My God, how I burned, how I burned with longing to leave earthly and fly back to you.
Grant thereof a space for our meditations in the hidden things of Thy law, and close it not against us who knock. For not in vain wouldest Thou have the darksome secrets of so many pages written;.
Though you hale my body to that place, and there set me, can you force me also to turn my mind or my eyes to those shows? I shall then be absent while present, and so shall overcome both you and them.
It is my faith that calls to you, Lord, the faith which you gave me and made to live in me through the merits of your Son, who became man, and through the ministry of your preacher.
You are God and Lord of all you have created. In you are the constant causes of inconstant things. All mutable things have in you their immutable origins. In you all irrational and temporal things have the everlasting causes of their life.
Whoever were the inventors of such tales, whether fact or fiction, or facts concerning others and fictitiously attributed to Jove, words fail to express what a low opinion these fable-mongers must have formed of human nature to assume that men could endure such lies with patience.
Who can plumb its depths? And yet it is a faculty of my soul. Although it is part of my nature, I cannot understand all that I am.
For the sense of the flesh is slow, because it is the sense of the flesh; and thereby is it bounded. It sufficeth for that it was made for; but it sufficeth not to stay things running their course from their appointed starting-place to the end appointed.
If you find physical pleasure in earthly experiences, use the occasion to praise God for these gifts. Turn your love not on the pleasures but toward their Maker.
Shall any be his own artificer? or can there elsewhere be derived any vein, which may stream essence and life into us, save from thee, O Lord, in whom essence and life are one? for Thou Thyself art supremely Essence and Life.
For in Thy Word, by which they are created, they hear their decree, “hence and hitherto.
Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.
He who has no tomb has the sky for his vault.
See, heaven and earth exist, they cry aloud that they are made, for they suffer change and variation.
Be not conformed to the world. Contain yourselves from it: the soul lives by avoiding what it dies by affecting.
There is a joy that brings true happiness, but it is not given to the ungodly. It is only for those who love You for Your own sake. That joy is to know You as You are. This is the happy life, to rejoice in You, of You, and for You.
But the idling of men is called business; 47 the idling of boys, though exactly like, is punished by those same men: and no one pities either boys or men. Perhaps an unbiased observer would hold that I was rightly punished as a boy for playing with a ball: because this hindered my progress in studies – studies which would give me the opportunity as a man to play at things more degraded.
The promise of satisfaction in worldly loves is an enduring lie that moves the soul to unfaithfulness from its proper lover. We.
Through the entertainment of the ears, a weaker mind can rise up to devotional feeling. Yet when in my own case it happens that the song moves me more than the subject, I confess I’ve committed a punishable sin, and then I’d rather not hear someone singing.
But obviously the Romans have a plausible defence for undertaking and carrying on such disastrous wars, – to wit, that the pressure of their enemies forced them to resist, so that they were compelled to fight, not by any greed of human applause, but by the necessity of protecting life and liberty.