Augustine of Hippo Quotes on God
Augustine's mature theology — across the Confessions, On the Trinity, and the City of God — fuses Plotinian Neoplatonism with the doctrines of biblical revelation. The Confessions narrate Augustine's own conversion as the soul's restless search for the God in whose image it was made and in whom alone it can find rest; On the Trinity develops the philosophical analysis of God as one substance in three persons through the analogy of the human mind's threefold structure of memory, understanding, and will. The City of God reframes universal history as the entwined story of two cities — the earthly city founded on self-love to the contempt of God and the heavenly city founded on the love of God to the contempt of self — whose final separation is the proper subject of Christian historical hope.
Quotes
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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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“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.”
XV, 22 -
“De actis cum Felice Manicheo {AD 404), translated as A Debate with Felix the Manichean , ¶1709, in The Faith of the Early Fathers Vol 3 : St. Augustine to the End of the Patristic Age by W.A. Jurgens, p. 88”
Nowhere in the Gospel do we read that the Lord said: "I am sending you a Paraclete who will teach you about the course of the sun and moon ." For He wanted to make Christians , not mathematicians . -
“We were ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent; we are set free by the foolishness of God .”
De doctrina christiana | 1:14 Latin: Serpentis sapientia decepti sumus, Dei stultitia liberamur. -
“Shut out the evil love of the world, that you may be filled with the love of God. You are a vessel that was already full: you must pour away what you have, that you may take in what you have not.”
Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John(414) | Second Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 274 -
“Beauty grows in you to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul 's beauty.”
Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John(414) | Ninth Homily, Paragraph 9, as translated by Boniface Ramsey (2008) Augustinian Heritage Institute -
“Inasmuch as love grows in you, in so much beauty grows; for love is itself the beauty of the soul.”
Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John(414) | as translated by H. Browne and J. H. Meyers, The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers (1995) -
“For God loves to save and not to condemn ; therefore is he patient with evil, that out of evil good may be brought.”
Sermons | 18 -
“Venerate the martyrs, praise, love, proclaim, honor them. But worship the God of the martyrs .”
Sermons | 273:9; translation from: The works of Saint Augustine , John E. Rotelle, New City Press, ISBN 1565480600 ISBN 9781565480605 p . 21. [21] -
“As the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As therefore the body perishes when the soul leaves it, so the soul dies when God departs from it.”
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers(1895) | p. 277 -
“The true servants of God are not solicitous that He should order them to do what they desire to do, but that they may desire to do what He orders them to do.”
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers(1895) | p. 616 -
“If there is something more excellent than the truth , then that is God ; if not, then truth itself is God.”
De Libero Arbitrio(388 - 395) -
“Hence, a devout Christian must avoid astrologers and all impious soothsayers, especially when they tell the truth, for fear of leading his soul into error by consorting with demons and entangling himself with the bonds of such association.”
De Genesi ad Litteram | Modern translation by J.H. Taylor in Ancient Christian Writers (1982) -
“When the apostle James was talking about faith and works against those who thought their faith was enough, and didn’t want to have good works, he said, You believe God is one; you do well; the demons also believe, and tremble .” (Jas 2:19)”
Sermons | 183:13:2