There is no saintsaint without a past, no sinner without a future.

God has promised forgiveness to your repentancerepentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastinationprocrastination.

MiraclesMiracles are not contrarycontrary to nature but only contrarycontrary to what we know about nature.

Love, and do what you will. If you keep silence, do it out of love. If you cry outcry out, do it out of love. If you refrainrefrain from punishing, do it out of love.

Patience is the companioncompanion of wisdom.

Complete abstinenceabstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

In my deepest woundwound I saw your gloryglory, and it dazzleddazzled me.

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 miserymisery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrowssorrows of men. That is what love looks like.

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descendingdescending. You plan a tower that will piercepierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humilityhumility.

In essentials, unity; in non essentials, liberty;liberty; in all things, charitycharity.

HumilityHumility must accompanyaccompany all our actions, must be with us everywhere; for as soon as we gloryglory in our good works they are of no furtherfurther value to our advancement in virtuevirtue.

The good Christian should bewarebeware of mathematicians. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenantcovenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confineconfine man in the bonds of Hell.

Too late came I to love you, O Beauty both so ancientancient and so new! Too late came I to love you and beholdbehold you were with me all the time . ..

[Y]ou are not ashamedashamed of your sin [in committing adultery]adultery] because so many men commit it. Man's wickednesswickedness is now such that men are more ashamedashamed of chastity than of lechery. Murderers, thieves, perjurers, false witnesseswitnesses, plunderersplunderers and fraudsters are detesteddetested and hated by people generally, but whoever will sleep withsleep with his servant girl in brazenbrazen lechery is liked and admiredadmired for it, and people make light of the damage to his soul. And if any man has the nerve to say that he is chastechaste and faithful to his wife and this gets known, he is ashamedashamed to mix with other men, whose behaviour is not like his, for they will mockmock him and despisedespise him and say he's not a real man; for man's wickednesswickedness is now of such proportions that no one is considered a man unless he is overcomeovercome by lechery, while one who overcomesovercomes lechery and stays chastechaste is considered unmanly.

Does God proclaimproclaim Himself in the wonders of creation? No. All things proclaimproclaim Him, all things speak. Their beauty is the voice by which they announce God, by which they sing, "It is you who made me beautiful, not me myself but you.

You called and shouted and burst my deafness. You flashed, shone, and scatteredscattered my blindness. You breathed odorsodors, and I drew in breath and panted for You. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and soughtsought you there, and in my unlovely state I plungedplunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existenceexistence in you, they had no existenceexistence at all. You called and cried out loud and shatteredshattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendentresplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrantfragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.

We made bad use of immortalityimmortality, and so ended upended up dying; Christ made good use of mortality, so that we might end upend up living.

The peace of the celestialcelestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmoniousharmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. (City of God, Book 19)

Life is a miserymisery, death an uncertaintyuncertainty. Suppose it stealssteals suddenly upon me, in what state shall I leave this world? When can I learn what I have here neglected to learn? Or is it true that death will cut offcut off and put an end to all care and all feeling? This is something to be inquiredinquired into

God grants us not always what we ask so as to bestowbestow something preferable.

Free curiosity has greater power to stimulatestimulate learning than rigorousrigorous coercioncoercion. NeverthelessNevertheless, the free ranging flux of curiosity is channeled by discipline under Your Law.

I recallrecall how miserable I was, and how one day you brought me to a realizationrealization of my miserable state. I was preparing to deliver a eulogyeulogy upon the emperor in which I would tell plentyplenty of lies with the object of winning favor with the well informed by my lying; so my heart was panting with anxiety and seething with feverish, corruptive thoughts. As I passed through a certain district in Milan I noticed a poor beggar, drunk, as I believe, and making merrymerry. I groanedgroaned and pointed outpointed out to the friends who were with me how many hardshipshardships our idiotic enterprises entailedentailed. GoadedGoaded by greed, I was draggingdragging my load of unhappiness along, and feeling it all the heavier for being draggeddragged. Yet while all our efforts were directed solely to the attainment of unclouded joy, it appearedappeared that this beggar had already beaten us to the goal, a goal which we would perhaps never reach ourselves. With the help of the few paltrypaltry coins he had collected by begging this man was enjoying the temporaltemporal happiness for which I strove by so bitterbitter, deviousdevious and roundaboutroundabout a contrivance. His joy was no true joy, to be sure, but what I was seekingseeking in my ambitionambition was a joy far more unreal; and he was undeniablyundeniably happy while I was full of forebodingfull of foreboding he was carefree, I apprehensiveapprehensive. If anyone had questioned me as to whether I would rather be exhilaratedexhilarated or afraidafraid, I would of course have replied, "Exhilarated";"Exhilarated"; but if the questioner had pressed me furtherfurther, asking whether I preferred to be like the beggar, or to be as I was then, I would have chosen to be myself, ladenladen with anxieties and fears. Surely that would have been no right choice, but a perverseperverse one? I could not have preferred my condition to his on the grounds that I was better educated, because that fact was not for me a source of joy but only the means by which I soughtsought to curry favor with human beings: I was not aiming to teach them but only to win their favor.

What I needed most was to love and to be loved, eagereager to be caught. Happily I wrappedwrapped those painful bonds around me; and sure enough, I would be lashed with the red hot pokers of jealousyjealousy, by suspicions and fear, by burst of anger and quarrelsquarrels

Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominatedominate just men.

For great are you, Lord, and you look kindly on what is humblehumble, but the loftylofty minded you regardregard from afar. Only to those whose hearts are crushedcrushed do you draw close. You will not let yourself be found by the proud, nor even by those who in their inquisitiveinquisitive skill count stars or grains of sand, or measure the expanses of heaven, or trace the paths of the planets.

What grace is meant to do is to help good people, not to escape theirescape their sufferings, but to bearbear them with a stoutstout heart, with a fortitudefortitude that finds its strength in faith.

So you see how endlessly futilefutile and fruitless it would be if we wanted to refuterefute their objections every time they obstinatelyobstinately resolvedresolved not to think through what they say but merelymerely to speak, just so long as they contradict our arguments in any way they can.

O Lord my God, tell me what you are to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvationsalvation. Say it so that I can hear it. My heart is listening, Lord; open the ears of my heart and say to my soul, I am your salvationsalvation. Let me run toward this voice and seizeseize hold of you. Do not hidehide your face from me: let me die so that I may see it, for not to see it would be death to me indeed.

Often the contempt of vainvain gloryglory becomes a source of even more vainvain gloryglory, for it is not being scorned when the contempt is something one is proud of.

In matters that are so obscureobscure and far beyond our visionvision, we find in Holy ScriptureScripture passages which can be interpretedinterpreted in very different ways without prejudiceprejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rushrush in headlong and so firmlyfirmly take our stand on one side that, if furtherfurther progress in the search for truth justly underminesundermines this position, we too fall with it.

Every day my conscience makes confessionconfession relying onrelying on the hope of Your mercy as more to be trusted than its own innocence.

CharityCharity is no substitute for justice withheldwithheld.

The happy life is this to rejoicerejoice to thee, in thee, and for thee.

The good man is free, even if he is a slaveslave. The evilevil man is a slaveslave, even if he is a king.

Let us, on both sides, lay asidelay aside all arrogancearrogance. Let us not, on either side, claimclaim that we have already discovered the truth. Let us seekseek it together as something which is known to neither of us. For then only may we seekseek it, lovingly and tranquillytranquilly, if there be no bold presumptionpresumption that it is already discovered and possessedpossessed.

Can human folly harbour a more arrogantarrogant or ungrateful thought than the notionnotion that whereas God makes man beautiful in body, man makes himself pure in heart?

Our wholewhole business therefore in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.

You have been professingprofessing yourself reluctantreluctant to throw offthrow off your load of illusionillusion because truth was uncertainuncertain. Well, it is certain now, yet the burdenburden 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 onreflecting on these questions.

Lord Jesus, don't let me lie when I say that I love you...and protectprotect me, for today I could betraybetray you.

For whence had that formerformer sorrowsorrow so easily penetratedpenetrated to the quick, but that I had poured outpoured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die?

The wisdom of what a person says is in direct proportion to his progress in learning the holy scripturesscriptures and I am not speaking of intensive reading or memorization, but real understanding and careful investigation of their meaning. Some people read them but neglect them; by their reading they profit in knowledge, by their neglect they forfeitforfeit understanding.