St. Augustine
Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, in English Augustine of Hippo, also known as St. Augustine, St. Austin, was bishop of Hippo Regius (present-day Annaba, Algeria). He was a Latin philosopher and theologian from the Africa Province of the Roman Empire and is generally considered as one of the greatest Christian thinkers of all times. His writings were very influential in the development of Western Christianity. According to his contemporary Jerome, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith." In his early years he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism and afterward by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. After his conversion to Christianity and his baptism in 387, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and different perspectives. He believed that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, and he framed the concepts of original sin and just war. When the Western Roman Empire was starting to disintegrate, Augustine developed the concept of the Catholic Church as a spiritual City of God (in a book of the same name), distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. Augustine's City of God was closely identified with the Church, the community that worshiped the Trinity. In the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint and pre-eminent Doctor of the Church. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of the Protestant Reformation due to his teaching on salvation and divine grace. In the Eastern Orthodox Church he is also considered a saint. He carries the additional title of Blessed. Among the Orthodox, he is called "Blessed Augustine" or "St. Augustine the Blessed".
Santo Agostinho
“When I come across one or other of my fellow Christians ignorant of astronomy, believing what is not so, I calmly look on, not thinking him the worse for mistaking the place or order of created things, so long as he holds nothing demeaning to you, Lord, the creator of all those things. But he is worse off if he holds that his error is a matter of religious faith, and persists stubbornly in the error. His faith is still a weak thing in its cradle, needing the milk of a mothering love, until the youth grows up and cannot be the play-thing, any more, of every doctrinal wind that blows. But one who ventures on the role of teacher, of leader and ruler of those under his spell, whose followers heed him not as a man only but as your very Spirit -- what are we to make of him when he is caught purveying falsehoods? Should we not reject and despise such madness?”
“You can easily see what and endless, wearisome and fruitless task it would be if I were to refute all the unconsidered objections of people who pigheadly contradict everything I say.”
“Embrace the love of God, and by love embrace God”
“The world is a great book...they who never stir from home read only a page.”
“Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe so that you may understand.”
“Sin, but sin boldly.”
“To whatever the soul of man turns, unless toward God, it cleaves to sorrow, even though the things outside God and outside itself to which it turns may be things of beauty.”
“Prayer is the key that opens heaven; the favors we ask descend upon us the very instant our prayers ascend to God.”
“Place your hopes in the man from whom you do not inherit”
“The world is a book, and he who does not travel reads only a page.”
“Learn to dance, so when you get to heaven the angels know what to do with you.”
“I had not yet fallen in love, but I was in love with the idea of it, and this feeling that something was missing around me made me despise myself for not being more anxious to satisfy the need. I began to look around for some object for my love, since I badly wanted to love something. I had no liking for the safe path without pitfalls, for although my real need was for you, my God, who are the food of the soul, I was not aware of this hunger.”
“The world is a book, and those who don't travel only read one page.”
“He who denies the existence of God, has some reason for wishing that God did not exist.”
“Watch, O Lord,with those who wake,or watch or weep tonight,and give your angels chargeover those who sleep.Tend your sick ones,O Lord Jesus Christ;rest your weary ones;bless your dying ones;soothe your suffering ones;pity your afflicted ones;shield your joyous ones;and all for your love's sake.Amen.”
“i understand that i understand”
“In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.”
“What madness, to love a man as something more than human! I lived in a fever, convulsed with tears and sighs that allowed me neither rest nor peace of mind. My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry. Everything that was not what my friend had been was dull and distasteful. I had heart only for sighs and tears, for in them alone I found some shred of consolation.”
“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
“In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.”
“There can only be two basic loves... the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self unto the forgetfulness and denial of God.”
“He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.”
“What I needed most was to love and to be loved, eager to be caught. Happily I wrapped those painful bonds around me; and sure enough, I would be lashed with the red-hot pokers of jealousy, by suspicions and fear, by burst of anger and quarrels”
“My sin grew sleek on my excesses.”
“God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.”
“Even the straws under my knees shout to distract me from prayer”
“God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail. ”
“Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.”
“Our hearts have been made for you, O God, and they shall never rest until they rest in you.”
“For you [God] are infinite and never change. In you 'today' never comes to an end: and yet our 'today' does come to an end in you, because time, as well as everything else, exists in you. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. And since your years never come to an end, for you they are simply 'today'...But you yourself are eternally the same. In your 'today' you will make all that is to exist tomorrow and thereafter, and in your 'today' you have made all that existed yesterday and for ever before.”
“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 dominate just men.”
“Sin is Energy in the wrong channel. ”
“In the usual course of study I had come to a book of a certain Cicero.”
“There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”
“Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.”
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
“Tolle, lege: take up and read.”