4th century · Skopia

Showing 23 works across all media from the 4th century

Nonfiction · Autobiography and memoir

Confessions

Saint Augustine

398 · 346 pages

Augustine addresses God directly, confessing the stolen pears, the years of lust, and a prayer for chastity but not yet. Sixteen centuries on, his self-examination still cuts deeper than modern memoir.

★ 9.3

Autobiography and memoir

Give me chastity and continency—but not yet!

Confessions · 398

★ 7.9

Autobiography and memoir · Religious literature

Our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Confessions · 400

★ 7.8

The Recognition of Sakuntala

400 · 147 pages

King Dushyanta secretly marries a girl raised in a forest hermitage, then a curse erases her from his memory. Kalidasa writes the forest so beautifully that Goethe borrowed the play's prologue for Faust.

★ 7.3

Religious literature

The weakness of little children's limbs is innocent, not their souls.

Confessions · 400

★ 4.0

Philosophical literature · Religious literature

Hear the other side.

391

★ 3.9

A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept.

374

★ 3.8

Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price.

374

★ 3.8

No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow.

374

★ 3.8

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

395

★ 3.8

Religious literature

Too late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Too late I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself and there I searched for you.

Confessions · 400

★ 3.8

The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.

394

★ 3.7

Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, "Why do you not practice what you preach?"

394

★ 3.7

Even brute beasts and wandering birds do not fall into the same traps or nets twice.

394

★ 3.7

The Roman world is falling, yet we hold our heads erect instead of bowing our necks.

396

★ 3.7

Every day were are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal.

396

★ 3.7

When you are at Rome live in the Roman style: when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.

St. Augustine, Letter to Casulanus · 397

★ 3.7

Religious literature

God became man so that man might become God.

On the Incarnation · 318

★ 2.2

Essay · Philosophical literature

A law that is not just does not seem to me to be a law.

389

★ 2.2

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

394

★ 2.1

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