Controversial Sayings

The will is truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and sins.

To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it.

In Paradise, our bodies were entirely subject to the will's bidding. As such, Adam could have commanded his body for sexual purposes merely by a rational act, and children... would have been generated 'by a calm act of the will.' Erotic desires and p…

Married second-class.

The things we love and desire are not ours to hold. Love turns false and dangerous when we assert ourselves as the masters of our universe. Our original sin, in Augustine's view, is the human condition that reaches for the illusion of power or commun…

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.

The law detects, grace alone conquers sin.

Sin is believing the lie that you are self-created, self-dependent and self-sustained.

There never can have been, and never can be, and there never shall be any sin without pride.

Sin is looking for the right thing in the wrong place.

He who thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon.

Nobody should ever doubt that in the washing of rebirth (Titus 3:5) absolutely all sins, from the least to the greatest, are altogether forgiven.

What did it profit that I read the greatest human ideas of the so-called 'liberal arts' in the books I got hold of. My thinking was enslaved to corrupt desires, so what difference did it make that I could read and understand these books?

But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in Him but in myself and His other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.

Day after day I postponed living in you, but I never put off the death which I died each day in myself. I longed for a life of happiness but I was frightened to approach it in its own domain; and yet, while I fled from it, I still searched for it.

I had not yet fallen in love, but I was in love with the idea of it, and this feeling that something was missing around me made me despise myself for not being more anxious to satisfy the need. I began to look around for some object for my love, sinc…

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 w…

For thus far also, 'The wife hath not power of her own body, but the man: in like manner also the man hath not power of his own body, but the woman.' That that also, which, not for the begetting of children, but for weakness and incontinence, either …

Husband and wife receive command and pattern how they ought to be one with another. The command is, 'Let wives be subject unto their own husbands, as unto the Lord; because the husband is the head of the wife;' and, 'Husbands, love your wives.'

If Adam and Eve had not sinned, God might have created children for them without the need of intercourse.