"O my God! What miseries and mockeries did I then experience when it was impressed on me that obedience to my teachers…"

"We were sinning by writing or reading or studying less than our assigned lessons. For I did not, O Lord, lack memory …"

"I disobeyed them, not because I had chosen a better way, but from a sheer love of play. I loved the vanity of victory…"

"But why, then, did I dislike Greek learning, which was full of such tales? For Homer was skillful in inventing such p…"

"The Catholic faith, … I now realized could be maintained without presumption. This was especially true after I had he…"

"Woe unto you, O torrent of human custom! Who shall stay your course? When will you ever run dry? How long will you ca…"

"I do not blame the words [of fiction], for they are, as it were, choice and precious vessels, but I do deplore the wi…"

"What is it now to me, O my true Life, my God, that my declaiming was applauded above that of many of my classmates an…"

"I was delighted with Cicero’s exhortation, at least enough so that I was stimulated by it, and enkindled and inflamed…"

"In Greek the love of wisdom is called “philosophy,” and it was with this love that that book inflamed me. There are s…"