You stimulate him to take pleasure in praising you, because have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they can find peace in you.
I.1

Can I find a place outside heaven and earth so that there my god may come to me?
I.2

And when you are poured out over us, it is not you who are brought low but us who are raised up, not you who are scattered but us who are brought together.
I.3

And in all this what have I said, my God, my Life, my holy sweetness? What does any man succeed in saying when he attempts to speak of you? Yet woe to those who do not speak of you at all, when those who speak most say nothing.
I.4

What am I to you, that you should demand to be loved by me?

Do not hide your face from me. Let me die, lest I should die indeed; only let me see your face.
I.5

For what do I want to say, O Lord, except that I do not know where I came from into this mortal life or (should I say?) into this vital death.

And since Thy years do not fail, your years are Today.

But Thou art still the same, and all things of tomorrow and after tomorrow, all things of yesterday and before yesterday, you will accomplish today and have accomplished today. What does it matter to me if someone finds this incomprehensible? I should like him too to rejoice as he says: “What does this mean?” Yes; this is the way I should like him to rejoice, preferring to find you in his uncertainty rather than in his certainty to miss you.
I.6

For when still a boy I began to call upon you, my Help and my Refuge, and in praying to you I broke through the knots of language.
I.9

“Let him have a few more wounds: he is not well yet.”

. . . wave after great wave of temptation seemed to be hanging over me after my boyhood. My mother could see them coming and she preferred to expose them to the mere clay out of which I might afterward be reshaped, rather than the express image itself.
I.11

. . . every inordinate affection should be its own punishment.
I.12