Quotes from Confessions

Quotations follow the J.M. Cohen translation (Penguin Classics, 1953) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

2. 3

   I have entered upon a performance which is without example, whose accomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present my fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself.

3. 4

   I know my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made like any one I have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature did wisely in breaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined after having read this work.

4. 5

   I felt before I thought: this is the common lot of humanity.

5. 6

   We suffer before we think; it is the common lot of humanity. I experienced more than my proportion of it.

6. 7

   Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I.

7. 8

   I accused her with doing what I meant to have done, and as I designed to have given her the ribbon, asserted she had given it to me.

8. 9

   Such as I was, I have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous and sublime.

9. 10

   My birth cost my mother her life, and was the first of my misfortunes.

10. 11

    Power eternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, I was better than that man.

11. 12

    The weight, therefore, has remained heavy on my conscience to this day; and I can truly own the desire of relieving myself, in some measure, from it, contributed greatly to the resolution of writing my Confessions.

12. 13

    The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.

13. 14

    Ah, there's some periwinkle!

14. 15

    Idleness is as much the pest of society as of solitude.

15. 16

    How many wrongs are effaced by the embraces of a friend!