Q0232

Augustine of Hippo

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Take up and read; take up and read.
Thinker Augustine of Hippo
School Patristic Philosophy
Source Confessions VIII.12
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Confessions VIII.12, within the tradition of Patristic Philosophy. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Augustine of Hippo's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Augustine of Hippo. (n.d.). Take up and read; take up and read. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0232

MLA: Augustine of Hippo. “Take up and read; take up and read..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0232.

Chicago: Augustine of Hippo. “Take up and read; take up and read..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0232.

Same thinker

More from Augustine of Hippo

  1. You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
  2. Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
  3. What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I do not know.
  4. Give what you command, and command what you will.
  5. Do not go outside; return into yourself. Truth dwells in the inner man.

All quotations by Augustine of Hippo

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme