City of God Quotes

“And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God . . . while the good pray and praise.”

“For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing.”

“In a word, human kingdoms are established by divine providence.”

“They have made Virtue also a goddess, which, indeed, if it could be a goddess, had been preferable to many. And now, because it is not a goddess, but a gift of God, let it be obtained by prayer from Him, by whom alone it can be given.”

“I do not know what ages passed before the human race was created, yet I have no doubt that no created thing is co-eternal with the Creator.”

“The bodies of irrational animals are bent toward the ground, whereas man was made to walk erect with his eyes on heaven, as though to remind him to keep his thoughts on things above.”

“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.”

“Thus, though it is not every creature that can be blessed (for beasts, trees, stones, and things of that kind have not this capacity), yet that creature which has the capacity cannot be blessed of itself, since it is created out of nothing, but only by Him by whom it has been created.”

“Every city is a living body.”

“The place and time of these miracles are dependent on His unchangeable will, in which things future are ordered as if already they were accomplished.”

“God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.”

“There are three things which every artificer must possess if he is to effect anything,—nature, education, practice. Nature is to be judged by capacity, education by knowledge, practice by its fruit.”

“As to those feebler spirits who, though they cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, do yet cleave to them with a somewhat immoderate attachment, they have discovered by the pain of losing these things how much they were sinning in loving them. For their grief is of their own making.”

“The desire for fame tempts even noble minds.”

“For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed.”

“Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.”

“Though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves.”

“If any one attributes their existence to fate, because he calls the will or the power of God itself by the name of fate, let him keep his opinion, but correct his language.”

“Like a good servant, Job counted the will of his Lord his great possession, by obedience to which his soul was enriched; nor did it grieve him to lose, while yet living, those goods which he must shortly leave at his death.”

“It is a great question among men, whether man can be mortal and blessed.”