Every soul must pay back what it owes, either by using well what it received, or by losing what it was unwilling to use well.
The whole of history since the ascension of Jesus into heaven is concerned with one work only: the building and perfecting of this “City of God.
I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares.
The peace of all things is the tranquillity of order.
In their perverted way all humanity imitates you. Yet they put themselves at a distance from you and exalt themselves against you. But even by thus imitating you they acknowledge that you are the creator of all nature and so concede that there is no palace where one can entirely escape from you.
They were angry with their Lord in behalf of their idols, they who even if they were angry with their slave on their idol’s account, were to be condemned. For their slave was better than their idol: for God made their slave, the carpenter made their idol. They were so angry in their idol’s behalf, that they feared not to be angry with their Lord.
Those who ask ‘What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?’ are still steeped in error which they should have discarded.
That vague and wandering opinion of Deity is declared by an apostle to be ignorance of God:.
Much more might be said about the perfection of the number seven, but this book is already too long, and I fear lest I should seem to catch at an opportunity of airing my little smattering of science more childishly than profitably.
No doubt, then, that a free curiosity has more force in our learning these things, than a frightful enforcement.
Weaned from all passing fancies, let my soul praise You, O God, Creator of all. You did not allow my soul to remain attached to corruptible things with the glue of love, attached to what my senses find pleasing. For things we are attached to go where they will, then they cease, leaving the lover torn with corrupted longings.
Reason judges in one way, custom in another. Reason judges by the light of truth, so that by right judgment it subjects lesser things to greater. Custom is often swayed by agreeable habits, so that it esteems as greater what truth reveals as lower.
For no wisdom is true wisdom if it does not direct all its prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice towards that final state where God shall be all in all in an assured eternity and perfect peace.
Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in.
I didn’t know that evil doesn’t exist except as the absence of good up to the point of annihilation.
Thus, little by little, I became conscious where I was; and to have a wish to express my wishes to those who could content them, and I could not; for the wishes were within me, and they without; nor could they by any sense of theirs enter within my spirit. So I flung about at random limbs and voice, making the few signs I could, and such as I could, like, though in truth very little like, what I wished.
Yet when it happens to me that the music moves me more than the subject of the song, I confess myself to commit a sin deserving punishment, and then I would prefer not to have heard the singer.
For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity.
The person who knows the truth knows it, and he who knows it knows eternity. Love knows it.
So when someone happens to consult the pages of a poet whose verses and intention are concerned with a quite different subject, in a wonderful way a verse often emerges appropriate to the decision under discussion.