Augustine Confessions Quotes

According to St. Augustine, the left hand represented the temporal, the mortal, and the bodily, as opposed to the right, which stood for "God, eternity, the years of God which fail not."25 For centuries the preference for the right hand over the left governed how people fished, ploughed fields, twisted rope, and ate their meals. The Greeks and Romans, for example, always reclined on the left side, propped on the left elbow, leaving the right hand free for the business of eating and drinking. Plutarch noted that parents taught children to eat right-handed from a young age, and "if they do put forth the left hand, at once we correct them."26 The prejudice against the left hand persisted during the Renaissance, with parents freeing a child's right hand from its swaddling clothes to ensure right-handedness at the dinner table as well as at the writing desk. ~ Ross King

Do not feel surprise at being schooled amid toil: you are being schooled for a wondrous destiny. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

So saving grace, converting grace, for Augustine, is God's giving us a sovereign joy in God that triumphs over all other joys and therefore sways the will. The will is free to move toward whatever it delights in most fully, but it is not within the power of our will to determine what that sovereign joy will be. ~ John Piper

Cards on the table, Ava. No fucking about, no more drunken confessions and no more holding out on me, Do you understand? ~ Jodi Ellen Malpas

You (God) have not only commanded continence, that is, from what things we are to restrain our love, but also justice, that is, on what we are to bestow our love. ~ Saint Augustine

Dear Imelda, In accordance with your wishes, I did not imagine you smiling. I did not smile myself. But I am willing to take my chances. Your body is yours to give or not. Should you decide not, I will respect that, although I must warn you that I will work hard to reverse your decision. Let me say, though, that I find all the signs most encouraging. Shall we go forward then? Love, Augustine. ~ Jerry Pinto

Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable. ~ Augustine Birrell

The good man is free, even if he is a slave. The evil man is a slave, even if he is a king. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

It is He who gave to this intellectual nature free-will of such a kind, that if he wishes to forsake God his blessedness, misery should forthwith result. ~ Saint Augustine

That your enemies have been created is God's doing; that they hate you and wish to ruin you is their own doing. What should you say about them in your mind? "Lord be merciful to them, forgive them their sins, put the fear of God in them, change them!" You are loving in them not what they are, but what you would have them to become. ~ Saint Augustine

Despite the chronic shortages of almost every good and commodity, there was no shortage of paper, since everyone in the neighborhood was required to write confessions on a periodic basis. Even ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

Well, someone asks, how can we be sure God is trustworthy? The answer is that this is the one part of the Lord's Prayer Jesus himself prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, under circumstances far more crushing than any of us will ever face. He submitted to his Father's will rather than following his own desires, and it saved us. That's why we can trust him. Jesus is not asking us to do anything for him that he hasn't already done for us, under conditions of difficulty beyond our comprehension. Luther adds, following Augustine, that without this trust in God, we will try to take God's place and seek revenge on those who have harmed us.203 ~ Timothy J. Keller

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. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

If by fate anyone means the will or power of God, let him keep his meaning but mend his language; for fate commonly means a necessary process which will have its way apart from the will of God and men. ~ Saint Augustine

The deformity of Christ forms you. If he had not willed to be deformed, you would not have recovered the form which you had lost. Therefore he was deformed when he hung on the cross. But his deformity is our comeliness. In this life, therefore, let us hold fast to the deformed Christ. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

From my heel to my toe is a measured space of 29.7 centimetres or 11.7 inches. This is a unit of progress and it is also a unit of thought. 'I can only meditate when I am walking,' wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the fourth book of his 'Confessions', 'when I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.' Søren Kierkegaard speculated that the mind might function optimally at the pedestrian pace of three miles per hour, and in a journal entry describes going out for a wander and finding himself 'so overwhelmed with ideas' that he 'could scarcely walk'. Christopher Morley wrote of Wordsworth as 'employ[ing] his legs as an instrument of philosophy' and Wordsworth of his own 'feeling intellect'. Nietzsche was typically absolute on the subject - 'Only those thoughts which come from 'walking' have a value' - and Wallace Stevens typically tentative: 'Perhaps / The truth depends on a walk around the lake.' In all of these accounts, walking is not the action by which one arrives at knowledge; it is itself the means of knowing. ~ Robert Macfarlane

I know what it is, but when you ask me I don't. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

I have no interest in writing confessions, in deliberately baring myself to my readers. I prefer to remain behind a screen. ~ Louis Begley

All truth and understanding is a result of a divine light which is God Himself. ~ Saint Augustine

I've never been good at following directions. All you have to do is look at my Ikea bureau with the crooked drawers to figure that one out. ~ Donna Augustine

When we want to let go of a situation no matter what it is we must be able to "bless" it. When you bless something you sanction it giving it your approval and endorsement freeing it to go forward with your cooperation and support. ~ Sue Augustine

Although most products will soon be too costly to purchase, there will be a thriving market in the sale of books on how to fix them. ~ Norman Ralph Augustine

He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent. ~ Saint Augustine

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. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

Woe to my proud soul, which hoped that if it fell away from you, it would have something better! It turned and turned again upon its back and sides and belly, but all places were hard to it, for you alone are rest. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

But we enjoyed playing games and were punished for them by men who played games themselves. However, grown-up games are known as 'business' and even though boys' games are much the same, they are punished for them by their elders. No one pities either the boys or the men, though surely we deserve pity, for I cannot believe that a good judge would approve of the beatings I received as a boy on the ground that my games delayed my progress in studying subjects which would enable me to play a less creditable game later in life. ~ Saint Augustine

When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing. ~ Hannah Arendt

Everyone has human heads in their closet. Sometimes the heads are secrets, or unsaid confessions, or quiet fears. This book is one of those severed heads. ~ Jenny Lawson

People travel to marvel at the mountains, seas, rivers and stars and they pass right by themselves without astonishment. ~ Saint Augustine

I have become an enigma to myself. So said Saint Augustine. And herein lies my sickness. ~ Don DeLillo

I wanted to stare it down and give the reaper the middle finger when I went. ~ Donna Augustine

I inquired what wickedness is, and I didn't find a substance, but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance – You oh God – towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matter. ~ Augustine Of Hippo