Top 500 Saint Augustine Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much.”

— Saint Augustine

452. “For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next.”

— Saint Augustine

453. “I was unhappy and so is every soul unhappy which is tied to its love for mortal things; when it loses them, it is torn in pieces, and it is then that it comes to realize the unhappiness which was there even before it lost them.”

— Saint Augustine

454. “To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it.”

— Saint Augustine

455. “If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the formula teach me?”

— Saint Augustine

456. “For whenever unbaptized persons die confessing Christ, this confession is of the same efficacy for the remission of sins as if they were washed in the sacred font of baptism.”

— Saint Augustine

457. “The wicked exist in this world either to be converted or that through them the good may exercise patience.”

— Saint Augustine

458. “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

459. “Such is the strength of the burden of habit. Here I have the power to be but do not wish it. There I wish to be but lacks the power. On both grounds, I’m in misery.”

— Saint Augustine

460. “The rich are like beasts of burden, carrying treasure all day, and at the night of death unladen; they carry to their grave only the bruises and marks of their toil.”

— Saint Augustine

461. “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

462. “What am I then, my God? What is my nature? A life varied, multifaceted and truly immense.”

— Saint Augustine

463. “He who does little, but in a state to which God calls him, does more than he who labors much, but in a state which he has thoughtlessly chosen: a cripple limping in the right way is better than a racer out of it.”

— Saint Augustine

464. “I thought that continence was a matter of our own strength, and I knew that I had not the strength: for in my utter foolishness I did not know the word of Your Scripture that none can be continent unless You give it.”

— Saint Augustine

465. “We enjoy some gratification when our good friends die; for though their death leaves us in sorrow, we have the consolatory assurance that they are beyond the ills by which in this life even the best of people are broken down or corrupted.”

— Saint Augustine

466. “A person can do other things against his will, but belief is possible only in one who is willing.”

— Saint Augustine

467. “A young man had become possessed by a devil. The thing within him burst into loud lamentation and departed from the man. At once the youth’s eye fell out on his cheek, and the whole of the pupil which had been black became white.”

— Saint Augustine

468. “I poured my soul into the dust by loving a man who was soon to die, as if he would live forever.”

— Saint Augustine

469. “War should we waged without love of violence, cruelty, or enmity.”

— Saint Augustine

470. “Don’t you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?”

— Saint Augustine

471. “Then assuredly the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time.”

— Saint Augustine

472. “Blessedness consists in the accomplishment of our desires, and in our having only regular desires.”

— Saint Augustine

473. “Let necessity, and not your will, slay the enemy who fights against you.”

— Saint Augustine

474. “The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away. -Ronald Reagan In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?”

— Saint Augustine

475. “Why then be perverted and follow thy flesh? Be it converted and follow thee.”

— Saint Augustine

476. “Whoever is still seeking for miracles so that he may believe is himself a wonder, who does not believe while the world around him does.”

— Saint Augustine

477. “Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants as to willing what he has heard from you.”

— Saint Augustine

478. “Nothing so clearly distinguishes a spiritual man as his treatment of an erring brother.”

— Saint Augustine

479. “I found thee not, O Lord, without, because I erred in seeking thee without that wert within.”

— Saint Augustine

480. “Men are always ready to nose around and find out about other’s lives, but they feel lazy to know themselves and correct their own life.”

— Saint Augustine

481. “Just as it is agreed that we all wish to be happy, so it is that we all wish to be wise, since no one without wisdom is happy.”

— Saint Augustine

482. “The ministry is a weight from which even an angel might shrink.”

— Saint Augustine

483. “I will not live an instant that I do not live in love. Whoever loves does all things without suffering, or, suffering, loves his suffering.”

— Saint Augustine

484. “For you have imposed order, and so it is that the punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.”

— Saint Augustine

485. “It is not in virtue of its liberty that the human will attains to grace, it is much rather by grace that it attains to liberty.”

— Saint Augustine

486. “If But for the Mercy of my Lord, that my paradise becomes a woman’s hell.”

— Saint Augustine

487. “I am convinced that in all history there has never been a greater need to Pray for our Pastors than exists right now! Pastors are experiencing an unprecedented wave of attacks, stresses, challenges. obstacles. pressures.”

— Saint Augustine

488. “Love, and He will draw near; love, and He will dwell within you.”

— Saint Augustine

489. “All the dancer’s gestures are signs of things, and the dance called rational, because it aptly signifies and displays something over and above the pleasure of the senses.”

— Saint Augustine

490. “What can be hoped for which is not believed?”

— Saint Augustine

491. “He who thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon.”

— Saint Augustine

492. “While the best men are guided by love, most mean are still goaded by fear.”

— Saint Augustine

493. “Lord, who art always the same, give that I know myself, give that I know Thee.”

— Saint Augustine

494. “We both exist and know that we exist, and rejoice in this knowledge.”

— Saint Augustine

495. “One can’t reach the Truth but trough Love.”

— Saint Augustine

496. “Slavery is not penal in character and planned by that law which commands the preservation of the natural order and forbids disturbance.”

— Saint Augustine

497. “The mind commands the mind to will, and yet, though it be itself, it minds not. What is this monstrous thing? And why is it?”

— Saint Augustine

498. “This entire most beautiful order of good things is going to pass away after its measure has been exhausted; for both morning and evening were made in them.”

— Saint Augustine

499. “The peace of all things is the tranquillity of order.”

— Saint Augustine

500. “It is salutary for us to learn to hold cheap such things, be they good or evil, as attach indifferently to good men and bad, and to covet those good things which belong only to good men, and flee those evils which belong only to evil men.”

— Saint Augustine