"Charity is no substitute for justice withheld," and other St. Augustine Quotes

Saint Augustine (354-430 A.D.) is one of my favorite ancient mystics, and is one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity. In Roman Catholicism and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint and pre-eminent Doctor of the Church, and the patron of the Augustinian religious order. Many Protestants consider him to be one of the theological fountainheads of Reformation teaching on salvation and grace. In Orthodox Churches he is considered blessed or even a saint.

Born in Africa, he lived a hedonistic lifestyle as a youth, and developed a relationship with a young woman who would be his concubine for over fifteen years. During this period he had a son with this young woman. His education and early career was in philosophy and rhetoric, the art of persuasion and public speaking.  He was educated in Carthage and Rome.

At age thirty, Augustine had won the most visible academic chair in the Latin world, at a time when such posts gave ready access to political careers. However, he felt the tensions of life at an imperial court, lamenting one day as he rode in his carriage to deliver a grand speech before the emperor, that a drunken beggar he passed on the street had a less careworn existence than he did.   

After a flirtation with skepticism, he began his spiritual quest in earnest during his early 30’s.  In the summer of 386, after having read an account of the life of Saint Anthony of the Desert which greatly inspired him, Augustine underwent a profound personal crisis and decided to convert to Christianity. He abandoned his career in rhetoric, quit his teaching position in Milan, gave up any ideas of marriage, and devoted himself entirely to serving God and the practices of priesthood.  He eventually relocated back to northern Africa.  

His works—including The Confessions, which is often called the first Western autobiography—are still read around the world.  They include The City of God, Free Choice of the Will, and On Christian Doctrine, which are all seminal and influential on much Christian thought that followed.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Augustine…let me know which ones you like:

Heart speaks to heart.

Nothing conquers except truth and the victory of truth is love.

To sing once is to pray twice.

Lord, you have seduced me and I let myself be seduced.

Love, and do what you will.

God, oh Lord, grant me the power to overcome sin. For sin is that which you gave to us when you granted us free choice of will. If I choose wrongly, then I shall be justly punished for it. Is that not true, my Lord, of whom I indebted for my temporal existence. Thank you, Lord, for granting me the power to will my self not to sin.

Christ is the teacher within us.

Hear the other side.

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.

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.

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.

Don't you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others.

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

He that is jealous is not in love.

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.

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

Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.''

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?

It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.

Love, and do what you like.

Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.

No eulogy is due to him who simply does his duty and nothing more.

O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.

Love the sinner and hate the sin.

Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.

Patience is the companion of wisdom.

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.

Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.

Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.

There is no possible source of evil except good.

There is something in humility which strangely exalts the heart.

To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

We cannot pass our guardian angel's bounds, resigned or sullen, he will hear our sighs.

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.

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.

Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart.

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

Once again, let me know the ones that resonate with you…or perhaps any that I haven’t listed.  : )

"When in doubt, tell the truth" and other Mark Twain Quotes

Some of my favorite thoughts from this American original. Let me know which ones resonate with you...

There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.

When in doubt tell the truth.

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Senator: a person who makes laws in Washington when not doing time.

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.

Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul.

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.

More to come in my next post.

Favorites? Thoughts?

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it," and other quotes from Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters. O'Connor's writing also reflected her Catholic faith, and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from her. Let me know which ones resonate with you.

I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.

Anyone who survives childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life.

Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them.

I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.

We lost our innocence in the Fall, and our turn to it is through the Redemption which was brought about by Christ's death and by our slow participation in it. Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite.

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.

There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.

If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.

You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.

All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.

I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.

Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.

Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.

To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

Where is there a place for you to be? No place... Nothing outside you can give you any place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.

When there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the spiritual is apt gradually to be lost.

Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.

I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear.

Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.

I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.

I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow.

I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child's faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.

The greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama.

I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.

More next week. Any thoughts on these now?