Aurelius Augustinus: Trending quotes (page 3)

“Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.”
Ergo noli quaerere intelligere ut credas, sed crede ut intelligas.

Aurelius Augustinus

Tractates on the Gospel of John; tractate XXIX on John 7:14-18, §6 A Select Library of the Nicene And Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church Volume VII by St. Augustine, chapter VII (1888) as translated by Philip Schaff http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf107.iii.xxx.html.
Compare: Anselm of Canterbury: "Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand".

Understanding

“When the Head and members are despised, then the whole Christ is despised, for the whole Christ, Head and body, is that just man against whom deceitful lips speak iniquity”

Aurelius Augustinus

Ps. 30:19
Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, p.425

Christ

“There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”

Aurelius Augustinus

This is sometimes attributed to Augustine, but the earliest known occurrence is in Persian Rosary (c. 1929) by Ahmad Sohrab (PDF) http://magshare.net/narchive/NArchive/Misc/Raw_Data/A_Persian_Rosary_by_Mirza_Ahmad_Sohrab.pdf, which probably originates as a paraphrase of a statement in Oscar Wilde's 1893 play A Woman of No Importance: "The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."
Misattributed

Past , Future

“It is not by change of place that we can come nearer to Him who is in every place, but by the cultivation of pure desires and virtuous habits.”

Aurelius Augustinus

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 433

Change

“O sons of Peace, sons of the One Catholic [Church], walk in your way, and sing as you walk. Travelers do this in order to keep up their spirits.”

Aurelius Augustinus

Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, p.427

Peace , Way , Travel , Singing

“Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.”

Aurelius Augustinus

De Libero Arbitrio (388 - 395)

Horse

“God became man so that man might become God.”
Factus est Deus homo ut homo fieret Deus.

Aurelius Augustinus

128
Sermons

God

“The female defects – greed, hate, and delusion and other defilements – are greater than the male’s…You [women] should have such an intention…Because I wish to be freed from the impurities of the woman’s body, I will acquire the beautiful and fresh body of a man.”

Aurelius Augustinus

Saint Augustine as quoted by Dr Bettany Hughes Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11785181/Feminism-started-with-the-Buddha-and-Confucius-25-centuries-ago.html
Disputed

Women , Hate , Beauty

“The Heavenly City outshines Rome, beyond comparison. There, instead of victory, is truth; instead of high rank, holiness; instead of peace, felicity; instead of life, eternity.”

Aurelius Augustinus book The City of God

Book II, Chapter 29
The City of God (early 400s)

Life , Truth , Peace , Victory

“For the spiritual power of a sacrament is like light in this way: it is both received pure by those to be enlightened, and if it passes through the impure it is not defiled.”
Spiritalis enim virtus Sacramenti ita est ut lux: et ab illuminandis pura excipitur, et si per immundos transeat, non inquinatur.

Aurelius Augustinus

Tractates on the Gospel of John; tractate V on John 1:33, §15; translation by R. Willems
Compare:
The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted.
Diogenes Laërtius, Lib. vi. section 63
A very weighty argument is this — namely, that neither does the light which descends from thence, chiefly upon the world, mix itself with anything, nor admit of dirtiness or pollution, but remains entirely, and in all things that are, free from defilement, admixture, and suffering.
Julian, in Upon the Sovereign Sun http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/julian_apostate_1_sun.htm, (c. December 362), as translated by C. W. King in Julian the Emperor (1888) - Full text online http://www.archive.org/details/julianemperorco00juligoog
The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.
Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book II (1605)

Way , Light

“How, then, shall I respond to him who asks, “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?” I do not answer, as a certain one is reported to have done facetiously (shrugging off the force of the question). “He was preparing hell,” he said, “for those who pry too deep.” It is one thing to see the answer; it is another to laugh at the questioner--and for myself I do not answer these things thus. More willingly would I have answered, “I do not know what I do not know,” than cause one who asked a deep question to be ridiculed--and by such tactics gain praise for a worthless answer.”
Ecce respondeo dicenti, 'quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram?' respondeo non illud quod quidam respondisse perhibetur, ioculariter eludens quaestionis violentiam: 'alta,' inquit, 'scrutantibus gehennas parabat.' aliud est videre, aliud ridere: haec non respondeo. libentius enim responderim, 'nescio quod nescio' quam illud unde inridetur qui alta interrogavit et laudatur qui falsa respondit.

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

Ecce respondeo dicenti, 'quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram?' respondeo non illud quod quidam respondisse perhibetur, ioculariter eludens quaestionis violentiam: 'alta,' inquit, 'scrutantibus gehennas parabat.'
aliud est videre, aliud ridere: haec non respondeo. libentius enim responderim, 'nescio quod nescio' quam illud unde inridetur qui alta interrogavit et laudatur qui falsa respondit.
Book XI, Chapter XII; translation by E.B. Pusey
Confessions (c. 397)

God , Hell , Question

“Therefore, on hearing His words let no one say either: "These are not Christ's words," or "These are not my words." On the contrary, if he knows that he is in the body of Christ, let him say: "These are both Christ's words and my words." Say nothing without Him, and He will say nothing without thee. We must not consider ourselves as strangers to Christ, or look upon ourselves as other than Himself.”

Aurelius Augustinus

Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, p.422

Christ

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”
Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

XI, 14
Confessions (c. 397)

Time

“Give, O Lord, what Thou commandest, and then command what Thou wilt.”

Aurelius Augustinus

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 512

“Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”

Aurelius Augustinus

As quoted in Majority of One (1957) by Sydney J. Harris, p. 283
Disputed

Justice

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
Fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

I, 1
Confessions (c. 397)

Heart

“Since He is the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus has been made Head of the Church, and the faithful are His members. Wherefore He says: "For them I hallow Myself" (John 17:19). But when He says, "For them I hallow Myself," what else can He mean but this: "I sanctify them in Myself, since truly they are Myself"? For, as I have remarked, they of whom He speaks are His members, and the Head of the body are one Christ. … That He signifies this unity is certain from the remainder of the same verse. For having said, "For them I hallow Myself," He immediately adds, "in order that they too may be hallowed in truth," to show that He refers to the holiness that we are to receive in Him. Now the words "in truth" can only mean "in Me," since Truth is the Word who in the beginning was God.
The Son of man was Himself sanctified in the Word as the moment of His creation, when the Word was made flesh, for Word and man became one Person. It was therefore in that instant that He hallowed Himself in Himself; that is, He hallowed Himself as man, in Himself as the Word. For there is but one Christ, Word and man, sanctifying the man in the Word.
But now it is on behalf of His members that He adds: "and for them I hallow Myself." That is to say, that since they too are Myself, so they too may profit by this sanctification just as I profited by it as man without them. "And for them I hallow Myself"; that is, I sanctify them in Myself as Myself, since in Me they too are Myself. "In order that they too may be hallowed in truth." What do the words "they too" mean, if not that thy may be sanctified as I am sanctified; that is to say, "in truth," which is I Myself?”

Aurelius Augustinus

Quia et ipsi sunt ego. "Since they too are myself"
Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, pp. 431-432

Men , God , Truth , Faith

“He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.”

Aurelius Augustinus

St. Augustine, Sermo 169, 11, 13: PL 38, 923 as quoted in Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S. J.. Saved: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics (p. 15). Our Sunday Visitor. Kindle Edition.
Sermons

Help

“When I am here, I do not fast on Saturday; when at Rome, I do fast on Saturday.”
Quando hic sum, non iuieno Sabbato; quando Romae sum, iuieno Sabbato.

Aurelius Augustinus

Here, in Letter 36 "To Casulanus" (396 A.D.), Augustine is quoting Ambrose.
Origin of the phrase: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
Misattributed

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.”
Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam.

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

X, 27, as translated in Theology and Discovery: Essays in honor of Karl Rahner, S.J. (1980) edited by William J. Kelly
Variant translations:
So late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! So late I loved you!
The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett‎ (2007), by Lee Oser, p. 29
Too late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Too late I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.
Introduction to a Philosophy of Religion (1970) by Alice Von Hildebrand
Confessions (c. 397)

Love , Beauty , Search