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“When wickedness rules and flourishes, not only does virtue go unrewarded, it is even trodden underfoot by the wicked and punished in the place of crime. That this can happen in the realm of an omniscient and omnipotent God who wills only good, is beyond perplexity and complaint.”
-The Consolation of Philosophy, Book IV, Ch. I


“And so sovereign Providence has often produced a remarkable effect — evil men making other evil men good. For some, when they think they suffer injustice at the hands of the worst of men, burn with hatred for evil men, and being eager to be different from those they hate, have reformed and become virtuous. It is only the power of God to which evils may also be good, when by their proper use He elicits some good result.
-The Consolation of Philosophy, Book IV, Ch. VI

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“Each future thing is anticipated by the gaze of God which bends it back and recalls it to the presence of its own manner of knowledge; it does not change, as you think, with alternate knowledge of now this and now that, but with one glance anticipates and embraces your changes in its constancy. God receives those present mode of knowledge and vision of all things not from the issue of future things but from His own immediacy.”
-The Consolation of Philosophy, Book V, Ch. VI


“Take the case of those who believe that foreknowledge does not impose necessity upon the future, and that freedom of the will is not infringed by foreknowledge. I would like to know why you consider their reasoning ineffective. For the only source of your proof of the predestination of the future is your belief that what is foreknown cannot but happen. Therefore, if—as you were only just now saying—if foreknowledge does not impose any predestination on the future, why is it that acts of the will are forced to be predestined? But for the sake of argument, so that you may see what follows, let us say that there is no foreknowledge. In this case, actions of the will are not forced to be predestined, are they?...Again, let us say that there is foreknowledge, but that it does not impose any predestination on things; the same freedom of the will remains, I think, absolute and uninfringed.”
-The Consolation of Philosophy, Book V, Ch. IV

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“This world would never have coalesced into one form out of such diverse and antagonistic parts had there not been one who could unify such diversity.”
-The Consolation of Philosophy, Book III, Ch. XII


“I could never believe that events of such regularity are due to the haphazards of chance. In fact I know that God the Creator watches over His creation. The day will never come that sees me abandon the truth of this belief.”
-The Consolation of Philosophy, Book I, Ch. VI

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“...how do prophets see the future, if there is not yet a future to be seen? It is impossible to see what does not exist. In the same way people who describe the past could not describe it correctly unless they saw it in their minds, and if the past did not exist it would be impossible for them to see it at all. Therefore both the past and the future do exist.”
-Confessions, Book XI, Ch. 17


“It might be correct to say that there are three times, a present of past things, a present of present things, and a present of future things. Some such different times do exist in the mind, but nowhere else that I can see. The present of past things is the memory; the present of present things is direct perception; and the present of future things is expectation. If we may speak in these terms, I can see three times and I admit that they do exist.”
-Confessions, Book XI, Ch. 20


“It is not that God’s knowledge varies in any way, that the future, the present, and the past affect that knowledge in three different ways. It is not with God as it is with us. He does not look ahead to the future, look directly at the present, look back to the past. He sees in some other manner, utterly remote from anything we experience or could imagine. He does not see things by turning his attention from one thing to another. He sees all without any kind of change. Things which happen under the condition of time are in the future, not yet in being, or in the present, already existing, or in the past, no longer in being. But God comprehends all these in a stable and eternal present. And with him there is no difference between seeing with the eyes and ‘seeing’ with the mind, for he does not consist of mind and body. Nor is there any difference between his present, past, and future. God’s knowledge has no change or variation. ‘With him there is no alteration, or shadow of movement.’”
-City of God, Book XI, Ch. 21

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“I used to ask my friends ‘Do we love anything unless it is beautiful? What, then, is beauty and in what does it consist? What is it that attracts us and wins us over to the things we love? Unless there were beauty and grace in them, they would be powerless to win our hearts.’”
-Confessions, Book IV, Ch. 13


“For beauty does not depend on mere size, but on the symmetry and proportion of the component parts.”
-City of God, Book XI, Ch. 22


“Then there is the beauty and utility of the natural creation, which the divine generosity has bestowed on man, for him to behold and to take into use...How could any description do justice to all these blessings? The manifold diversity of beauty in sky and earth and sea; the abundance of light, and its miraculous loveliness, in sun and moon and stars; the dark shades of woods, the color and fragrance of flowers;...Then there is the mighty spectacle of the sea itself, putting on its changing colors like different garments, now green, with all the many varied shades, now purple, now blue.”
-City of God, Book XXII, Ch. 24

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“...evil is nothing but the removal of good until finally no good remains.”
-Confessions, Book III, Ch. 7


“...’evil’ is merely a name for the privation of good.”
-City of God, Book XI, Ch. 22


“For you evil does not exist, and not only for you but for the whole of your creation as well, because there is nothing outside it which could invade it and break down the order which you have imposed on it. Yet in the separate parts of your creation there are some things which we think of as evil because they are at variance with other things.”
-Confessions, Book VII, Ch. 13


“But God, who is supremely good in his creation of natures that are good, is also completely just in his employment of evil choices in his design, so that whereas such evil choices make a wrong use of good natures, God turns evil choices to good use. Thus when the Devil, who was good as God created him, became bad by his own choice, God caused him to be cast down to a lower station and to become a derision to the angels of God; and this means that the Devil’s temptations prove to be for the benefit of God’s saints, though the Devil longs to injure them thereby.”
-City of God, Book XI, Ch. 17


“The truth is that one should not try to find an efficient cause for a wrong choice. It is not a matter of efficiency, but of deficiency; the evil will itself is not effective but defective. For to defect from him who is the Supreme Existence, to something of less reality, this is to begin to have an evil will. To try to discover the causes of such defection — deficient, not efficient causes — is like trying to see darkness or to hear silence. Yet we are familiar with darkness and silence, and we can only be aware of them by means of eyes and ears, but this is not by perception but by absence of perception.”
-City of God, Book XII, Ch. 7

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“...we recognize a God who is supreme and true and therefore we confess his supreme power and foreknowledge. We are not afraid that what we do by an act of will may not be a voluntary act, because God, with his infallible prescience, knew that we should do it.”
-City of God, Book V, Ch. 9


“There are those who use the name ‘destiny’ to refer not to the conjunction of stars at the moment of conception, or birth, or beginning, but to the connected series of causes which is responsible for anything that happens. ...For in-fact they ascribe this orderly series, this chain of causes, to the will and power of the supreme God, who is believed, most rightly and truly, to know all things before they happen and who leaves nothing unordered. From him come all powers, but not all wills.”
-City of God, Book V, Ch. 8

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“Now God supremely exists, and therefore he is the author of every existence which does not exist in this supreme degree. No existence which came from nothing can claim to be equal to him; nothing could exist in any way, if it had not been created by him.”
-City of God, Book XII, Ch. 5


“Forms are of two kinds. There is one sort of form given externally to material substances; potters, for instance, woodworkers, and craftsmen of that kind, fashion and paint forms resembling the bodies of living creatures in the pursuit of their art. There is another kind of form which operates internally; this form supplies the efficient causes, and it derives from a secret and hidden decision of a living and intelligent nature, which, being itself uncreated, is responsible for the creation not only of the natural, physical forms, but also of the souls of living creatures. The first kind of form may be ascribed to the artist or craftsman concerned; the second belongs to God alone, who alone is artist, maker, and creator. He needed no material from the world, nor help from angels, when he made the world itself, and created the angels.”
-City of God, Book XII, Ch. 26

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“...everything which happens was always so in the past, will be the same again in the future, and is happening now across the world;...each of us lives only the present moment, and the present moment is all we lose.”
-Meditations, 12.26


“Remind yourself too that each of us lives only in the present moment, a mere fragment of time: the rest is life past or uncertain future.”
-Meditations, 3.10

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“‘No nature is inferior to art’: in-fact the arts imitate the variety of natures. If that is so, then the most perfect and comprehensive of all natures could not be surpassed by any artistic invention. Now all arts create the lower in the interests of the higher: so this is the way of universal nature too.”
-Meditations, 11.10


“Everything in any way beautiful has its beauty of itself, inherent and self-sufficient: praise is no part of it. At any rate, praise does not make anything better or worse. This applies even to the popular conception of beauty, as in material things or works of art. So does the truly beautiful need anything beyond itself? No more than law, no more than truth, no more than kindness or integrity. Which of these things derives its beauty from praise, or withers under criticism? Does an emerald lose its quality if it is not praised? And what of gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a dagger, a flower, a bush?”
-Meditations, 4.20