Therefore, whatsoever a man suffers contrary to his own will, he ought not to attribute to the will of men, or of angels, or of any created spirit, but rather to His will who gives power to wills.
What indeed is more pitiful than a piteous person who has no pity for himself? I could weep over the death Dido brought upon herself out of love for Aeneas, yet I shed no tears over the death I brought upon myself by not loving you.
It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man’s greatest good to have everything good but himself.
For in truth lust is made out of a perverse will, and when lust is served, it becomes habit, and when habit is not resisted, it becomes necessity.
Still I would not forsooth have sacrifices offered to devils for me, to whom I was sacrificing myself by that superstition. For what else is it to feed the wind, but to feed them, that is by going astray to become their pleasure and derision?
Things out of their place are in motion: they come to their place and are at rest. My love is my weight: wherever I go, my love is what brings me there.50 By Your Gift we are on fire and borne upwards: we flame and we ascend. In our heart we ascend.
What, then, is the God I worship? He can be none but the Lord God himself, for who but the Lord is God? What other refuge can there be, except our God?
When consent takes the form of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is called desire. When consent takes the form of enjoying the things we wish, this is called joy.
Without metaphysical freedom, the universe is just a divine puppet show. If there is to be any real creaturely goodness, any new and creative act of love, rather than the merely mechanical uncoiling of a wind-up universe, if there are to be any real decisions other than those made in the divine will, then there must be metaphysical freedom, and such freedom brings with it the possibility of evil as well as the promise of goodness.
I do acknowledge You, Lord of heaven and earth. I do praise You for assembling the pieces of my being and for the infancy I do not remember. For You have appointed ways by which we can discover the essential facts about ourselves. We can see others and guess much about Your work in us. We can learn much about Your care by seeing those “weak females” who cared for us as infants.
Virgil certainly is held to be a great poet; in fact he is regarded as the best and the most renowned of all poets, and for that reason he is read by children at an early age-they take great draughts of his poetry into their unformed minds, so that they may not easily forget him, for, as Horace remarks, “New vessels will for long retain the taste of what is first poured into them.
And what did it profit me, that all the books I could procure of the so-called liberal arts, I, the vile slave of vile affections, read by myself, and understood? And I delighted in them, but knew not whence came all, that therein was true or certain. For I had my back to the light, and my face to the things enlightened; whence my face, with which I discerned the things enlightened, itself was not enlightened.
Sorrow is permitted human beings, but it is not to be desired if we would be like You, Lord God. For You, who love souls far more purely than we and feel a perfect pity for others, are wounded, yet without sorrow. How can we be like You in this?
O Lord, turned me back upon myself. You took me from behind my own back, where I had placed myself because I did not wish to look upon myself. You stood me face to face with myself, so that I might see how foul I was, how deformed and defiled, how covered with stains and sores. I looked, and I was filled with horror, but there was no place for me to flee to away from myself.
For God would never have created any, I do not say angel, but even man, whose future wickedness He foreknew, unless He had equally known to what uses in behalf of the good He could turn him, thus embellishing, the course of the ages, as it were an exquisite poem set off with antitheses.
I’m above all that stuff, but I’m below you, and you are my true joy when I’m placed under you, and you’ve placed under me what you created below me.
And how shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord, since, when I call for Him, I shall be calling Him to myself? and what room is there within me, whither my God can come into me?
Our only pleasure in doing it was that it was forbidden.
Nor had I any desire to enjoy the things I stole, but only the stealing of them and the sin.
Whither do I call Thee, since I am in Thee? or whence canst Thou enter into.