Confessions Quotes

“I had become to myself a vast problem.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“Is righteousness, then, something 'fickle and changeable'? No; but the periods of time over which it presides, do not all proceed alike; they are time. Men, however, whose life on earth is short, are unable to conceive with their own minds the reasoning processes of earlier generations and of other races whom they have not known for themselves, whereas in the generations they do know, they can easily see what is appropriate within one and the same body or day or house, to each lib or hour or part and person. They are scandalized by the past, and enslaved to the present”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“It is according to this Law that the customs of different times and places are shaped to fit their time and place; but the Law itself is everywhere and always, not one thing in one place and another in another. It is according to this Law that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and all those who were praised by the mouth of God, were righteous. It is the naive who judge them unrighteous, judging them in accordance with their brief place in human time, and measuring the moral character of the human race from the direction of their own moral character.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“Разум приказывает себе совершить акт воли, но он не полностью хочет этого сделать, и, следовательно, его приказы не отдаются полностью. Он отдает приказ просто в той мере, в какой желает, и в той мере, в какой не желает, приказ не выполняется. Более того, не является странным явлением частичное желание что-либо сделать и частичное нежелание это сделать. Это болезнь разума. Таким образом, в нас существуют две воли, ни одна из которых сама по себе не является полной волей, и каждая обладает тем, чего не хватает другой.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions