The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.
The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.
The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.
Variation on the middle sentence: A thing is not necessarily false because it is badly expressed, nor true because it is expressed magnificently.
Let the Lord your God be your hope – seek for nothing else from him, but let him himself be your hope. There are people who hope from him riches or perishable and transitory honours, in short they hope to get from God things which are not God himself.
For no one should consider anything his own, except perhaps a lie, since all truth is from Him who said, “I am the truth.
When men cannot communicate their thoughts to each other, simply because of difference of language, all the similarity of their common human nature is of no avail to unite them in fellowship.
If God had designed woman as man’s master, he would have taken her from his head; if as his slave, he would have taken her from his feet; but as he designed her for his companion and equal, he took her from his side.
What could be more hapless than a man controlled by his own creations? It is surely easier for a man to cease to be a man by worshiping man-made gods than for idols to become divine by being adored.
Late have I loved you, Beauty so very ancient and so ever new. Late I have loved you! You were within, but I was without.
Let such a person rejoice even to ask the question, “What does this mean?” Yes, let him rejoice in that, and choose to find by not finding rather than by finding fail to find you.
No man can be a good bishop if he loves his title but not his task.
Of course, as everyone knows, neither my five books nor any five hundred books are sufficient to silence and pertinacity. It is the glory of vain men never to yield to the truth.
You know how stupid and weak I am: teach me and heal me.
After saying all that, what have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What does anyone who speaks of you really say? Yet woe betide those who fail to speak, while the chatterboxes go on saying nothing.
It would have been more profitable to love the sun in the sky, which at least our eyes perceive truly, than those chimeras offered to a mind that had been led astray through its eyes.
But unscrupulous ambition has nothing to work upon, save in a nation corrupted by avarice and luxury. Moreover, a people becomes avaricious and luxurious by prosperity.
The reader of these reflections of mine on the Trinity should bear in mind that my pen is on the watch against the sophistries of those who scorn the starting-point of faith, and allow themselves to be deceived through an unseasonable and misguided love of reason.
So too let him rejoice and delight in finding you who are beyond discovery rather than fail to find you by supposing you to be discoverable.