Augustine of Hippo

"A mediocre student will learn only what is taught; the excellent student will learn what is not."

"Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending."

"Freedom is not the absence of constraint but the presence of chosen constraints."

"Better to have a handful of well-chosen friends than multitudes of acquaintances."

"The human heart is restless until it rests in God."

"Anger is like a storm that sweeps away the landmarks of reason."

"Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting."

"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."

"Do not despair. The way forward is sometimes the way backward."

"We are dying while we live, and yet we fear to die."

"Patience is not the absence of action; rather it is timing. It waits on the right time to act."

"A person is not yet using the gift of their reason unless they understand the nature of virtue."

"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."

"Give me continence, but not yet."

"The new covenant promised new strength for the living."

"To ignore the past is to lose our future."

"Imagine, if you will, the kind of beauty that consists in harmony and proportion."

"The act of procreation belongs to nature, not to the will."

"Love grows more by the actions of those who love."

"Our Lord Jesus Christ has established his kingdom without swords and with sermons."

"The words you speak become the house you live in."

"People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the wide courses of rivers—yet they pass by themselves without wondering."

"All truth is God's truth."

"The desire for beauty and the desire for truth are one. They are the desire for God."

"A martyr is not someone who dies but someone who has done what they were meant to do."

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."

"Those who prevent the attempt to prevent suffering are themselves collaborating in the act."

"The virtues of unbelievers are actual vices."

"Hope is nothing else than expecting from God what faith believes God has promised."

"Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those raised up by the accidents of life into a position of dependency on you."