Date: 397-401
"Only a few succeed in arriving at these reasons with the eye of the mind, and when one does arrive, insofar as is possible, the very one who arrives does not abide in them, but as it were the eye (of the mind) itself is beaten back and repelled."
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)
Date: 397-401
"Surely thy law, O Lord, punishes thievery; yea, and this law is so written in our hearts [lex scripta in cordibus hominum], that iniquity itself cannot blot it out."
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)
Date: 397-401
"et certe non est interior litterarum scientia quam scripta conscientia, id se alteri facere quod nolit pati." ["Assuredly no science of letters can be so innate as the record of conscience, 'that he is doing to another what from another he would be loth to suffer.'"]
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)
Date: 399-426
"Well now, let us see where we are to locate what you might call the border between the outer and the inner man."
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)
Date: 399-426
"The Trinity's "own light seemed to be present around us, still, no trinity appeared to us in nature, for in the midst of that splendor we did not keep the eye of our mind fixed steadily upon searching for it ... because that ineffable light beat back our gaze, and the weakness of our mind was co...
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)
Date: c. 400 AD
"How can the soul be one with what it wears [i.e., the body]? For a shirt is not one with the person wearing it."
preview | full record— Nemesius of Emesa (fl. c. 390)
Date: 416
"And then at times a man's slave, worn out by the commands of an unfeeling master, finds rest in flight. Whither can the servant of sin flee? Himself he carries with him wherever he flees. An evil conscience flees not from itself; it has no place to go to; it follows itself."
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)
Date: 413-427
"And this grand and wonderful instinct belongs to men alone of all animals; for, though some of them have keener eyesight than ourselves for this world's light, they cannot attain to that spiritual light with which our mind is somehow irradiated, so that we can form right judgments of all things."
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)
Date: 413-427
"Wherefore, as the life of the flesh is the soul, so the blessed life of man is God, of whom the sacred writings of the Hebrews say, 'Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord.'"
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)
Date: 413-427
"Does not Tully, disputing of the difference of governments, ... say, that we command our bodily members as sons, they are so obedient, and that we must keep a harder form of rule over our mind's vicious parts, as our slaves?"
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)