Famous Augustine of Hippo Quotes Explained
Augustine of Hippo was a Roman-African theologian and philosopher whose work shaped Western Christianity and Latin philosophy for the next millennium. Augustine's <em>Confessions</em> and <em>City of God</em> set much of the agenda for Western Christian thought. Below are eight of the most-quoted lines, with notes on where they fit in his work.
Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:
“Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
What it means
Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te — from the opening paragraph of the Confessions (Book I, chapter 1). Augustine frames human desire as structurally directed at God, so that no finite object can fully satisfy it. The line is the thesis of the entire autobiography that follows.
“Love, and do what you will.”
Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love , and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace , through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good .
What it means
Dilige, et quod vis fac — from Augustine's Homilies on the First Epistle of John (7.8). The provocation is calculated: if the love is genuinely charity (caritas), it cannot will what is wrong, so the freedom it grants is constrained by its own nature. The line is not a licence for self-indulgence.
Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:
“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.”
What it means
From Augustine's Sermons. Augustine treats faith and sight as temporally distinct phases of the same act of cognition: in this life, the believer trusts what is not visible; in the next, the same content is given directly. The structure secures both the discipline of faith and the promise of vision.
“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know.”
Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.
What it means
From the Confessions, Book XI, the famous opening of Augustine's analysis of time. He observes that time is experienced as obvious in practice but escapes definition under examination: the past is no longer, the future is not yet, and the present has no duration. The puzzle motivates his account of time as a distention of the soul.
“Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
At ego adulescens miser ualde, miser in exordio ipsius adulescentiae, etiam petieram a te castitatem et dixeram, 'Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.
What it means
Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo — from the Confessions, Book VIII. Augustine quotes his younger self honestly to illustrate how the divided will desires its own reform while postponing it indefinitely. The self-quotation is one of the founding examples of Christian autobiographical candour.
“Patience is the companion of wisdom.”
Patientia comes est sapientiae
What it means
Attributed to Augustine in the homiletic tradition. Patience, for Augustine, is not passive endurance but the active virtue that allows wisdom to operate over time, since most goods cannot be obtained quickly and most evils cannot be removed at once.
“Do not go outside yourself, return to yourself: truth dwells in the interiority of man and, if you find that your nature is changeable, transcend yourself too . As quoted in De vera religione , XXXIX, 72”
Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas. Et si tuam naturam mutabilem inveneris, trascende et teipsum .
What it means
From On True Religion (chapter 39). Augustine's claim is that truth is found not by collecting external evidence but by turning inward to inspect the structure of one's own mind, which already participates in eternal reason. The argument anticipates Descartes by twelve centuries.
“The inclination to seek the truth is safer than the presumption which regards unknown things as known.”
On the Trinity(417) | (Cambridge: 2002), Book 9, Chapter 1, p. 24
What it means
From the Confessions and echoed in On the Trinity. Augustine treats epistemic humility as itself a form of safety: the searcher who admits not knowing avoids the deeper error of mistaking error for knowledge. The position is the Christian counterpart to Socratic ignorance.