Confessions Quotes

Who can recall to me the sins I committed as a baby? For in your sight no man is free from sin, not even a child who has lived only one day on earth. (I.7.2)

I was obliged to memorize the wanderings of a hero names Aeneas, while in the meantime I failed to remember my own erratic ways. I learned to lament the death of Dido, who killed herself for love,...

Can any man say enough when he speaks of you? Yet woe betide those who are silent about you! For even those who are most gifted with speech cannot find words to describe you. (I.4.1)

Yet "Truth and truth alone" was the motto which they repeated to me again and again, although the truth was nowhere to be found in them. All that they said was false, both what they said about you,...

These questions I must put to you, for I have no one else to answer them. (I.6.4)

Grief eats away its heart for the loss of things which it took pleasure in desiring, because it wants to be like you, from whom nothing can be taken away. (II.6.2)

Bodily desire, like a morass, and adolescent sex welling up within me exuded mists which clouded over and obscured my heart, so that I could not distinguish the clear light of true love from the mu...

I was expected to model myself upon men who were disconcerted by the rebukes they received if they used outlandish words or strange idioms to tell of some quite harmless thing they might have done,...