Fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.
You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
Checked word for word
Si enim fallor, sum.
If I am deceived, I am.
Checked word for word
Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.
What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who asks, I do not know.
Checked word for word
Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi!
Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
Checked word for word
Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.
Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet: his prayer as a young man, told with humour.
Checked word for word
Inde mihi visum est nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem; sed cuius rei, nescio, et mirum, si non ipsius animi.
So it seemed to me that time is nothing but a distension; of what, I do not know, and it would be strange if it were not of the mind itself.
Checked word for word
Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia?
Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robber bands?
Checked word for word
Definitio brevis et vera virtutis ordo est amoris.
A short and true definition of virtue: the order of love.
Checked word for word
Misconceptions
Nuanced
Descartes was the first to say "I think, therefore I am".
Twelve centuries earlier, Augustine wrote "if I am deceived, I am" against the sceptics. In 1641 Arnauld pointed this out to Descartes in the Objections, and Descartes thanked him for "strengthening" him "with the authority of Saint Augustine". The two arguments differ, though: Augustine uses it to rise towards God and the Trinity, Descartes to ground all of science. A 1640 letter by Descartes on this point (to Colvius) is not yet in our corpus.
False
For Augustine, God created evil.
That is exactly what he denies. Everything God created is good; evil is not a thing but a lack of good, as illness is a lack of health. Moral evil comes from the will turning away from the good.
False
Asked "what was God doing before he made the world?", Augustine answered: "preparing hell for the curious".
He quotes this joke in order to reject it: laughing is not answering. His real answer is bolder: time is part of creation, so there was no "before", no "then".
Nuanced
"Love, and do what you will": Augustine allows anything, as long as one loves.
The phrase is his (Homilies on the First Epistle of John, VII, 8, not yet in our corpus). But "love" there means charity, love of another's good: he is speaking of a father who corrects his son out of love. It is not permission to follow one's whims, but the idea that rightly ordered love inspires good actions.