"All my empty dreams suddenly lost their charm and my heart began to throb with a bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal truth. I began to climb out of the depths to which I had sunk, in order to return to you.
My God, how I burned with longing to have wings to carry me back to you, away from all earthly things, although I had no idea what you would do with me! For yours is the wisdom. ( Job 12:13)
In Greek the word "philosophy" means "love of wisdom", and it was this love that ... inflamed me.
...the only thing that pleased me... to love wisdom itself, whatever it might be, and to search for it, pursue it, hold it, and embrace it firmly.
...I ought not to have been content with what the philosophers said... even when they spoke the truth. I should have passed beyond them for love of you, my good Father, in whom all beauty has its source.
Truth! Truth! How the very marrow of my soul within me yearned for it...
My hunger and thirst were not even for the greatest of your works, but for you, my God, because you are Truth itself with whom there can be no change, no swerving from your course. (James 1:17)
You are the life of souls, the life of lives. You live, O Life of my soul, because you are life itself, immutable."
- Augustine's Confessions, from a time when he was nineteen years of age.
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