Confessions of st. Augustine

By common consent the work known as the Confessions of St. Augustine has a special place among the world’s great books. Autobiographical in character, it is not an attempt to tell the story of all the years of the writer’s life, least of all of the outward events of those years. But no writer ever went deeper into his own character and deeds, passed keener judgements upon himself, or revealed himself more fully and more humbly to others… His book is not only a most penetrating psychological study and a unique document for understanding the spiritual and ascetical life, but it is also a storehouse of thought for the philosopher and the theologian, and for others as well. Because of such things it is not to be wondered that this unique book should immediately have found many readers and that more than 1500 years after its publication it still attracts countless readers and affects them deeply. It is assuredly a great book, one of the greatest indeed, great in authorship, great in its diverse but unified subject matter, great in the form into which that subject matter has been cast, great in the end for which it was written, and great in the good effects that it has unfailingly produced… To become familiar with St. Augustine’s Confessions is to make one’s own, to some extent at least, an inexhaustible source of intellectual stimulation, of aesthetic delight, of moral help, and of spiritual enlightenment.