Confessions of Saint Augustine Book I

Why do we continually hear people say, even nowadays, ‘Leave him alone and let him do it. He is not yet baptized’? Yet when the health of the body is at stake, no one says ‘Let him get worse. He is not yet cured.’

What a person does against his will is not to his own credit, even if what he does is good in itself

For this is what you have ordained and so it is with us, that every soul that sins brings its own punishment upon it

I was flesh and blood, no better than a breath of wind that passes by and never returns

We learn better in a free spirit of curiosity than under fear and compulsion

For offerings can be made to those birds of prey, the fallen angels, in more ways than one