The angels surround and help the priest when he is celebrating Mass.
Saint AugustineRead
In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.
Interpretation
The true nature of individuals is revealed by their passions and affections.
Saint Augustine's quote emphasizes that understanding a person's character can be achieved by observing their loves and what they hold dear. The things that individuals are most passionate about reveal their values, priorities, and ultimately their true selves.
In practice
In a leadership workshop discussing team values, one might quote Augustine to illustrate the importance of understanding team members' passions.
The angels surround and help the priest when he is celebrating Mass.
There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing.
Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.
Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart.
Whatever skills I have acquired, whatever gifts I have been given, I place them at Your service.
Everyone who observes himself doubting observes a truth, and about that which he observes he is certain; therefore he is certain about a truth. Everyone therefore who doubts whether truth exists has in himself a truth on which not to doubt.... Hence one who can doubt at all ought not to doubt the existence of truth.
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.
If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!
The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.
We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.
If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest.
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