Saint Augustine
Peace in society depends upon peace in the family.Collection: Family
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?Collection: Book
Two criminals were crucified with Christ. One was saved; do not despair. One was not; do not presume.Collection: Hope
To sing is to pray twice.Collection: Catholic
Learn to dance, so when you get to heaven the angels know what to do with you.Collection: Dance
Put no faith in salvation through the political order.Collection: Responsibility
Do what you can and pray for what you cannot yet do.Collection: Prayer
Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.Collection: Punishment
If you should ask me what are the ways of God, I would tell you that the first is humility, the second is humility, and the third is humility. Not that there are no other precepts to give, but if humility does not preceed all that we do, our efforts are fruitless.Collection: Humility
Lord, teach me to know you, and to know myself.Collection: Lord
Give her two red roses, each with a note. The first note says For the woman I love and the second, For my best friend.Collection: Cute
Oh, God, to know you is life. To serve You is freedom. To praise you is the soul's joy and delight. Guard me with the power of Your grace here and in all places. Now and at all times, forever. Amen.Collection: Joy
Fasting cleanses the soul, raises the mind, subjects one’s flesh to the spirit, renders the heart contrite and humble, scatters the clouds of concupiscence, quenches the fire of lust, and kindles the true light of chastity.Collection: Heart
Symbols are powerful because they are the visible signs of invisible realities.Collection: Powerful
To withhold forgiveness is to take poison and expect the unforgiven to die.Collection: Poison
The cost of obedience is small compared with the cost of disobedience.Collection: Cost
In all trouble you should seek God. You should not set Him over against your troubles, but within them. God can only relieve your troubles if you in your anxiety cling to Him. Trouble should not really be thought of as this thing or that in particular, for our whole life on earth involves trouble; and through the troubles of our earthly pilgrimage we find God.Collection: Christian
When God is our strength, it is strength indeed; when our strength is our own, it is only weakness.Collection: Weakness
To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place through all the world; war, siege, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendour. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure but does not complain, for it is the friction which polishes him. It is the pressure which refines and makes him nobleCollection: War
Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it.Collection: Reflection
Unhappy is the soul enslaved by the love of anything that is mortal.Collection: Soul
Truth is not private property.Collection: Truth Is
Do not be afraid to throw yourself on the Lord! He will not draw back and let you fall! Put your worries aside and throw yourself on him; He will welcome you and heal you.Collection: Fall
Try to acquire the virtues you believe lacking in your brothers. Then you will no longer see their defects, for you will no longer have them yourself.Collection: Brother
It is easy to want things from the Lord and yet not want the Lord Himself, as though the gift could ever be preferable to the Giver.Collection: Want
I learned most, not from those who taught me but from those who talked with me.Collection: Inspirational
Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.Collection: Christian
The world is a great book, of which they that never stir from home read only a page.Collection: Life
Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.Collection: Thinking
Consequently, heretics and schismatics, separated from the unity of this Body, are able to receive the same Sacrament, but with no benefit to themselves; indeed, more to their own harm, in that they are judged the more severely rather than being liberated.Collection: Unity
In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.Collection: Fall
The sky and the earth and the waters and the things that are in them, the fishes, and the birds and the trees are not evil. All these are good; it is evil men who make this evil world.Collection: Men
Be always displeased with what you are if you wish to be what you are not. Always add, always walk, always proceed. Neither stand still nor go back nor deviate.Collection: Wish
There is no remedy so powerful against the heat of concupiscence as the remembrance of our Savior's Passion. In all my difficulties I never found anything so efficacious as the wounds of Christ: In them I sleep secure; from them I derive new life.Collection: Powerful
Even the straws under my knees shout to distract me from prayerCollection: Prayer
No one knows what he himself is made of, except his own spirit within him, yet there is still some part of him which remains hidden even from his own spirit; but you, Lord, know everything about a human being because you have made him...Let me, then, confess what I know about myself, and confess too what I do not know, because what I know of myself I know only because you shed light on me, and what I do not know I shall remain ignorant about until my darkness becomes like bright noon before your face.Collection: Light
Conscience and reputation are two things. Conscience is due to yourself, reputation to your neighbour.Collection: Two
Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.Collection: Peace
Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being little. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation. Modest humility is beauty's crown.Collection: Humility
Let those who think I have said too little and those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough thank God with me.Collection: Forgiveness
Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or to whom should I cry, save Thee? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and therefore do I speak.Collection: Believe
Eternity is the now that does not pass away.Collection: Passing Away
And I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, seeing He saith this of the Holy Spirit, Whom except we have, we can neither love God, nor keep His commandments?Collection: Spirit
Love, and do what you will. If you keep silence, do it out of love. If you cry out, do it out of love. If you refrain from punishing, do it out of love.Collection: Silence
One can't reach the Truth but through Love.Collection: Trough
In failing to confess, Lord, I would only hide You from myself, not myself from You.Collection: Catholic
The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.Collection: Long
True happiness is to rejoice in the truth, for to rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in You, O God, who are the truth... Those who think that there is another kind of happiness look for joy elsewhere, but theirs is not true joy.Collection: Thinking
We must be on our guard against giving interpretations which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers.Collection: Giving