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8be8750
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Do not abandon what You have begun in me, but go on to perfect all that remains unfinished.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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b196e50
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For no one should consider anything his own, except perhaps a lie, since all truth is from Him who said, "I am the truth."
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Augustine of Hippo |
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d5406c0
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He that becomes protector of sin shall surely become its prisoner.
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habit
lust
sin
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Augustine of Hippo |
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7ef20ee
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His knowledge is not like ours, which has three tenses: present, past, and future. God's knowledge has no change or variation.
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philosophy
theology
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Augustine of Hippo |
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a7bb786
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Late have I loved you, Beauty so very ancient and so ever new. Late I have loved you! You were within, but I was without.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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12204fd
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Someone who knows enough to become the owner of a tree, and gives thanks to you for the benefits it brings him, is in a better state, even if ignorant of its height in feet and the extent of its spread, than another who measures and counts all its branches but neither owns it nor knows its creator nor loves him.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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22e489c
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Why, then, do I set before You an ordered account of so many things? it's certainly not through me that You know them. But I'm stirring up love for You in myself and in those who read this so that we may all say, great is the Lord and highly worthy to be praised. I tell my story for love of Your love.
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journaling
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St. Augustine of Hippo |
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b66abfc
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For a prohibition always increases an illicit desire so long as the love of and joy in holiness is too weak to conquer the inclination to sin...
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Augustine of Hippo |
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aaa31d3
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For the human race is, more than any other species, at once social by nature and quarrelsome by perversion.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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638e573
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Ignorance and stupidity are given the names of simplicity and innocence...Idleness appears as desire for a quiet life.
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St. Augustine of Hippo |
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9629173
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So you see how endlessly futile and fruitless it would be if we wanted to refute their objections every time they obstinately resolved not to think through what they say but merely to speak, just so long as they contradict our arguments in any way they can.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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f511a0e
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I probably felt more resentment for what I personally was to suffer than for the wrong they were doing to anyone and everyone. But at that time I was determined not to put up with badly behaved people more out of my own interest than because I wanted them to become good people.
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education
leadership
servanthood
teaching
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St. Augustine of Hippo |
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9dd2fde
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For what is the self-complacent man but a slave to his own self-praise.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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7eee19e
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The bodies of irrational animals are bent toward the ground, whereas man was made to walk erect with his eyes on heaven, as though to remind him to keep his thoughts on things above.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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c1cee97
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My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it. It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide. But who is to rid it of these things? There is no one but you
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Augustine of Hippo |
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f13b90d
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the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord.
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theology
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Augustine of Hippo |
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27adcac
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This joy in God is not like any pleasure found in physical or intellectual satisfaction. Nor is it such as a friend experiences in the presence of a friend. But, if we are to use any such analogy, it is more like the eye rejoicing in light.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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a88e085
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You are not the mind itself. For You are the Lord God of the mind. All these things are liable to change, but You remain immutable above all things.
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thoughts
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St. Augustine of Hippo |
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7018b50
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What matters it to me if someone does not understand this? Let him too rejoice and say, "What is this?" Let him rejoice even at this, and let him love to find you while not finding it out, rather than, while finding it out, not to find you."
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Saint Augustine of Hippo |
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ee3e375
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I fell away from you, my God, and I went astray, too far astray from you, the support of my youth, and I became to myself a land of want.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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a0402b4
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To what place can I invite you, then, since I am in you? Or where could you come from, in order to come into me? To what place outside heaven and earth could I travel, so that my God could come to me there, the God who said, ?
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Augustine of Hippo |
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232ea71
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Can human folly harbour a more arrogant or ungrateful thought than the notion that whereas God makes man beautiful in body, man makes himself pure in heart?
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human-folly
purity
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Augustine of Hippo |
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970dc9d
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You have been professing yourself reluctant to throw off your load of illusion because truth was uncertain. Well, it is certain now, yet the burden still weighs you down, while other people are given wings on freer shoulders, people who have not worn themselves out with research, nor spent a decade and more reflecting on these questions.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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9a08e40
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It is no less impossible for us not to taste as bitter the death of those whose life for us was such a source of sweetness.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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605db75
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But what do I love, when I love You? Not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time. Not the brightness of the light, so welcome to our eyes, Nor sweet melodies of varied songs, Nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments and spices. Not manna and honey, nor the embrace of arms in fleshly pleasure. None of these I love when I love my God. Yet this love is a kind of light and melody and fragrance and meat and embrace. When I love my..
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Augustine of Hippo |
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0b55434
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Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?
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theology
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Augustine of Hippo |
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c6ea26a
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There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing.
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contentment
sovereignty-of-god
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St. Augustine of Hippo |
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8dd8635
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O mortals, how long will you be heavy-hearted? Life has come down to you, and are you reluctant to ascend and live? But what room is there for you to ascend, you with your high-flown ways and lofty talk? Come down, that you may ascend, ascend even to God...
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Augustine of Hippo |
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3238d8f
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A sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart. Nay, even idolatry is ample evidence of this fact.
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worship
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Augustine of Hippo |
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ee90726
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No man can be a good bishop if he loves his title but not his task.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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0def4fa
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My weight is my love.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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a1ecc2e
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I heard Your voice from on high. "I am the food of the fully grown. Grow and you will feed on me. And you will not change Me into you, like the food of flesh eats. But you will be changed into Me."
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St. Augustine of Hippo |
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1479d40
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I inquired what wickedness is, and I didn't find a substance, but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance - You oh God - towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matter.
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sin
wickedness
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St. Augustine of Hippo |
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d73b131
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Furthermore, what profit was it to me that I, rascally slave of selfish ambitions that I was, read and understood by myself as many books as I could get concerning the so-called liberal arts?...I had turned my back to the light and my face to the things it illuminated, and so no light played upon my own face, or on the eyes that perceived them.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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9787ac6
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Some things are to be enjoyed, others to be used, and there are others to be enjoyed and used.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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51b0574
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The Devil would not have begun by an open and obvious sin to tempt man into doing something which God had forbidden, had not man already begun to seek satisfaction in himself and, consequently, to take pleasure in the words: 'You shall be as Gods.' The promise of these words, however, would much more truly have come to pass if, by obedience, Adam and Eve had kept close to the ultimate and true Source of their being and had not, by pride ima..
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Augustine of Hippo |
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d6304ea
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Quid est tempus? Si nemo me queret, scio; si aliqui explicare velim, nescio.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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22086ac
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When men cannot communicate their thoughts to each other, simply because of difference of language, all the similarity of their common human nature is of no avail to unite them in fellowship.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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5bb47d8
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Let the Lord your God be your hope - seek for nothing else from him, but let him himself be your hope. There are people who hope from him riches or perishable and transitory honours, in short they hope to get from God things which are not God himself.
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inspirational
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Augustine of Hippo |
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bbbf60f
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So anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them.
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scripture
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Augustine of Hippo |
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7f9ab25
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Greed is not a defect in the gold that is desired but in the man who loves it perversely by falling from justice which he ought to esteem as incomparably superior to gold; nor is lust a defect in bodies which are beautiful and pleasing: it is a sin in the soul of the one who loves corporal pleasures perversely, that is, by abandoning that temperance which joins us in spiritual and unblemishable union with realities far more beautiful and pl..
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Augustine of Hippo |
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59cbad9
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For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away.
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Augustine of Hippo |
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487491a
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Such is the strength of the burden of habit. Here I have the power to be but do not wish it. There I wish to be but lacks the power. On both grounds, I'm in misery.
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self-improvement
will
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St. Augustine of Hippo |
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e9e1c68
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No longer was he the man who had joined the crowd; he was now one of the crowd he had joined, and a genuine companion of those who had led him there.
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Augustine of Hippo |