Augustine

A happy life is joy in the truth.

He who conceals a useful truth is equally guilty with the propagator of an injurious falsehood.

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.

Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you

Give what you command, and command what you will

He who sings prays twice

God will not suffer man to have 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

Patience is the companion of wisdom

Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe

He that is not jealous is not in love.

It is love that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds.

Repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt.

The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.

- All from Augustine of Hippo, 354 - 430

About:

Augustine was born at Tagaste in Roman north Africa on 13 Nov in 354 into a middle-class family. His mother Monica was a devout Christian, his father was pagan. Educated for a legal career at Carthage, he turned to dissipation and drifted away from his mother's teaching. Later he was taken up with the Manichaen heresies for some ten years, but returned to Christianity as a powerful teacher and philosopher at Rome and then Milan. Fearing additional responsibilities he avoided cities without bishops, but while visiting a friend at Hippo-Regius in 391 a crowd gathered and insisted that he be ordained a priest, he was soon consecrated as coadjutor bishop and finally Bishop of Hippo in 396. His massive written output has had a profound influence on the Church, here's a sample.