Quotes About Augustine

Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick. I have nothing in common with them.

Augustine's pietistic, confessional stream of discourse also broke with the tradition of Western thought by reconfiguring the idea of the soul, not only as rational "essence" but also as "the mysterious and unknown realms of [the] inner world that were no less hidden . . . than the distant realms of the outer world

Augustine arrives at "the camps and vast palaces of memory."11 There he finds the notion of the "happy life," which is his origin and as such the quintessence of his being. The absolute future turns out to be the ultimate past and the way to reach it is through remembrance.

Through this interpretation of the biblical teaching on the Fall, Augustine, who had a brilliant capacity for analytical self-reflection far exceeding that of any other author of antiquity, effectively poisoned the entire Western Church with his doctrine on original sin, which is rejected down to this day by the Eastern churches.

Augustine's insight that emotion dims in memory, however, is overwhelmingly true of our episodic memories. The cooling of the emotions that belong to such recollections is built into the nature of this kind of memory, because it is quickly turned into narrative.

Augustine's insight that emotion dims in memory, however, is overwhelmingly true of our episodic memories. The cooling of the emotions that belong to such recollections is built into the nature of this kind of memory, because it is quickly turned into narrative. The raw affective material of memories is restructured and then told as stories from a remove.

Is it experimental to have been influenced by the Bible? By Saint Augustine?

Since St. Augustine announced that Eve - and, hence, collective woman - was responsible for original sin, rabid sexism has been a major pillar of patriarchal religious tradition.

They have made Virtue also a goddess, which, indeed, if it could be a goddess, had been preferable to many. And now, because it is not a goddess, but a gift of God, let it be obtained by prayer from Him, by whom alone it can be given, and the whole crowd of false gods vanishes.

And we indeed recognize in ourselves the image of God, that is, of the supreme Trinity, an image which, though it be not equal to God, or rather, though it be very far removed from Him,—being neither co-eternal, nor, to say all in a word, consubstantial with Him,—is yet nearer to Him in nature than any other of His works, and is destined to be yet restored, that it may bear a still closer resemblance.

The human mind may perceive truth only through thinking, as is clear from Augustine.

According to Augustine, the power of sin is such that it takes hold of our will, and as long as we are under its sway we cannot move our will to be rid of it. The most we can accomplish is to struggle between willing and not willing, which does little more than show the powerlessness of our will against itself. The sinner can will nothing but sin. Within that condition, there certainly are good and bad choices; but even the best choices still fall within the category of sin.

He dreamed of a Europe after the pattern of his favorite book, Saint Augustine's The City of God, a Europe made one in faith as well as territory, a greater Frankland where men would beat all swords into plowshares and all people would walk in the peaceable kingdom in the name of the Lord.

I got a calling, y'all—you should try giving me a shout if ya ever need it, 'cuz my name is Saint Monica, I'm the mother of Saint Augustine, one of the Fathers of the Church, and ya know what? My ass gets results!

They looked back to the Bible and to the apostolic era, as well as to early church fathers such as Augustine (354–430) for the mold by which they could shape the church and re-form it. The Reformers had a saying, "Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda," meaning "the church reformed, always reforming.

Leaning on Augustine's insight, Bonhoeffer sees the sanctorum communio as "the community of loving persons who, touched by God's Spirit, radiate love and grace."17

The measure of love is to love without measure.

Jim Tile was questioning Augustine about the skulls on the wall. "Cuban voodoo?

For "what the soul is to the body of man," Saint Augustine was to write, "that the Holy Spirit is to the Body of Christ, which is the Church.

Translating Plato's philosophy to the context of Christian belief, Augustine finds that "out of a certain compassion for the masses God Most High bent down and subjected the authority of the divine intellect even to the human body itself"—in the incarnation of Jesus, the God-Man—so that God might recall "to the intelligible world souls blinded by the darkness of error and befouled by the slime of the body.

St. Augustine adds that God has taught us to praise Him, in the Psalms, not in order that He may get something out of this praise, but in order that we may be made better by it. Praising God in the words of the Psalms, we can come to know Him better. Knowing Him better we love Him better, loving Him better we find our happiness in Him.

Unbelievably, Augustine claims God makes Christians desire the salvation of those whom he has damned (Corrept.15, 47). Rist adeptly identifies this as "the most pathetic passage

Yes, I'm sure, Augustine," Mad Rogan said into the phone. "He didn't caress my cheek softly with his calloused fingers, but I saw a male hand.

I'm curious, what are you picturing exactly?" Augustine asked. "A crisscrossing pattern of red laser beams and ferrets in harnesses slithering through it like ninjas?