Confessions of Saint Augustine Book IV

My heart grew somber with grief, and wherever I looked I saw only death

To her, the well-loved man whom she had lost was better and more real than the shadowy being in whom I would have her trust. Tears alone were sweet to me, for in my heart’s desire they had taken the place of my friend

I simply grieved and wept, for I was heartbroken and had lost my joy. Or is weeping, too, a bitter thing, becoming a pleasure only when the things we once enjoyed turn loathsome and only as long as our dislike for them remains

I lived in misery, like every man whose soul is tethered by the love of things that cannot last and then is agonized to lose them. Only then does he realize the sorry state his is in, and was in even before his loss. In such a state was I at that time, as I wept bitter tears and found my only consolation in their very bitterness

Perhaps this, too, is why I shrank from death, for fear that one whom I had loved so well might then be wholly dead

Time never stand still, nor does it idly pass by it out effect upon our feelings or fail to work its wonders on the mind

For whence had that former sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick, but that I had pour out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die

They can kindle a blaze to melt our hearts and weld them into ome

Not all reach old age, but all alike must die

But enthusiasm in one man will kindle the same fire in another, for we admire the person whose praises we hear only if we believe that they are sincerely uttered — in other words that the person who utters them genuinely admires the man whom he praises

We can see from this that the soul is weak and helpless unless it clings to the firm rock of truth. Men give voice to their opinions, but they are only opinions, like so many puffs of wind that waft the soul hither and thither and make it veer and turn. The light is clouded over and the truth cannot be seen, although it is there before our eyes

I loved the peace that virtue brings and hated the discord that comes of vice. From this I concluded that in goodness there was unity, but in evil disunion of some kind

Crimes against other men are committed when the emotions, which spur us to action, are corrupt and rise in revolt without control. Sins of self-indulgence are committed when the soul fails to govern the impulses from which it derives bodily pleasure. In the same way, if the rational mind is corrupt, mistaken ideas and false beliefs will poison life