“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
meaningloveself
Paraphrase or translation
Philosopher
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Augustine of Hippo
354–430 · Christian Platonism · Medieval
Augustine of Hippo was a North African rhetorician who became a Christian bishop and the most influential Latin theologian of late antiquity. Born in Thagaste in 354, trained in Carthage and Milan, he was shaped by Cicero, by Manichaean teaching, and then by Platonist books, before baptism in 387 under Ambrose. The Confessions, written around 397, are a prayer, an autobiography, and a philosophy of will, memory, and time.
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As bishop of Hippo he preached, fought Donatist and Pelagian disputes, and across many years wrote the City of God after the sack of Rome. He died in 430 while the Vandals besieged his city. Medieval Latin Christianity read him constantly, which is why a late-antique writer sits in this library's medieval shelf. His themes are ordered and disordered love, the divided will, the two cities, and the limits of what a mind can explain even when it knows how to live.
Henry Chadwick's English is the usual way into the Confessions. The City of God needs a different translator.
Start here
Confessions, books 8 and 11, in Henry Chadwick's translation
Book 8 shows the divided will and the garden scene, and book 11 turns the same mind toward time. The opening prayer of book 1 only makes sense once those stretches are in view.
Quotations
“Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
selfvirtuechange
Paraphrase or translation
“Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
lovemeaningself
Paraphrase or translation
“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to someone who asks, I do not know.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
knowledgemindchange
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“Take up and read, take up and read.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
changeknowledgemeaning
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“Two loves have made two cities: love of self to the contempt of God, and love of God to the contempt of self.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
lovesocietyethics
Paraphrase or translation
“Love, and do what you will.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
loveethicsvirtue
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“Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing, my God, a deep and boundless manifold.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
mindselfknowledge
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“I loved my own undoing. I loved the fault, not that for which I committed the fault.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
ethicsselfvirtue
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“My weight is my love. Wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
loveselfchange
Paraphrase or translation
Key ideas
Restless heart
Human desire is made for God, so finite goods can occupy the heart without giving it rest.
Divided will
A person can know and even ask for a good while a part of the will still refuses to choose it now.
Two cities
History is pulled by two loves, love of God and love of self turned as far as contempt of the other.
Memory and time
The mind holds a vast memory, and time is grasped as a stretching of attention rather than as a simple container.
Major works
Confessions (c. 397–400)
Prayer, autobiography, and philosophy of will, memory, and time. Chadwick's translation is the usual modern English.
City of God (c. 413–426)
A long answer to pagan Rome, distinguishing the earthly city from the city of God by what each loves.
On the Trinity (c. 399–419)
Speculative theology that also offers a psychological image of the Trinity in memory, understanding, and will.
Influences
Influenced
Common misreadings
- The prayer for chastity but not yet is a joke he recommends, rather than a diagnosis of a will split against itself.
- Love, and do what you will is a licence, rather than a claim about a will already formed by charity.
Famous lines Augustine of Hippo never said
None of the lines this library files for Augustine of Hippo is marked Questionable or Misattributed. That is only a fact about these cards. It is not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.
FAQ
What is the best book to start with?
Confessions, books 8 and 11, in Henry Chadwick's translation Book 8 shows the divided will and the garden scene, and book 11 turns the same mind toward time. The opening prayer of book 1 only makes sense once those stretches are in view.
What is the most famous quote?
This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Augustine of Hippo that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” (Confessions I.1.1, Paraphrase or translation).
What is the most misquoted line?
None of the lines this library files for Augustine of Hippo is marked Misattributed or Questionable. That is a fact about these cards, not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.
What is one key idea, in a sentence?
Restless heart: Human desire is made for God, so finite goods can occupy the heart without giving it rest.