Julia > Julia's Quotes

“...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 what purpose have you prayed?"
"For thanks. If I must die, at least I have lived. If my companions have perished, at least I have known them. If the world is cruel, at least I have tasted kindness. I had to cross to the far side of the sky to taste it but, as you say, the world is full of miracles.”
― Michael Flynn, Eifelheim

“Any fool can hope when success lies plainly in view. It wants genuine strength to hope when matters are hopeless.”
― Michael Flynn, Eifelheim

“For faith, properly understood, does not contradict reason in the least; indeed...it is nothing less than the will to keep one's mind fixed precisely on what reason has discovered to it.”
― Edward Feser, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism

“I'm not often bored,' I assured her. "Life's not long enough for that.”
― Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia

“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

“The gospel of justifying faith means that while Christians are, in themselves still sinful and sinning, yet in Christ, in God’s sight, they are accepted and righteous. So we can say that we are more wicked than we ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope — at the very same time. This creates a radical new dynamic for personal growth. It means that the more you see your own flaws and sins, the more precious, electrifying, and amazing God’s grace appears to you. But on the other hand, the more aware you are of God’s grace and acceptance in Christ, the more able you are to drop your denials and self-defenses and admit the true dimensions and character of your sin.”
― Timothy Keller

“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

“For the most part, we hesitate to instruct, to admonish, and, as occasion demands, to correct, and even to reprehend them. This we do either because the effort wearies us, or we fear offending them, or we avoid antagonizing them lest they thwart or harm us in those temporal matters where our cupidity ever seeks to acquire or our faint hearts fear to lose.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“For, in the same fire, gold gleams and straw smokes; under the same flail the stalk is crushed and the grain threshed; the lees are not mistaken for oil because they issued from the same press. So, too, the tide of trouble will test, purify, and improve the good, but beat, crush, and wash away the wicked. So it is that, under the weight of the same affliction, the wicked deny and blaspheme God, and the good pray to Him and praise Him. The difference is not in what people suffer but in the way they suffer. The same shaking that makes fetid water stink makes perfume issue a more pleasant odor.”
― Augustine of Hippo

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

“Of course, as everyone knows, neither my five books nor any five hundred books are sufficient to silence and pertinacity. It is the glory of vain men never to yield to the truth.”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“...Since the mind, which was meant to be reasonable and intelligent, has, by dark and inveterate vices, become too weak to adhere joyously to His unchangeable light (or even to bear it) until, by gradual renewal and healing, it is made fit for such happiness, its first need was to be instructed by faith and purified.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“But what is hope? When all else is lost, it is the one thing you may keep.”
― Michael Flynn, Eifelheim

“When princes flee battle, and knights turn free-lance, and barons rob pilgrims, what value has honor?"

“Why, all the more, seeing how rare it has become.”
― Michael Flynn, Eifelheim

“No pit is so deep that He is not deeper still; with Jesus even in our darkest moments, the best remains and the very best is yet to be.”
― Corrie ten Boom

“I had forgotten that you are only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of the State? You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

“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

“The earthly [city] has made for herself, according to her heart's desire, false gods out of any sources at all, even out of human beings, that she might adore them with sacrifices. The heavenly one, on the other hand, living like a wayfarer in this world, makes no false gods for herself. On the contrary, she herself is made by the true God that she may be herself a true sacrifice to Him.”
― 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

“Sin is to a nature what blindness is to an eye. The blindness is an evil or defect which is a witness to the fact that the eye was created to see the light and, hence, the very lack of sight is the proof that the eye was meant...to be the one particularly capable of seeing the light. Were it not for this capacity, there would be no reason to think of blindness as a misfortune.”
― 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

“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 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

“What is pride but an appetite for inordinate exaltation? Now, exaltation is inordinate when the soul cuts itself off from the very Source to which it should keep close and somehow makes itself and becomes an end to itself.”
― 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