Augustine's Confessions

If I were going to add a name to the blog to represent the theological side of our musings, it might very well be Augustine. I don't agree with him on everything, but his insight, his honesty, and his heart are staggering. I'm terribly fascinated by his Confessions, and, intellectual work aside, consider that his was the first autobiography, the first manuscript written in a painfully honest, introspective style. I've heard it said that until Augustine no one had considered so personal a story worth telling. It's kind of like Don Quixote being the first modern novel and establishing a genre we can't really imagine being without.

Here are a couple of nuggets from F.J. Sheed's translation of the Latin:

But amongst these vices and crimes and countless iniquities are the sins into which men fall although they are in general on the right way. By those who judge rightly, these sins are blamed according to the rule of perfection, but the person themselves may still be praised for the hope of a better harvest, as the blade gives hope of the growing corn.

And here's another that I include for the vividness of the language. I'd like to know to say somethin' like this in Latin.

For swelling and undigested discord often belches forth bitter words when in the venom of intimate conversations with a present friend hatred at its rawest is breathed upon an absent enemy.

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That's a mouthful, and not a delicious one at that.