City of God Quotes

“God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.”
― St. Augustine, City of God

“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“What are kingdoms without justice? They're just gangs of bandits.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“There are wolves within, and there are sheep without.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“What grace is meant to do is to help good people, not to escape their sufferings, but to bear them with a stout heart, with a fortitude that finds its strength in faith.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“And yet, will we ever come to an end of discussion and talk if we think we must always reply to replies? For replies come from those who either cannot understand what is said to them, or are so stubborn and contentious that they refuse to give in even if they do understand.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“Every good man resists others in those points in which he resists himself.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“Pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation - when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“Though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“He that becomes protector of sin shall surely become its prisoner.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“This joy in God is not like any pleasure found in physical or intellectual satisfaction. Nor is it such as a friend experiences in the presence of a friend. But, if we are to use any such analogy, it is more like the eye rejoicing in light.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“No man can be a good bishop if he loves his title but not his task.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“His knowledge is not like ours, which has three tenses: present, past, and future. God's knowledge has no change or variation.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“For a prohibition always increases an illicit desire so long as the love of and joy in holiness is too weak to conquer the inclination to sin...”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“The bodies of irrational animals are bent toward the ground, whereas man was made to walk erect with his eyes on heaven, as though to remind him to keep his thoughts on things above.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“... the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“It is this Good which we are commanded to love with our whole heart, with our whole mind, and with all our strength. It is toward this Good that we should be led by those who love us, and toward this Good we should lead those whom we love. In this way, we fulfill the commandments on which depend the whole Law and the Prophets: 'Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with thy whole heart, and thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind'; and 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' For, in order that a man might learn how to love himself, a standard was set to regulate all his actions on which his happiness depends. For, to love one's own self is nothing but to wish to be happy, and the standard is union with God. When, therefore, a person who knows how to love himself is bidden to love his neighbor as himself, is he not, in effect, commanded to persuade others, as far as he can, to love God?”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“For what is the self-complacent man but a slave to his own self-praise.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“...It is no less impossible for us not to taste as bitter the death of those whose life for us was such a source of sweetness.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“For the human race is, more than any other species, at once social by nature and quarrelsome by perversion.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“But it must not be supposed that folly is as powerful as truth, just because it can, if it likes, shout louder and longer than truth.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“...The Devil would not have begun by an open and obvious sin to tempt man into doing something which God had forbidden, had not man already begun to seek satisfaction in himself and, consequently, to take pleasure in the words: 'You shall be as Gods.' The promise of these words, however, would much more truly have come to pass if, by obedience, Adam and Eve had kept close to the ultimate and true Source of their being and had not, by pride imagined that they were themselves the source of their being. For, created gods are gods not in virtue of their own being but by a participation in the being of the true God. For, whoever seeks to be more than he is becomes less, and while he aspires to be self-sufficing he retires from Him who is truly sufficient for him.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“...Since divine truth and scripture clearly teach us that God, the Creator of all things, is Wisdom, a true philosopher will be a lover of God. That does not mean that all who answer to the name are really in love with genuine wisdom, for it is one thing to be and another to be called a philosopher.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“So it falls out that in this world, in evil days like these, the Church walks onward like a wayfarer stricken by the world's hostility, but comforted by the mercy of God. Nor does this state of affairs date only from the days of Christ's and His Apostles' presence on earth. It was never any different from the days when the first just man, Abel, was slain by his ungodly brother. So shall it be until this world is no more.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“When men cannot communicate their thoughts to each other, simply because of difference of language, all the similarity of their common human nature is of no avail to unite them in fellowship.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“He who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice nor love the vice because of the man.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“What could be more hapless than a man controlled by his own creations? It is surely easier for a man to cease to be a man by worshiping man-made gods than for idols to become divine by being adored.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“The Greeks think they justly honor players, because they worship the gods who demand plays; the Romans, on the other hand, do not suffer an actor to disgrace by his name his own plebeian tribe, far less the senatorial order. And the whole of this discussion may be summed up in the following syllogism. The Greeks give us the major premise: If such gods are to be worshiped, then certainly such men may be honored. The Romans add the minor: But such men must by no means be honoured. The Christians draw the conclusion: Therefore such gods must by no means be worshiped.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“Greed is not a defect in the gold that is desired but in the man who loves it perversely by falling from justice which he ought to esteem as incomparably superior to gold; nor is lust a defect in bodies which are beautiful and pleasing: it is a sin in the soul of the one who loves corporal pleasures perversely, that is, by abandoning that temperance which joins us in spiritual and unblemishable union with realities far more beautiful and pleasing; nor is boastfulness a blemish in words of praise: it is a failing in the soul of one who is so perversely in love with other peoples' applause that he despises the voice of his own conscience; nor is pride a vice in the one who delegates power, still less a flaw in the power itself: it is a passion in the soul of the one who loves his own power so perversely as to condemn the authority of one who is still more powerful.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God