Augustine of Hippo

He who falls, falls by his own will; and he who stands, stands by God's will.

For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity.

This disease of curiosity.

Oh, God, to know you is life. To serve You is freedom. To praise you is the soul's joy and delight. Guard me with the power of Your grace here and in all places. Now and at all times, forever. Amen.

Every good man resists others in those points in which he resists himself.

if we are wayfarers who want to return home, then we must see the world as a means of transportation (terestibus vel marinis vehiculis) and always remember to distinguish the means and ends.

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?

... the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord.

His knowledge is not like ours, which has three tenses: present, past, and future. God's knowledge has no change or variation.

That vague and wandering opinion of Deity is declared by an apostle to be ignorance of God:

You are not blamed for your unwilling ignorance, but because you fail to ask about what you do not know.... For no one is prevented from leaving behind the disadvantage of ignorance and seeking the advantage of knowledge.

Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or to whom should I cry, save Thee? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and therefore do I speak.

Behold, now, how foolish it is, in so great an abundance of the truest opinions which can be extracted from these words, rashly to affirm which of them Moses particularly meant; and with pernicious contentions to offend charity itself, on account of which he hath spoken all the things whose words we endeavour to explain!

The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.

The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.

I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.

True inner righteousness does not judge according to custom but by the measure of the most perfect law of God Almighty by which the mores of various places and times were adapted to those places and times.

A sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart. Nay, even idolatry is ample evidence of this fact.