An open library of thought
Seek truth by turning inward, then beyond.
Truth is sought by turning from external things into the mind and then beyond it, toward an unchangeable light that the mind does not produce but by which it judges.
In Book 10 of the Confessions, Augustine searches the vast halls of memory to ask where God can be found.
Evil is not a substance or a rival principle but the lack or corruption of a good; moral evil comes from a will that turns from a higher good to a lower one.
In Book 2 of the Confessions, an adolescent theft of pears done for no gain becomes a study of wanting the forbidden for its own sake.
Two loves make two cities: love of self reaching to contempt of God, and love of God reaching to contempt of self. In history they are mixed within the same institutions and persons.
Book 14 of The City of God closes by contrasting the city that glories in itself with the city that glories in the Lord.
Past and future do not exist outside the mind; we measure time in the soul, which stretches across memory of the past, attention to the present and expectation of the future.
Reciting a psalm, the mind holds what it has already said in memory and what remains to be said in expectation.