I find Augustines rundown of these sources of sins fascinating, as he does not simply recite dangers and examples. He does not condemn them like a vengeful preacher.
Instead, he highlights how people who commit these sins are looking for something, and have a certain rational behind what they do.
But they will not find what […]

Book 2, Chapter 2, 2
Still I did not keep the moderate way of the love of mind to mind - the bright path of friendship. Instead, the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh, and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and overcast my heart […]

Book 1, Chapter 18, 28
After Augustine tells how he wasted his talents on vanities such as reciting poetry (not because it was poetry, but because it was pagan fiction), he offers an explanation as to why he did so.

But it is no wonder that I was thus carried toward vanity and was estranged from thee, […]

Book 1, Ch. 13, 21
Yes, I am still “reflecting” on the same section of The Confessions as the previous Reflection. Not my fault. Blame Augustine.
He continues to lament that he wept for the characters in fictional stories while not regarding his own depraved state.
For my own condition I shed no tears, though […]

Book 1, Ch. 13, 21
Augustine poses a question to God, as he is usually inclined to do.
For what can be more wretched than the wretch who has no pity upon himself, who sheds tears over Dido, dead for the love of Aeneas, but who sheds no tears for his own death in not loving thee…
What […]