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Aurelius Augustinus Quotes
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183 Quotes on Patience, Love, Charity, and Spirituality for Self-Discovery and Growth

Explore the wisdom of Aurelius Augustinus through his inspiring quotes on patience, love, charity, and spirituality. Let his words guide you on a journey of self-discovery and growth.

Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher from North Africa. His writings greatly influenced Western philosophy and Christianity during the Patristic Period. He converted to Christianity after being drawn to various faiths and philosophies in his youth. Augustine's approach to philosophy and theology incorporated different viewpoints, and he made significant contributions to the development of original sin doctrine and just war theory. He believed that human freedom was reliant on the grace of Christ.

Recognized as a saint in multiple Christian traditions, Augustine is considered a preeminent Catholic Doctor of the Church. He is celebrated by various denominations on 28 August, the day of his death. Augustine's thoughts had a profound impact on medieval society, shaping their worldview. Many Protestants, including Calvinists and Lutherans, consider him an important figure in the Protestant Reformation due to his teachings on salvation and divine grace. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, his teachings are more disputed, but some theologians have shown appreciation for his writings.

Despite some disagreements with certain doctrines like original sin and predestination, Augustine continues to be revered as a saint who profoundly influenced Christian thought in the West. His feast day is celebrated in both the Eastern Orthodox Churches on 15 June and in various Western Christian traditions. Scholars recognize him as having had an immense impact comparable only to that of Paul of Tarsus in shaping Western Christian thought.

✵ 13. November 354 – 28. August 430   •   Other names Svatý Augustýn, Augustinus, Sv. Augustín, San Agustín de Hipona, Svatý Augustin
Aurelius Augustinus photo
Aurelius Augustinus: 183   quotes 202   likes

Aurelius Augustinus Quotes

“But it isn’t just a matter of faith, but of faith and works. Each is necessary. For the demons also believe — you heard the apostle — and tremble (Jas 2:19); but their believing doesn’t do them any good. Faith alone is not enough, unless works too are joined to it: Faith working through love (Gal 5:6), says the apostle.”

Aurelius Augustinus

16A:11:2
Sermons

Love , Faith

“Christ is not valued at all unless He be valued above all.”

Aurelius Augustinus

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 395

Christ

“So the Church imitates the Lord’s mother — not in the bodily sense, which it could not do — but in mind it is both mother and virgin. In no way, then, did Christ deprive his mother of her virginity by being”

Aurelius Augustinus

Sermons

Way , Sense , Christ

“Do not despair: one thief was saved. Do not presume: one thief was damned.”

Aurelius Augustinus

Attributed to St. Augustine in The Repentance of Robert Greene, Master of Arts http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Greene/Repentance_Robert_Greene.pdf (1592) by Robert Greene.
Disputed
Variant: Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.

Despair

“So if you can manage it, you shouldn’t touch your partner, except for the sake of having children.”
Non ergo accedas, si potes, nisi liberorum procreandorum causa.

Aurelius Augustinus

278:9; translation from: The works of Saint Augustine, John E. Rotelle, New City Press, 1994, ISBN 1565480600 ISBN 978-1565480605p. 55. http://books.google.com/books?id=5jswAAAAYAAJ&q=%22if+you+can+manage+it,+you+shouldn%E2%80%99t+touch+your+partner,+except+for+the+sake+of+having+children%22&dq=%22if+you+can+manage+it,+you+shouldn%E2%80%99t+touch+your+partner,+except+for+the+sake+of+having+children%22&hl=en&ei=dMJkTaOcCcGC8gah4IjmBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA
Sermons

Children

“He who sings prays twice.”

Aurelius Augustinus

Misattributed

Singing

“Singing is of a lover.”
Cantare amantis est.

Aurelius Augustinus

Variant translation: To sing is characteristic of the lover.
336
Sermons

Lovers , Singing

“Inter faeces et urinam nascimur.”

Aurelius Augustinus

We are born between feces and urine.
Attributed to a church father in Freud's Dora; Freud seems to have found it in an anatomy textbook by Josef Hyrtl (1867), where it was attributed to a church father; it may have been invented by Hyrtl. http://books.google.com/books?id=yw3tglAWxNAC&pg=RA1-PR72&lpg=RA1-PR72&dq=%22inter+urinas+et+faeces+nascimur%22+hyrtl&source=bl&ots=2sjrc-dGEs&sig=MDvt7D74M5JPozL1HKnN1FEmxbY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vHJtUuneKJjb4APXq4CIAQ&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22inter%20urinas%20et%20faeces%20nascimur%22%20hyrtl&f=false For Hyrtl's quotation see http://books.google.com/books?id=qrEaAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA820&dq=nascimur+inauthor:Hyrtl&hl=en&sa=X&ei=z3RtUru2LMzKkAfnm4DoAQ&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=nascimur%20inauthor%3AHyrtl&f=false.
Misattributed
Variant: We are born amid feces and urine.

“In our own times, you see, an emperor came to the city of Rome, where there’s the temple of an emperor, where there’s a fisherman’s tomb. And so that pious and Christian emperor, wishing to beg for health, for salvation from the Lord, did not proceed to the temple of a proud emperor, but to the tomb of a fisherman, where he could imitate that fisherman in humility, so that he, being thus approached, might then obtain something from the Lord, which a haughty emperor would be quite unable to earn.”

Aurelius Augustinus

Temporibus enim nostris venit imperator in urbem Romam: ibi est templum imperatoris, ibi est sepulcrum piscatoris. Itaque ille ad deprecandam a Domino salutem imperator pius atque christianus non perrexit ad templum imperatoris superbum, sed ad sepulcrum piscatoris, ubi humilis ipsum piscatorem imitaretur, ut tunc respectus aliquid impetraret a Domino, quod superbiens imperator mereri non posset.
341:4; English from: Newly Discovered Sermons, 1997, Edmund Hill, tr., John E. Rotelle, ed., New City Press, New York, ISBN 1565481038 ISBN 9781565481039p. p. 286.
Sermons

Time , Health

“But if we discard this definition of a people, and, assuming another, say that a people is an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love, then, in order to discover the character of any people, we have only to observe what they love. Yet whatever it loves, if only it is an assemblage of reasonable beings and not of beasts, and is bound together by an agreement as to the objects of love, it is reasonably called a people; and it will be a superior people in proportion as it is bound together by higher interests, inferior in proportion as it is bound together by lower.”

Aurelius Augustinus book The City of God

XIX, 24
The City of God (early 400s)

Love , Making love , People

“I know, but it is no longer I.”

Aurelius Augustinus

Supposedly spoken by Augustine to his former concubine when she greeted him in the street, and when he ignored her said "Augustine, it is I!" Actually the quote (Sed ego non sum ego) is from De Poenitentia, Book II https://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/02m/0339-0397,_Ambrosius,_De_Poenitentia_Libri_Duo,_MLT.pdf, Chapter 10 by Ambrose. Ambrose relates it as a fable, not concerning Augustine, as explained here https://truthchallenge.one/blog/2014/11/17/did-st-augustine-say-this-to-a-prostitute/.
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