- "An apt and true reply was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride. "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor." --St. Augustine, The City of God
- "To many total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation." -- St. Augustine
- "A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently."
- "Six is a number perfect in itself, and not because God created the world in six days; rather the contrary is true. God created the world in six days because this number is perfect, and it would remain perfect, even if the work of the six days did not exist." The City of God
The City of God.
- "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell." DeGenesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37 [Note: mathematician = astrologer]
- "If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the formula teach me?" De Magistro ch X, 23.
- "Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first or second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood."
- "Be always displeased with what thou art, if your desirest to attain to what thou art not; for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest. But if thou have enough thou perisheth. Always add, always walk, always proceed. Neither stand still, nor go back, nor deviate."
- "Cursed is every-one who places his hope in man."
- "Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all."
- "We make ourselves a ladder out of our vices if we trample the vices themselves underfoot."
- "The purpose of all wars...is peace."
- "The people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered."
- "Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul."
- "Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you."
- "Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence."
- "Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature."
- "Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by."
- "God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity he would be careless; and understanding of his adversity he would be senseless."
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