Saint Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
St Augustine Quotes
Augustine wrote more than five million words that survive, and almost everything quoted from him comes from a handful of pages in the Confessions. These are the lines people actually search for, each one cited to the work it comes from, so you can read it in context rather than take it on trust.
On restlessness and longing
The opening of the Confessions is the most quoted sentence Augustine ever wrote, and the one most often cut short. The full line names what the restlessness is for.
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
“Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you.”
“You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.”
On love
Augustine's line on love is routinely quoted as licence to do anything. In the homily it comes from, it is the opposite: he has just argued that genuine love constrains what you are willing to do.
“Love, and do what you will.”
“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.”
On faith and understanding
Augustine's account of faith is not the absence of evidence. It is a starting point that makes understanding possible.
“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.”
“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that you may understand.”
“Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.”
On suffering and patience
Augustine lived through the sack of Rome and died with the Vandals at the gates of his own city. He is not writing about suffering from a distance.
“God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.”
“Patience is the companion of wisdom.”
On prayer and conversion
The most honest prayer in Christian literature is Augustine quoting his younger self, and he includes it precisely because it was not yet sincere.
“Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
“God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.”
Quotes wrongly attributed to St Augustine
These circulate widely under St Augustine's name and are not his. They are listed here so you do not put one in a homily, a bulletin or a citation.
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”
Not in Augustine. It appears in no edition of his works and is not attested before the twentieth century. The earliest versions credit no one.
“Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are anger and courage.”
Very widely attributed to Augustine, including by people who should know better. It has never been traced to any of his writings.
“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”
Usually credited to Augustine or to St Ignatius of Loyola. The wording belongs to neither; it comes from a later Jesuit tradition summarising Ignatius, and was reversed in transmission.
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