Hippo.co.za Quotes & Sayings

The bodies of irrational animals are bent toward the ground, whereas man was made to walk erect with his eyes on heaven, as though to remind him to keep his thoughts on things above. — Augustine Of Hippo

He who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice nor love the vice because of the man. — Augustine Of Hippo

Their irreligious pride makes them withdraw from you and eclipse your great light from reaching themselves. They can foresee a future eclipse of the sun, but do not perceive their own eclipse in the present. — Augustine Of Hippo

Thus, if our understanding finds its delight within, in the brightest of secret places, let it also delight in the following insight into the ways of love: the more love goes down in a spirit of service into the ranks of the lowliest people, the more surely it rediscovers the quiet that is within when its good conscience testifies that it seeks nothing of those to whom it goes down but their eternal salvation.[16] — Augustine Of Hippo

The Newark train station is about as romantic as a pile of hippo dung with head lice. — Harlan Coben

And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. — Augustine Of Hippo

Thou gavest; and to my nurses willingly to give me what Thou gavest them. For they, with a heaven-taught affection, willingly gave me what they abounded with from Thee. — Augustine Of Hippo

People travel to wonder
at the height of the mountains,
at the huge waves of the seas,
at the long course of the rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars,
and yet they pass by themselves
without wondering. — Augustine Of Hippo

For why in your calamities do you complain of Christianity, unless because you desire to enjoy your luxurious license unrestrained, and to lead an abandoned and profligate life without the interruption of any uneasiness or disaster? For certainly your desire for peace, and prosperity, and plenty is not prompted by any purpose of using these blessings honestly, that is to say, with moderation, sobriety, temperance, and piety; for your purpose rather is to run riot in an endless variety of sottish pleasures, and thus to generate from your prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a thousandfold more disastrous than the fiercest enemies. — Augustine Of Hippo

God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination. — Augustine Of Hippo

You raise us upright. — Augustine Of Hippo

Hence words are learnt; hence eloquence is to be attained, most necessary to persuade people to your way of thinking, and to unfold your opinions." So, in truth, we should never have understood these words, — Augustine Of Hippo

In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love. — Augustine Of Hippo

Music, that is the science or the sense of proper modulation, is likewise given by God's generosity to mortals having rational souls in order to lead them to higher things. — Augustine Of Hippo

Sin is looking for the right thing in the wrong place. — Augustine Of Hippo

As flattering friends mislead, quarreling foes can often correct — Augustine Of Hippo

Purity both of the body and the soul rests on the steadfastness of the will strengthened by God's grace, and cannot be forcibly taken from an unwilling person. — Augustine Of Hippo

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility. — Augustine Of Hippo

Thy purpose unchanged; receivest again what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing in gains; — Augustine Of Hippo

Hence a 'bishop' who has set his heart on a position of eminence rather than an opportunity for service should realize that he is no bishop. So — Augustine Of Hippo

He used to say that it was no wonder if from the human soul, by some higher instinct that does not know what goes on within itself, some utterance emerges not by art but by 'chance' which is in sympathy with the affairs or actions of the inquirer.7 — Augustine Of Hippo

Those who must inevitably die ought not to worry overmuch about what accident will cause their death, but about their destination after dying. Christians know that the death of a poor religious man, licked by the tongues of dogs, is far better than the death of a godless rich man, dressed in purple and linen. — Augustine Of Hippo

Some Western Christians read the story as a factual account of the Original Sin that condemned the human race to everlasting perdition. But this is a peculiarly Western Christian interpretation and was introduced controversially by Saint Augustine of Hippo only in the early fifth century. The Eden story has never been understood in this way in either the Jewish or the Orthodox Christian traditions. However, we all tend to see these ancient tales through the filter of subsequent history and project current beliefs onto texts that originally meant something quite different. — Karen Armstrong

At one time in my infancy I also knew no Latin, and yet by listening I learnt it with no fear or pain at all, from my nurses caressing me, from people laughing over jokes, and from those who played games and were enjoying them. I learnt Latin without the threat of punishment from anyone forcing me to learn it. My own heart constrained me to bring its concepts to birth, which I could not have done unless I had learnt some words, not from formal teaching but by listening to people talking; and they in turn were the audience for my thoughts. This experience sufficiently illuminates the truth that free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. — Augustine Of Hippo

When spirits fall, their darkness is revealed, for they are stripped of the garment of your light. By the misery and restlessness which they then suffer you make clear to us how noble a being is your rational creation, for nothing less than yourself suffices to give it rest and happiness. This means that it cannot find them in itself. For you, O God, will shine on the darkness about us. From you proceeds our garment of light, and our dusk shall be noonday. — Augustine Of Hippo

The soul is not moved to abandon higher things and love inferior things unless it wills to do so. — Augustine Of Hippo

Such is the strength of the burden of habit. Here I have the power to be but do not wish it. There I wish to be but lacks the power. On both grounds, I'm in misery. — Augustine Of Hippo

Now the fact that they will be unable to delight in sin does not entail that they will have no free will. In fact, the will will be the freer in that it is freed from a delight in sin and immovably fixed in a delight in not sinning. The — Augustine Of Hippo

No one knows what he himself is made of, except his own spirit within him, yet there is still some part of him which remains hidden even from his own spirit; but you, Lord, know everything about a human being because you have made him ... Let me, then, confess what I know about myself, and confess too what I do not know, because what I know of myself I know only because you shed light on me, and what I do not know I shall remain ignorant about until my darkness becomes like bright noon before your face. — Augustine Of Hippo

Since divine truth and scripture clearly teach us that God, the Creator of all things, is Wisdom, a true philosopher will be a lover of God. That does not mean that all who answer to the name are really in love with genuine wisdom, for it is one thing to be and another to be called a philosopher. — Augustine Of Hippo

Nothing being less accordant with the nature of God than to cast off the government of the world, leaving it to chance, and so to wink at the crimes of men that they may wanton with impunity in evil courses; it follows, that every man who indulges in security, after extinguishing all fear of divine judgment, virtually denies that there is a God. — Augustine Of Hippo

There could be nothing more fortunate for human affairs than that by the mercy of God they who are endowed with true piety of life if they have the skill for ruling people should also have the power. — Augustine Of Hippo

So you see how endlessly futile and fruitless it would be if we wanted to refute their objections every time they obstinately resolved not to think through what they say but merely to speak, just so long as they contradict our arguments in any way they can. — Augustine Of Hippo

There is a Master within Who teaches us. Christ is our Master, and his inspiration and his anointing teaches us. Where his inspiration and his anointing are lacking, it is in vain that words resound in our ears. As Paul the Apostle said: 'I planted the seed and Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.' Therefore, whether we plant or whether we water by our words, we are nothing. It is God Who gives the increase; His anointing teaches you all things. — Augustine Of Hippo

Love all men, even your enemies; love them, not because they are your brothers, but that they may become your brothers. Thus you will ever burn with fraternal love, both for him who is already your brother and for your enemy, that he may by loving become your brother. — Augustine Of Hippo

It is indeed a song of steps. And as I have often said to you, these steps are not made to descend but to ascend. The questioner wishes then to ascend; and where does he wish to ascend if not to heaven? What does this mean - to ascend to heaven? Does he wish to ascend so as to be in the heavens with the sun, the moon, and the stars? Far from that! But there is in heaven an eternal Jerusalem where the angels, our co-citizens, are. From these co-citizens we on earth are estranged. In this exile we sigh; in the city we shall have joy. — Augustine Of Hippo

I look forward, not to what lies ahead of me in this life and will surely pass away, but to my eternal goal. I am intent upon this one purpose, not distracted by other aims, and with this goal in view I press on, eager for the prize, God's heavenly summons. Then I shall listen to the sound of Your praises and gaze at Your beauty ever present, never future, never past. But now my years are but sighs. You, O Lord, are my only solace. You, my Father, are eternal. But I am divided between time gone by and time to come, and its course is a mystery to me. My thoughts, the intimate life of my soul, are torn this way and that in the havoc of change. And so it will be until I am purified and melted by the fire of Your love and fused into one with You. — Augustine Of Hippo

For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away. — Augustine Of Hippo

Learn to dance, so when you get to heaven the angels know what to do with you. — Augustine Of Hippo

As if it were owing to the merit of our turning to God that His grace were given us, wherein He Himself even turns unto us. Now the persons who hold this opinion fail to observe that, unless our turning to God were itself God's gift, it would not be said to Him in prayer, "Turn us again, O God of hosts;" and, "You, O God, wilt turn and quicken us;" and again, "Turn us, O God of our salvation," - with other passages of similar import, too numerous to mention here. — Augustine Of Hippo

I know what it is, but when you ask me I don't. — Augustine Of Hippo

Bernadette and her enthusiasm were like a hippo and water: get between them and you'll be trampled to death. — Maria Semple

Evidently there is difficulty, real difficulty, in learning a foreign language at all, as if it sprinkled all the sweet flavor of the Greek mythical stories with a foul taste. — Augustine Of Hippo

Curled up at the base of the scales, fast asleep, was the oddest monster I'd seen yet. It had the head of crocodile with a lion's mane. The front half of its body was a lion, but the back end was sleek, brown, and fat - a hippo, I decided. The odd bit was, the animal was tiny - I mean, no larger than an average poodle, which I suppose made him a hippodoodle. — Rick Riordan

You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence. — Joseph Conrad

When the will abandons what is above itself and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil - not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked. Therefore it is not an inferior thing which has made the will evil, but it is itself which has become so by wickedly and inordinately desiring an inferior thing. — Augustine Of Hippo

Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men. — Augustine Of Hippo

Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself? — Augustine Of Hippo

Oh! for Thy mercies' sake, tell me, O Lord my God, what Thou art unto me. — Augustine Of Hippo

The mode of ascertaining the proper meaning, and the mode of making known the meaning when it is ascertained. — Augustine Of Hippo

The earthly [city] has made for herself, according to her heart's desire, false gods out of any sources at all, even out of human beings, that she might adore them with sacrifices. The heavenly one, on the other hand, living like a wayfarer in this world, makes no false gods for herself. On the contrary, she herself is made by the true God that she may be herself a true sacrifice to Him. — Augustine Of Hippo

Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace. — Augustine Of Hippo

If you find physical pleasure in earthly experiences, use the occasion to praise God for these gifts. Turn your love not on the pleasures but toward their Maker.3 Otherwise, the things that please you will cause you to displease. Love those souls that please you, but love them in God. — Augustine Of Hippo

We were born in a Jewish world, as part of a Jewish faith tradition. We had to translate ourselves into the neo-Platonic thinking Greek world; that took us about 400 years. Then, finally a man named Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, recast Christianity in terms of neo-Platonic thought. — John Shelby Spong

No one should be ashamed to admit that they do not know what they do not know, in case while feigning knowledge, they come to deserve to never know. — Augustine Of Hippo

The world is a book, and he who does not travel reads only a page. — Augustine Of Hippo

266. "Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of the faith is to see what we believe. — Augustine Of Hippo

Your mother would have more luck winning her election than teaching you how to be charming. Izzy Malone, going to charm school! Are you going to walk across the room with a book stuck on your head?"

"No, it's not like that at all," I said as he doubled over with laughter. "And I really don't see what's so funny."

"It's just that"--he gasped--"it would be like teaching a hippo to wear high heels! — Jenny Lundquist

To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement. — Augustine Of Hippo

Chapter XV.--He Entreats God, that Whatever Useful Things He Learned as a Boy May Be Dedicated to Him. 24. Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto Thee Thy mercies, whereby Thou hast saved me from all my most mischievous ways, that Thou mightest become sweet to me beyond all the seductions which I used to follow; and that I may love Thee entirely, and grasp Thy hand with my whole heart, and that Thou mayest deliver me from every temptation, even unto the end. For lo, O Lord, my King and my God, for Thy service be whatever useful thing I learnt as a boy--for Thy service what I speak, and write, and count. For when I learned vain things, Thou didst grant me Thy discipline; and my sin in taking delight in those vanities, Thou hast forgiven me. I learned, indeed, in them many useful words; but these may be learned in things not vain, and that is the safe way for youths to walk in. — Augustine Of Hippo

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe. — Augustine Of Hippo

Pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation - when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. — Augustine Of Hippo

You know how stupid and weak I am: teach me and heal me. — Augustine Of Hippo

Let him love to find You while not finding it out, rather than, while finding it out, not to find You. — Augustine Of Hippo

An unjust law is no law at all. — Augustine Of Hippo

The measure of love is to love without measure. — Augustine Of Hippo

Have I not confessed against myself my transgressions unto Thee, and Thou, my God, hast forgiven the iniquity of my heart? — Augustine Of Hippo

Sin is to a nature what blindness is to an eye. The blindness is an evil or defect which is a witness to the fact that the eye was created to see the light and, hence, the very lack of sight is the proof that the eye was meant ... to be the one particularly capable of seeing the light. Were it not for this capacity, there would be no reason to think of blindness as a misfortune. — Augustine Of Hippo

hippo-comedietta — Charles Dickens

Crucified Christ, when He, mindful of mercy, said, Father, — Augustine Of Hippo

A sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart. Nay, even idolatry is ample evidence of this fact. — Augustine Of Hippo

Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee. — Augustine Of Hippo

What do you think you are doing by infesting the whole world? Because I do it with one puny boat, I am called a pirate; because you do it with a great fleet, you are called an emperor. — Augustine Of Hippo

I have said before, and shall say again, that I write this book for love of your love. — Augustine Of Hippo

In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. — Augustine Of Hippo

Only one possibility remains: the movement by which the will turns from enjoying the Creator to enjoying his creatures belongs to the will itself. — Augustine Of Hippo

I fell away from you, my God, and I went astray, too far astray from you, the support of my youth, and I became to myself a land of want. — Augustine Of Hippo

Weaned from all passing fancies, let my soul praise You, O God, Creator of all. You did not allow my soul to remain attached to corruptible things with the glue of love, attached to what my senses find pleasing. For things we are attached to go where they will, then they cease, leaving the lover torn with corrupted longings. — Augustine Of Hippo

Word "thing" in a strict sense, to signify that which is never employed as a sign of anything else: for example, wood, stone, cattle, and other things of that kind. — Augustine Of Hippo

[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections. — William Gibson

What then, is correctness of speech but the maintenance of the practice of others, as established by the authority of ancient speakers? But the weaker men are, the more they are troubled by such matters. Their weakness stems from a desire to appear learned, not with a knowledge of things, by which we are edified, but with a knowledge of signs, by which it is difficult not to be puffed up in some way; even a knowledge of things often makes people boastful, unless their necks are held down by the Lord's yoke. — Augustine Of Hippo

It is not without significance that Hebrew was the language used by Abraham, and that he could not hand it on to all his descendants but only to those who were derived from him through Jacob, and by uniting to form the people of God in the most evident and conspicuous fashion, were able to keep the covenants and to preserve the stock from which Christ came. And — Augustine Of Hippo

And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought. — Augustine Of Hippo

I held my heart back from positively accepting anything, since I was afraid of another fall, and in this condition of suspense I was being all the more killed. — Augustine Of Hippo

Why are you relying on yourself, only to find yourself unreliable? — Augustine Of Hippo

I think I have now, by God's help, discharged my obligation in writing this large work. Let those who think I have said too little, or those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough join me in giving thanks to God. Amen. — Augustine Of Hippo

A wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens. — Augustine Of Hippo

The good man is free, even if he is a slave. The evil man is a slave, even if he is a king. — Augustine Of Hippo

There are many going afar to marvel at the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the long courses of great rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the movements of the stars, yet they leave themselves unnoticed! — Augustine Of Hippo

Between temporal and eternal things there is this difference: a temporal thing is loved more before we have it, and it begins to grow worthless when we gain it, for it does not satisfy the soul, whose true and certain rest is eternity; but the eternal is more ardently loved when it is acquired than when it is merely desired. — Augustine Of Hippo

But unscrupulous ambition has nothing to work upon, save in a nation corrupted by avarice and luxury. Moreover, a people becomes avaricious and luxurious by prosperity. — Augustine Of Hippo

It was to Noah that God gave instructions to make an ark in which he was to be rescued from the devastation of the Flood, together with his family, that is, his wife, his sons and daughters-in-law, and also the animals that went into the ark in accordance with God's directions. Without doubt this is a symbol of the City of God on pilgrimage in this world, of the Church which is saved through the wood on which was suspended 'the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus'. — Augustine Of Hippo

This only I know, that woe is me except in Thee: not only without but within myself also; and all abundance, which is not my God, is emptiness to me. — Augustine Of Hippo

Woe is me! how high art Thou in the highest, and how deep in the deepest! and Thou never departest, and we scarcely return to Thee. — Augustine Of Hippo

HE THAT LOVETH LITTLE PRAYETH LITTLE, HE THAT LOVETH MUCH PRAYETH MUCH. — Augustine Of Hippo

Do not say that the past was better than the present. Virtues are what make the good times and vices that go bad. — Augustine Of Hippo

If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself. — Augustine Of Hippo

God. For they had not the insight to see that I might put the lessons which they forced me to learn to any other purpose than the satisfaction of man's insatiable desire for the poverty he calls wealth and the infamy he knows as fame. — Augustine Of Hippo

Greed is not a defect in the gold that is desired but in the man who loves it perversely by falling from justice which he ought to esteem as incomparably superior to gold; nor is lust a defect in bodies which are beautiful and pleasing: it is a sin in the soul of the one who loves corporal pleasures perversely, that is, by abandoning that temperance which joins us in spiritual and unblemishable union with realities far more beautiful and pleasing; nor is boastfulness a blemish in words of praise: it is a failing in the soul of one who is so perversely in love with other peoples' applause that he despises the voice of his own conscience; nor is pride a vice in the one who delegates power, still less a flaw in the power itself: it is a passion in the soul of the one who loves his own power so perversely as to condemn the authority of one who is still more powerful. — Augustine Of Hippo

For sin bust be punished either by the penitent sinner or by God, his judge; and God, who has promised pardon to the penitent sinner, has nowhere promised to one who delays his conversion a morrow to do penance in. — Augustine Of Hippo