Augustine of Hippo Quotes
Augustine of Hippo was a Roman-African theologian and philosopher whose work shaped Western Christianity and Latin philosophy for the next millennium. His Confessions, addressed to God in autobiographical form, inaugurated a major literary genre and remains a foundational text on memory, time, and the structure of the self. The quotes below are attributed to Augustine of Hippo, organized by topic.
Augustine of Hippo on God
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Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:
“Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
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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.”
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Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:
“Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.”
Augustine of Hippo on Justice
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Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:
“Hear the other side.”
Augustine of Hippo on Love
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Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:
“Love, and do what you will.”
Augustine of Hippo on Time
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Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:
“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.”
Augustine of Hippo on Virtue
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Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:
“Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
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Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:
“There is no possible source of evil except good.”
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Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:
“Patience is the companion of wisdom.”
Things actually not said by Augustine of Hippo
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Augustine of Hippo but are in fact from someone else. Did Augustine of Hippo say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did Augustine of Hippo say this? No.
“Pray as if everything depended on God; work as if everything depended on you.”
This maxim is variously credited to Augustine, Ignatius of Loyola, and several other figures, but it does not appear in Augustine's surviving works. The form most commonly quoted today is associated with later Catholic devotional literature and circulated widely from the 19th century onward. Its earliest precise wording cannot be reliably traced to any single classical or medieval source.