Augustine of Hippo

A new series of beautiful hardcover nonfiction classics, with covers designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith World-changing ideas meet eye-catching design: the best titles of the extraordinarily successful Great Ideas series are now packaged in Coralie Bickford-Smith’s distinctive, award-winning covers. Whether on a well-curated shelf or in your back pocket, these timeless works of philosophical, political, and psychological thought are absolute must-haves for book collectors as well as design enthusiasts. The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Augustine spent his early years torn between conflicting faiths and worldviews. His Confessions, written when he was in his forties, recount how, slowly and painfully, he came to turn away from his youthful ideas and licentious lifestyle, to become instead an ardent devotee of Christianity and one of its most influential thinkers. A remarkably honest and revealing spiritual autobiography touching on issues relevant to people of all faiths, the Confessions also address fundamental issues of Christian doctrine, and many of the prayers and meditations it includes are still an integral part of the practice of Christianity today. In his insightful introduction, R. S. Pine-Coffin discusses Saint Augustine’s intentions in writing his Confessions and issues of translation. This edition also includes a list of dates of events recorded in the Confessions. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Confessions

Zeke Taylor

I lived in misery, like every man whose soul is tethered by the love of things that cannot last and then is agonized to lose them.

“Our conversation” = conversation with his mother, near to the day of her death, though no sickness is mentioned in the context of their conversation.

They were specifically talking about saints in heaven, not the saints on earth

Our conversation led us to the conclusion that no bodily pleasure, however great it might be and whatever earthly light might shed lustre upon it, was worthy of comparison, or even of mention, beside the happiness of the life of the saints.

Confessions quotes

Join the club