Today is the Feast Day of St. Augustine of Hippo. He is an interesting figure, a prolific writer, and a fascinating philosopher.
Notwithstanding the ingenious and stimulating character of his ideas and arguments, what I find most interesting in Augustine is how theological language can serve as a sort of algebraic "variable" or "place-holder" for investigating concepts that transcend philosophy, but yet remain significant factors in leading us toward anthropological understanding. Read this way, theology is particularly suggestive as we tackle the elusive problems of identifying, defining and understanding the Human Condition. Although poetry remains the apex of this quest to know, our poetry is next to meaningless without some knowledge of the traditions and the history of theological and philosophical inquiry that are our inheritance.
Here are some representative quotes from Augustine:
To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.
Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop.
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.
Let us, on both sides, lay aside all arrogance. Let us not, on either side, claim that we have already discovered the truth. Let us seek it together as something which is known to neither of us. For then only may we seek it, lovingly and tranquilly, if there be no bold presumption that it is already discovered and possessed.
He who denies the existence of God, has some reason for wishing that God did not exist.
If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.
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.
It is not that we keep His commandments first and that then He loves but that He loves us and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace which is revealed to the humble but hidden from the proud.
The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.
The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.
The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.
God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail.
Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?
And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.
How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.
Trust the past to God’s mercy, the present to God’s love, and the future to God’s providence.
If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.
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.
Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.
The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.
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 as they are.
Yet we must say something when those who say the most are saying nothing.
Patience is the companion of wisdom.
The good man is free, even if he is a slave. The evil man is a slave, even if he is a king.
There is no sin unless through a man’s own will, and hence the reward when we do right things also of our own will.
More? I suggest the articles in these references:
Strongly recommended: Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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| Ary Scheffer - Saint Augustine and his mother, Saint Monica (1846) |
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