245.
I cannot tell whether or not I have the forbearance to do without anything unless it is taken away from me.
Page 246.
You have commanded us not only to be continent, but also to be just; that is, to withhold our love from certain things and to bestow it on others. You want us not only to love you, but also to love our neighbour.
Page 246.
I beg you, my God, to reveal me to my own eyes, so that I may confess to my brothers in Christ what wounds I find in myself, for they will pray for me.
Page 247.
Our love of praise leads us to court the good opinion of others and hoard it for our personal glorification. And even when I reproach myself for it, the love of praise tempts me.
Page 247.
A mediator between God and man must have something in common with God and something in common with man. For in both these points he were like men, he would be far from God; and if in both of them he were like God, he would be far from men. In neither case could he be a mediator.
Page 250.
I write this book for love of your love.
Page 253.
Let me offer you in sacrifice the service of my thoughts and my tongue.
Page 254.
Let your Scriptures be my chaste delight. Let me not deceive myself in them nor deceive others about them.
Page 254.
Open your door to my knocking. This I beg of you through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, the Man of you right hand, the Son of Man, whom you have established for yourself as mediator between yourself and us. He was the one whom you sent to find us when we were not looking for you, and you sent him to find us so that we should look for you.
Page 255.
If anything exists that was not created, there is nothing in it that was not there before; and the meaning of change and variation is that something is there which was not there before.
Page 256.
Our knowledge, compared with yours, is ignorance.
Page 257.
Does anything exist by any other cause than that you exist?
Page 257.
Your Word is not speech in which each part comes to an end when it has been spoken, giving place to the next, so that finally the whole may be uttered. In your Word all is uttered at one and the same time, yet eternally. If it were not so, your Word would be subject to time and change, and therefore would be neither truly eternal nor truly immortal.
Page 259.
Even when we learn from created things, which re subject to change, we are led to the Truth which does not change.
Page 260.
You are the Maker of all time. If, then, there was any time before you made heaven and earth, how can anyone say that you were idle? You must have made that time, for time could not elapse before you made it.
But if there was no time before heaven and earth were created, how can anyone ask what you were doing ‘then’? If there was no time, there was no ‘then’.
Page 263.
Our use of words is generally inaccurate and seldom completely correct, but our meaning is recognized none the less.
Page 269.
Grant me what I love, for it was your gift that I should love it.
Page 270.
I am in a sorry state, for I do not even know what I do not know!
Page 273.
The past increases in proportion as the future diminishes, until the future is entirely absorbed and the whole becomes past.
Page 277.
The mind, which regulates this process, performs three functions, those of expectation, attention, and memory. The future, which it expects, passes through the present, to which it attends, into the past, which it remembers.
Page 277.
It is not future time that is long, but a long future is a long expectation of the future; and past time is not long, because it does not exist, but a long past is a long remembrance of the past.
Page 277.
‘Never’ has no meaning when there is no time. … There cannot possibly be time without creation.
Page 279.
If there were a mind endowed with such great power of knowing and foreknowing that all the past and all the future were known to it as clearly as I now a familiar psalm, that mind would be wonderful beyond belief.
Page 279.
The poverty of our human intellect generally produces an abundance or words, for more talk is spent in search than in discovery.
Page 281.
All things have their origin in you, whatever the degree of their being, although the less they are like you, the farther they are from you.
Page 284.
Let me not be my own life, for when I lived of myself I lived evilly.
Page 286.
In you there is no change, either of form or motion. Your will does not alter as times change, for a will which varies is not immortal.
Page 287.
How wonderful are your Scriptures! How profound! We see their surface and it attracts us like children. And yet, O my God, their depth is stupendous. We shudder to peer deep into them, for they inspire in us both the awe of reverence and the thrill of love.
Page 290.
How can it harm me if I understand the writer’s meaning in a different sense from that in which another understands it? All of us who read his words do our best to discover and understand what he had in mind, and since we believe that he wrote the truth, we are not so rash as to suppose that he wrote anything which we know or think to be false. Provided, therefore, that each of us tries as best he can to understand in the Holy Scriptures what the writer meant by them, what harm is there if a reader believes what you, the Light of all truthful minds, show him to be the true meaning? It may not even be the meaning which the writer had in mind, and yet he too saw in them a true meaning, different though it may have been from this.
Page 296.
I realize that when a message is delivered to us in words, truthful though the messenger may be, two sorts of disagreement may arise. We may disagree either as to the truth of the message itself or as to the messenger’s meaning.
Page 300.
I wish to have no dealing with any who think things which in reality are false.
Page 300.
Man is nothing unless you remember him.
Page 303.
For this reason, although I hear people say ‘Moses meant this’ or ‘Moses meant that’, I think it more truly religious to say ‘Why should he not have had both meanings in mind, if both are true? And if others see in the same words a third, or a fourth, or any number of true meanings, why should we not believe that Moses saw them all? There is only one God, who used Moses to write the Holy Scriptures in the way best suited to the minds of great numbers of men who would all see truths in them, though not the same truths in each case.’
Page 308.
I call you to come into my soul, for by inspiring it to long for you you prepare it to receive you.
Page 311.
You had no need of me, nor am I a creature good in such way as to be helpful to you, my Lord and my God. It is not as though you could grow tired by working and I could serve you by preventing your fatigue, or would your power be any the less if my service were lacking.
Page 311.
I can only serve you and worship you so that good may come to me from you, and but for your now good could come to me, for I should not even exist to receive it.
Page 311.
Only you can never change, because you alone are absolute simplicity, for whom to live is the same as to life in blessed happiness, since you are your own beatitude.
Page 313.
You created, not because you had need, but out of the abundance of your own goodness.
Page 313.
The depths to which we sink, and from which we are raised, are not places in space. We can well speak of them in this way by analogy, but how different they are in reality! They are our passions, our loves, the unclean leanings of our own spirits, which drag us downward in our love of the world and its cares.
Page 315.
I show you my love, but if it is too little, give me strength to love you more.
Page 316.
Just as you are perfect being, so you alone have perfect knowledge; for your being, your knowledge, and your will are immutable. Your being knows and wills unchangeably; your knowledge is and wills unchangeably; and your will is and knows unchangeably. In your eyes it does not seem right that a mutable being, illumined by your immutable light, should know that light as the light knows itself.
Page 323.
All men are united by one purpose, temporal happiness on earth, ad all that they do is aimed at this goal, although in the endless variety of their struggles to attain it they pitch and toss like the waves of the sea.
Page 324.
It is in the Scriptures that you speak to us, teaching us to distinguish between the things that only our minds can know and those that the flesh can perceive, between souls that are wedded to the spirit and those that cling to worldly things.
Page 325.
Man with his natural gifts lone is like a mere infant in Christ’s nursery. He must be fed on milk until he is strong enough to eat solid food.
Page 326.
Follow the Lord, if you have a mind to be perfect.
Page 327.
There are truths that are fixed and defined and are not enlarged by further evolution.
Page 328.
All things are beautiful, because you are their Maker; but you, who made them all, are more beautiful than they, far more so than words can tell.
Page 329.
The soul lives when it avoids the things which it is death to seek. Keep yourself intact from the savage monster pride, from the sloth and the sensual pleasures of lust, and from quibbling knowledge that is knowledge only in name.
Page 330.
The arrogance of pride, the pleasures of lust, and the poison of vain curiosity are the impulses of a soul that is dead.
Page 331.
We must learn to keep our love of worldly things in check, for the evil life we lived amongst them was leading us to death.
Page 331.
When we learn to know God, we become new men in the image of our Creator. We gain spiritual gifts and can scrutinize everything - everything, that is, which it is right for us to judge - without being subject, ourselves, to any other man’s scrutiny.
Page 332.
No man, even though he has the gifts of the Spirit, can pass judgement on the peoples of this world who still struggle on without your grace.
Page 333.
Consider the verse ‘In the Beginning God made heaven and earth’. Scripture presents this truth to us in one way only, and there is only one way in which the words can be shaped by the tongue. But it may be understood in several different ways without falsification or error, because various interpretations, all of which are true in themselves, may be put upon it.
Pages 335-336.
If … I am to speak the truth, let me utter not what is mine, but what is yours.
Page 337.
God would not be loved if it were not for the Spirit which he has given us.
Page 343.
Just as in man’s soul there are two forces one which is dominant because it deliberates and one which obeys because it is subject to such guidance, in the same way, in the physical sense, woman has been made for man. In her mind and her rational intelligence she has a nature the equal of man’s, gut in sex she is physically subject to him in the same way as our natural impulses need to be subjected to the reasoning power of the mind, in order that the actions to which they lead may be inspired by the principles of good conduct.
Page 344.
You made rational action subject to the rule of the intellect, as woman is subject to man.
Page 345.
This worldly order in all its beauty will pass away. All these things that are very good will come to an end when the limit of their existence is reached.
Page 346.