I take it for granted that we read what are rightly called “great books”—Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, the Greek tragedians, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, the Bible, St. Augustine, some Church fathers, St. Thomas, Shakespeare, and into the…
Every time I re-read a book of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, or Aquinas, I shake my head and wonder why I had not seen that before. The answer is most likely that I was not ready…
Yet who can tell how many times each day our curiosity is tempted by the most trivial and insignificant matters? –Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin
Let me tell you, my God, how I squandered the brains you gave me on foolish delusions. –Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin
St. Augustine’s famous Confessions is a book directed to the very heart of each young person. No other book is quite like it. In it, Augustine excitedly tells us about his reading of Cicero’s now…
The soul lives when it avoids the things which it is death to seek. –Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin
1) G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy 2) C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 3) E. F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed 4) Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov 5) Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien 6) Ralph McInerny, I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You 7) Dorothy Sayers, The Whimsical Christian 8) J….
1. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Genesis, the Psalms. 2. The Gospel according to St. John. 3. St. Augustine, The Confessions 4. Plato, The Apology; The Crito; The Phaedo 5. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ. 6. The Epistles of St. Paul….
But there comes a time when we know that something is missing. And when this time comes, we need to know where to turn. Often, I will suggest, we should turn to Augustine himself. Without…
Moreover, when converts are well known, their example guides many others to salvation. –Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin, 163