Confessions by Saint Augustine. 

2/5 rating. 

Book #8 of 2020. Read February 17, 2020.

I do not understand the hype for this book at all! I have read religious books which are beautiful and bring up some good points; this book did neither.

The first half of the book I would have considered a 1/5 rating, as it fluctuated between Augustine wallowing in his past depravity and him lying prostrate in over-the-top worship of God. He seemed to relish in how awful he was before his conversion which I thought was so antithetical to the whole point of penitence.

I never knew I would be so ecstatic to hear about someone’s conversion until it led to Augustine going onto other topics besides the evilness of his former days. The second half of the book was really just complete drivel. He would ask worthwhile questions then proceed to either not really answer them, or use some flawed logic to come up with an unconvincing answer (and don’t even get me started on his mention of the ontological argument!). After this, he has a whole bunch of not-really related topics about memory and time and other things. 

Overall, the second half saved this book from being completely horrendous, but I was definitely happy to get the damn thing over with.

Quotes:

“Man it is who says this, and you have pity on him, because you made him and did not make sin in him.”

“This experience sufficiently illuminates the truth that free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion.”

“I had not the insight to see how the justice, to which good and holy people were obliged to submit, embraces within its principles all that it prescribes for all times in a far more excellent and sublime way, and, although it is in no respect subject to variation, yet it is not given all at once, but at various it prescribed in different contexts what is proper for the circumstances.”

“I found myself heavily weighed down by a sense of being tired of living and scared of dying.”

“I carried my lacerated and bloody soul when it was unwilling to be carried by me. I found no place where I could put it down. There was no rest in pleasant groves, nor in games or songs, nor in sweet-scented places, nor in exquisite feasts, nor in the pleasures of the bedroom and bed, not finally, in books and poetry. Everything was an object of horror, even light itself; all that was not he made me feel sick and was repulsive – except for groaning and tears. In them alone was there some slight relief.”

“I had become to myself a place of unhappiness in which I could not bear to be; but I could not escape from myself.”

“The lost life of those who die becomes the death of those still living.”

“[Man] had very much to say about the world, but was convicted of ignorance by those who really understand these things, and from this one can clearly know what understanding he had in other matters which are harder to grasp.”

“Since it is most true and certain that the incorruptible is superior to the corruptible, as I had already concluded, had it been the case that you are not incorruptible I could in thought have attained something better than my God.”

“Then do walls make Christians?”

“The human race is inquisitive about other people’s lives, but negligent to correct their own.”

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