How we cite our quotes: (Book.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
His celibacy seemed to me the only hardship which he had to bear. (VI.3.1)
Augustine is talking about Ambrose, that holiest of holies, and it's not really clear whether Ambrose himself has expressed to Augustine that his celibacy is hard to bear… or if Augustine is just projecting his own sexual desires onto Ambrose. We're going to surmise that it's the latter. But this comment sure does tell us something about Augustine: that of all the things that a person has to give up when they wish to live a devout life, Augustine finds sex the hardest to renounce. Talk about priorities.
Quote #5
Alypius could not understand how it was that I, of whom he thought so highly, could be so firmly caught in the toils of sexual pleasure as to assert, whenever we discussed the subject, that I could not possibly endure the life of a celibate. When I saw that he was puzzled by my words, I used to defend them by saying that there was a great difference between his own hasty, furtive experience and my enjoyment of a settled way of life. (VI.12.2)
Alypius is not the most sexually experienced person in the world, so he doesn't get what all the hubbub is about. Augustine, on the other hand, has been all but married to the same woman for ten years—that's his "settled way of life." What makes this quote interesting is how Augustine defends his sexual proclivity by making it synonymous not only with marriage, but also with love. Earlier in Book II, Augustine asserts that lust and love are different, and that as a young man he could not distinguish between the two (see II.2). Well, here ya go.
Quote #6
I was impatient at the delay of two years which had to pass before the girl whom I had asked to marry became my wife, and because I was more a slave to lust than a true lover of marriage, I took another mistress, without the sanction of wedlock. (VI.15.1)
Augustine's love life at this point is kind of a train wreck. First, he is peer-pressured into marrying. Then he sends his mistress (and the mother of his child) away to make room for his new wife. Then he gets engaged to a girl who is still too young to even get married. And then, because he didn't think any of this through very well, he ends up taking another mistress. Augustine's lustfulness is causing him to spiral out of control. Remember what he says in Book II about lust being murky, unclear, and chaotic? Preach it, Augustine.