Top 765 Quotes & Sayings by Saint Augustine

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Roman saint Saint Augustine.

Last updated on September 16, 2024.

Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. His writings influenced the development of Western philosophy and Western Christianity, and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period. His many important works include The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, and Confessions.

Roman - Saint | 354 - 430

Source: Wikipedia

Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.

Saint Augustine

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.

Saint Augustine

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.

Saint Augustine

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

Saint Augustine

Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

Saint Augustine

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.

Saint Augustine

O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.

Saint Augustine

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.

Saint Augustine

Hear the other side.

Saint Augustine

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

Saint Augustine

Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.

Saint Augustine

Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.

Saint Augustine

The same thing which is now called Christian religion existed among the ancients. They have begun to call 'Christian' the true religion which existed before.

Saint Augustine

To seek the highest good is to live well.

Saint Augustine

Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt.

Saint Augustine

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

Saint Augustine

Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others.

Saint Augustine

If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times.

Saint Augustine

If two friends ask you to judge a dispute, don't accept, because you will lose one friend; on the other hand, if two strangers come with the same request, accept because you will gain one friend.

Saint Augustine

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.

Saint Augustine

O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.

Saint Augustine

We cannot pass our guardian angel's bounds, resigned or sullen, he will hear our sighs.

Saint Augustine

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

Saint Augustine

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

Saint Augustine

Oh Lord, give me chastity, but do not give it yet.

Saint Augustine

Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.

Saint Augustine

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

Saint Augustine

Punishment is justice for the unjust.

Saint Augustine

Patience is the companion of wisdom.

Saint Augustine

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.

Saint Augustine

Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.

Saint Augustine

Love is the beauty of the soul.

Saint Augustine

Love, and do what you like.

Saint Augustine

Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.

Saint Augustine

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.

Saint Augustine

The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light; although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted.

Saint Augustine

The greatest evil is physical pain.

Saint Augustine

Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.

Saint Augustine

It seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all.

Saint Augustine

God is best known in not knowing him.

Saint Augustine

To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

Saint Augustine

What I needed most was to love and to be loved, eager to be caught. Happily I wrapped those painful bonds around me; and sure enough, I would be lashed with the red-hot pokers or jealousy, by suspicions and fear, by burst of anger and quarrels.

Saint Augustine

Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.

Saint Augustine

Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Saint Augustine

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

Saint Augustine

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

Saint Augustine

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.

Saint Augustine

He that is jealous is not in love.

Saint Augustine

Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.

Saint Augustine

The purpose of all wars, is peace.

Saint Augustine

By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.

Saint Augustine

Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.

Saint Augustine

Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again.

Saint Augustine

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

Saint Augustine

He fashioned hell for the inquisitive.

Saint Augustine

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

Saint Augustine

In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty.

Saint Augustine

Passion is the evil in adultery. If a man has no opportunity of living with another man's wife, but if it is obvious for some reason that he would like to do so, and would do so if he could, he is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act.

Saint Augustine

Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.

Saint Augustine

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

Saint Augustine