Quotes from St. Augustine

Every city is a living body.

Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in.

Understanding is the reward of faith.

O Lord my God, what a depth is that recess of Thy mysteries, and how far from it have the consequences of my transgressions cast me! Heal mine eyes, that I may share the joy of Thy light.

Behold, these things pass away, that others may replace them, and so this lower universe be completed by all his parts.

And the good delight to hear of the past evils of such as are now freed from them, not because they are evils, but because they have been and are not.

Human friendship also is endeared with a sweet tie, by reason of the unity formed of many souls.

Be not foolish, O my soul, nor become deaf in the ear of thine heart with the tumult of thy folly. Hearken thou too. The Word itself calleth thee to return: and there is the place of rest imperturbable, where love is not forsaken, if itself forsaketh not.

God, whose knowledge is simply manifold, and uniform in its variety, comprehends all incomprehensibles with so incomprehensible a comprehension, that though He willed always to make His later works novel and unlike what went before them, He could not produce them without order and foresight, nor conceive them suddenly, but by His eternal foreknowledge.

But however much that virtue may be praised and cried up, which without true piety is the slave of human glory, it is not at all to be compared even to the feeble beginnings of the virtue of the saints, whose hope is placed in the grace and mercy of the true God.

Prayers, also, are of avail to procure those things which He foreknew that He would grant to those who offered them.

But Thou, O my God, hadst already taught me by wonderful and secret ways, and therefore I believe that Thou taughtest me, because it is truth, nor is there besides Thee any teacher of truth, where or whencesoever it may shine upon us.