Being a Student - Part V: Able to Put Things in the Right Perspective

The human soul is like a dove. When it is enslaved by earthly loves, its plumage becomes heavy because of the mud and it cannot fly. But when the mud of earthly affections is removed from its feathers, it recovers its freedom. Using the love of God as one wing and the love of neighbour at the other it begins to fly. It ascends because it loves. (Commentary on the Psalms, 121, 1).

Not everybody who is indulgent with us is our friend, nor is everybody who punishes us our enemy. It is better to love with severity that to deceive gently. (Letter 93, 2, 4).

Do you want to know what class of person you are? Take the test of love. Do you love the things of the earth? You are earth. Do you owe your love to God? Be not afraid in saying it: you are God. (Treatise on the First Letter of John, 2, 2, 14).

Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are. Like sticks to like, unlike shuns unlike. (Sermon 15, 2, 2)

Moral failure is not the possession of evil things, but rather an act of the will that is evil; that is to say an action is evil not because the things sought are themselves evil, but rather the act itself is evil if it is contrary to the right order of things, or an abandonment of that which is good for something which is less good. For example, avarice is not a fault inherent in gold, but in the one who inordinately loves gold to the detriment of justice, which ought to be held in incomparably higher regard than gold. Neither is luxury the fault of lovely and charming objects, but of the heart that inordinately loves sensual pleasures, to the neglect of temperance . . . Nor yet is boasting the fault of human praise, but of the one who is inordinately fond of the applause of others, and that makes light of the voice of conscience. Pride, too, is not the fault of the one who delegates power, nor of power itself, but of the soul that is inordinately enamoured of its own power, and despises the more just dominion of a higher authority. Consequently he who inordinately loves the good which everything possesses, even though he obtain it, himself becomes evil in the good, and wretched and unhappy because he is deprived of a greater good. (The City of God, 12, 8).