The Confessions

by Augustine of Hippo · 400

Augustine's intimate account of his sins, restless searching, and conversion, addressed to God. The first great Western autobiography.

Books that mention The Confessions (8)

• The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: “the account he gives in the Confessions is premature”
• The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides: “Parts of Saint Augustine's Confessions, especially the information about his self-pleasuring youth”
• Contact by Carl Sagan: Chapter epigraph: "—AUGUSTINE Confessions, II, 3"
• Don Juan by George Gordon Byron: “But how faith is acquired, and then ensured, So well not one of the aforesaid paints As Saint Augustine in his fine Confessions, Which make the reader envy his transgressions.”
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon: “My personal acquaintance with the bishop of Hippo does not extend beyond the Confessions, and the City of God.”
• The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: “307. V. St. Augustine’s Confessions: “to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.””
• The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton: “A mere temptation is our life, (Austin, confess. lib. 10. cap. 28,)”
• An Inquiry into the Good by Nishida Kitarō: “Augustine also says, 'God's will is unchanging; He does not will at one time and not at another, much less reverse an earlier decision later' (The Confessions, XII. 15). [auto-translated]”