“The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.”

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

“When it happens that I am more moved by the song than the thing which is sung, I confess that I sin in a manner deserving punishment”

“I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.”

“The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.”

“He was not utterly unskilled in handling his own lack of training, and he refused to be rashly drawn into a controversy about those matters from which there would be no exit nor easy way of retreat. This was an additional ground for my pleasure. For the controlled modesty of a mind that admits limitations is more beautiful than the things I was anxious to know about.”

“I inquired what wickedness is, and I didn't find a substance, but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance – You oh God – towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matter.”