How we cite our quotes: (Book.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
All these things, and their like can be occasions of sin because, good though they are, they are of the lowest order of good, and if we are too much tempted by them we abandon those higher and better things, your truth, your law, and you yourself, O Lord our God. (II.5.1)
Not all good things are created equal. Augustine likes to divide things into "high" and "low" orders, in order to show how something that might appear to be fine and dandy, like friendship, shouldn't surmount the more important "high" order good things, like God's law. See, the tricky part of sin is that sometimes it doesn't look like sin.
Quote #5
Since I had no real power to break his law, was it that I enjoyed at least the pretense of doing so, like a prisoner who creates for himself the illusion of liberty by doing something wrong, when he has no fear of punishment, under a feeble hallucination of power? Here was the slave who ran away from his master and chased a shadow instead! What an abomination! What a parody of life! What abysmal death! Could I enjoy doing wrong for no other reason than that it was wrong? (II.6.4)
As we all know, behaving badly "just because" is a pretty common human tendency. What's interesting about this quote, though, is that Augustine uses prisoner/slave metaphors not once, but twice. Augustine is pointing to the idea of power, of being under the power of someone else, and of trying to exercise our own power against that someone by breaking their rules. But when we exercise power in that way, it's actually really pathetic, because it's only imitation-power. Which is almost as bad as imitation cheez.
Quote #6
In my youth I wandered away, too far from your sustaining hand, and created of myself a barren waste. (II.10.1)
Read that sentence again. At first you might have assumed that Augustine meant "I created for myself a barren waste," as in he was in a wasteland. But he actually says "created of myself a barren waste," as in he himself became a wasteland (not a wonderland). That's a strange metaphor, isn't it? It's not every day that you compare yourself to a chunk of earth. But by saying that he himself is barren, instead of someone in a barren landscape, he's making that landscape internal. You can always wander out of a barren wasteland, but how do you wander out of yourself? If you figure that out, let us know, because we get pretty sick of ourselves sometimes.