Saint Augustine Order Quotations

For God loves saving, not condemning, and therefore He is patient with bad people, in order to make good people out of bad people.

Believe in order to Understand and Understand in order to Believe

For grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them.

This entire most beautiful order of good things is going to pass away after its measure has been exhausted; for both morning and evening were made in them.

Put no faith in salvation through the political order.

In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.

To dye oneself with paints in order to have a rosier or a paler complexion is a lying counterfeit.

Cyprian was not issuing a new decree but was keeping to the most solid belief of the Church in order to correct some who thought that infants ought not be baptized before the eighth day after their birth. . . . He agreed with certain of his fellow bishops that a child is able to be duly baptized as soon as he is born.

Peace is not sought in order to provoke war, but war is waged in order to attain peace.

Slavery is not penal in character and planned by that law which commands the preservation of the natural order and forbids disturbance.

I believe in order to understand

Though in the order of nature angels rank above men, yet, by scale of justice, good men are of greater value than bad angels.

The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind commands the hand to move, and it so easy that one hardly distinguishes the order from its execution. Yet mind is mind and hand is body. The mind orders the mind to will. The recipient of the order is itself, yet it does not perform it.

Alternate translation: Come brethren, if you have a mind to be ingrafted in the vine, It is a pity to see you lopped off in this manner From the stock. Reckon up the prelates in the very see of Peter; And in that order of fathers see which has succeeded which. This is the rock over which the proud gates of hell prevail not.

The entire most beautiful order of things that are very good, when their measures have been accomplished, is to pass away.

I make bold to say that it is profitable for the proud to fall, in order that they may be humbled in that for which they have exalted themselves.

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?

Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence.