Quote in context
Augustine on the restless heart
Augustine of Hippo · Confessions 1.1.1
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Plain English
Augustine opens the Confessions by naming the ache that drives his whole story. Human desire keeps moving until it finds its proper rest in God.
Why it matters
It is probably Augustine's most famous sentence because it turns autobiography into a diagnosis of the human condition.
Who said it
Augustine of Hippo
354 – 430 · Born in Thagaste · North Africa
Augustine is the deepest pool in Western thought after Plato. Confessions invented spiritual autobiography — nobody before him wrote like that about an inner life. City of God invented the Christian philosophy of history. His doctrines of original sin, grace, predestination, free will, the church, and the sacraments shaped everything Catholic and Protestant fought about a thousand years later. Calvin is downstream of Augustine. Aquinas is downstream of Augustine. Even modern atheist philosophers writing about selfhood and time keep returning to him.
Book of the day
Confessions
Augustine of HippoA reading pick tied to today's figure, quote, era, or event. The most approachable major Latin Father: autobiography, prayer, memory, sin, grace, and desire.
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