BY SOFO ARCHON
Below are 33 powerful quotes from the mind of the early Christian theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine, on topics such as love, beauty, god, sin, time, wisdom, hope, and patience.
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1. “The world is a great book, of which they that never stir from home read only a page.”
2. “Beauty grows in you to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul’s beauty.”
3. “Already I had learned from thee that because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true; nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false.”
4. “Hear the other side.”
5. “People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.”
6. “Love, and do what you like.”
7. “God provides the wind, but man must raise the sails.”
8. “This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.”
9. “As the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As therefore the body perishes when the soul leaves it, so the soul dies when God departs from it.”
10. “What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.”
11. “The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light, — although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted.”
12. “It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.”
13. “Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like town-made or rustic vessels — both kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish.”
14. “It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.”
15. “Love the sinner and hate the sin.”
16. “Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.”
17. “You aspire to great things? Begin with little ones.”
18. “He that is jealous is not in love.”
19. “He who sings prays twice.”
20. “Renouncement: the heroism of mediocrity.”
21. “Anger is a weed; hate is the tree.”
22. “To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of things eternal; to knowledge, the rational apprehension of things temporal.”
23. “For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared.”
24. “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.”
25. “The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.”
26. “Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.”
27. “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”
28. “It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.”
29. “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”
30. “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.”
31. “He who is filled with love is filled with God himself.”
32. “Patience is the companion of wisdom.”
33. “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.”