Quotes from Saint Augustine

If you lose your soul, there is a danger of its being destroyed. Therefore, you may not love it, since you do not want it to be destroyed. But in not wanting it to be destroyed, you love it.

It is human to err, but it is devilish to remain willfully in error.

When [men] go to war, what they want is to impose on their enemies the victor's will and call it peace.

There is no possible source of evil except good.

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

It is the function of perfection to make one know one's imperfection.

Love, and do what you like.

Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.

Patience is the companion of wisdom.

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.

Just as it is agreed that we all wish to be happy, so it is that we all wish to be wise, since no one without wisdom is happy.

Your wisdom should be without pride.

Blessed is he who devotes his life to great and noble ends, and who forms his well-considered plans with deliberate wisdom.

Let your old age be childlike, and your childhood like old age; that is, so that neither may your wisdom be with pride, nor your humility without wisdom.

Great are those two gifts, wisdom and continence: wisdom, forsooth, whereby we are formed in the knowledge of God; continence whereby we are not conformed to this world.

The soul, which is spirit, can not dwell in dust; it is carried along to dwell in the blood.

A marriage without children is the world without the sun.

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

If you are suffering from a bad man's injustice, forgive him lest there be two bad men.

God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail.

Don't you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?

I once laboured hard for the free will of man, until the grace of God at length overcame me.

There is a God-shaped vacuum in every man that only Christ can fill.