Quotes from Confessions

Quotations follow the F. J. Sheed translation (Continuum, 1993) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.

2. 3

   Give me chastity and continence — but not yet.

3. 4

   Give me chastity and continency, but not yet.

4. 5

   Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new. Late have I loved you.

5. 6

   Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new, late have I loved you.

6. 7

   Take up and read; take up and read.

7. 8

   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.

8. 9

   What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.

9. 10

   You were within me, but I was outside, and there I sought you.

10. 11

    To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves.

11. 12

    Grant what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt.

12. 13

    And men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the extent of the ocean, and the courses of the stars, and omit to wonder at themselves.

13. 14

    I loved to perish, I loved mine own fault, not that for which I was faulty, but my fault itself.

14. 15

    Thou wert more inward to me than my most inward part; and higher than my highest.

15. 16

    I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not.

16. 17

    I sank away from Thee, and I wandered, O my God, too much astray from Thee my stay, in these days of my youth, and I became to myself a barren land.