Top 500 Saint Augustine Quotes (2023 Update)
Page 10 of 10

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

— Saint Augustine

453. “Why is it that man desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would by no means suffer?”

— Saint Augustine

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

— Saint Augustine

455. “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

456. “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

457. “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

458. “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

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

— Saint Augustine

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

— Saint Augustine

461. “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

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

— 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. “Do you who are a Christian desire to be revenged and vindicated, and the death of Jesus Christ has not yet been revenged, nor His innocence vindicated?”

— Saint Augustine

465. “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

466. “The people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered.”

— Saint Augustine

467. “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

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

— Saint Augustine

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

— Saint Augustine

470. “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

471. “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

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

— Saint Augustine

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

— Saint Augustine

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

— Saint Augustine

475. “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

476. “If a parricide is more wicked than anyone who commits homicide-because he kills not merely a man but a near relative-without doubt worse still is he who kills himself, because there is none nearer to a man than himself.”

— Saint Augustine

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

— Saint Augustine

478. “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

479. “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

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

— Saint Augustine

481. “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

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

— Saint Augustine

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

— Saint Augustine

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

— Saint Augustine

485. “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

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

— Saint Augustine

487. “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

488. “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

489. “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

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

— Saint Augustine

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

— Saint Augustine

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

— Saint Augustine

493. “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

494. “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

495. “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

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

— Saint Augustine

497. “In the usual course of study I had come to a book of a certain Cicero.”

— Saint Augustine

498. “Your wisdom should be without pride.”

— Saint Augustine

499. “Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing.”

— Saint Augustine

500. “You know how stupid and weak I am: teach me and heal me.”

— Saint Augustine