Augustine Confessions Quotes: 27 Lines from All 13 Books

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Augustine's Confessions is one of the most quoted Christian books ever written. Its best lines are prayers. Augustine talks to God the whole way through, so even his memories of school and friendship come out as praise and confession.

The quotations below are exact, taken from the free edition in TheWay Library: the English translation by E. B. Pusey, first published in the nineteenth century. Other translations word these lines differently, so if you've seen "our heart is restless until it rests in you," that's a more modern rendering of the same sentence. Each quote gives the book it comes from, so you can find it in context in The Confessions of St. Augustine.

The restless heart

The most famous line comes in the first paragraph of the first book. In Pusey's words:

Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.
The Confessions, Book I

A few paragraphs later Augustine turns that truth into a prayer for himself:

Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it.
The Confessions, Book I

And he looks back on a boyhood spent weeping over stories while ignoring God:

Thou light of my heart, Thou bread of my inmost soul, Thou Power who givest vigour to my mind, who quickenest my thoughts, I loved Thee not.
The Confessions, Book I

On sin and the stolen pears

Augustine's story of stealing pears as a teenager is short, but he presses it hard. What frightened him was that he did wrong for no reason but the wrong itself.

Nor cared I to enjoy what I stole, but joyed in the theft and sin itself.
The Confessions, Book II

It was foul, and I loved it; I loved to perish, I loved mine own fault, not that for which I was faulty, but my fault itself.
The Confessions, Book II

His arrival at Carthage as a student opens Book III:

To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love.
The Confessions, Book III

On a mother's prayers

Monica prayed and wept for her son for years. When she begged a bishop to talk with him, the bishop sent her away with words she treasured:

Go thy ways and God bless thee, for it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish.
The Confessions, Book III

Years later, as she lay dying at Ostia, she asked for only one thing:

Lay … this body any where; let not the care for that any way disquiet you: this only I request, that you would remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever you be.
The Confessions, Book IX

On friendship and loss

When a close friend died, Augustine was crushed. Writing as a bishop, he drew the lesson:

Blessed whoso loveth Thee, and his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thee. For he alone loses none dear to him, to whom all are dear in Him who cannot be lost.
The Confessions, Book IV

There is no rest, where ye seek it. Seek what ye seek; but it is not there where ye seek.
The Confessions, Book IV

On being led to God

Augustine went to Milan for a job and went to hear Ambrose preach for the style. God had other plans:

To him was I unknowing led by Thee, that by him I might knowingly be led to Thee.
The Confessions, Book V

I panted after honours, gains, marriage; and thou deridedst me.
The Confessions, Book VI

I was becoming more miserable, and Thou nearer.
The Confessions, Book VI

The Platonists helped him think rightly about God, but only Christ could bring him to God:

Then I sought a way of obtaining strength sufficient to enjoy Thee; and found it not, until I embraced that Mediator betwixt God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.
The Confessions, Book VII

On the divided will

Book VIII is the story of his conversion, and it holds some of his most honest lines about habit and delay. The full scene is in our article on Augustine's conversion story.

Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.
The Confessions, Book VIII

For of a forward will, was a lust made; and a lust served, became custom; and custom not resisted, became necessity.
The Confessions, Book VIII

How long, how long, "tomorrow, and tomorrow?" Why not now? why not is there this hour an end to my uncleanness?
The Confessions, Book VIII

Take up and read; Take up and read.
The Confessions, Book VIII

"Too late loved I Thee"

Many readers count this as the most beautiful paragraph in the book. Pusey's version opens "Too late loved I Thee"; modern translations often say "Late have I loved you."

Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within, and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee.
The Confessions, Book X

Thou calledst, and shoutedst, and burstest my deafness. Thou flashedst, shonest, and scatteredst my blindness.
The Confessions, Book X

On grace and seeking God

Augustine's short prayer in Book X became famous in his own lifetime and stirred up a long argument about grace:

Give what Thou enjoinest, and enjoin what Thou wilt.
The Confessions, Book X

I asked the earth, and it answered me, "I am not He"; and whatsoever are in it confessed the same.
The Confessions, Book X

He is Thy best servant who looks not so much to hear that from Thee which himself willeth, as rather to will that, which from Thee he heareth.
The Confessions, Book X

On time, Scripture and rest

The last three books turn to Genesis. Book XI has the line every student of philosophy meets sooner or later:

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not.
The Confessions, Book XI

In this diversity of the true opinions, let Truth herself produce concord.
The Confessions, Book XII

The book ends where it began, with rest in God:

O Lord God, give peace unto us: (for Thou hast given us all things;) the peace of rest, the peace of the Sabbath, which hath no evening.
The Confessions, Book XIII

But Thou, being the Good which needeth no good, art ever at rest, because Thy rest is Thou Thyself.
The Confessions, Book XIII

Reading the quotes in context

These lines are stronger on the page than on a poster, because each one sits inside a story of real sin and real mercy. To see where they fall, read our summary of all 13 books, or learn more about the man in Who Was Augustine of Hippo?. Better still, open the Confessions and begin with Book I.