How we cite our quotes: (Book.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Bodily desire, like a morass, and adolescent sex welling up within me exuded mists which clouded over and obscured my heart, so that I could not distinguish the clear light of true love from the murk of lust. (II.2.1)
We've got two contrasting ideas here that help elucidate one another: love and lust. Augustine's word choices ("mists," "clouded," "murk") tell us that lust is an unclear, confusing, chaotic thing, while love is clear, bright, and full of sunshine and rainbows. By separating love and lust, Augustine makes a distinction between the wants of the body and the wants of the soul—and we have no doubts about which wants are more important to Augustine.
Quote #2
This was the age at which the frenzy gripped me and I surrendered myself entirely to lust, which your law forbids but human hearts are not ashamed to sanction. (II.2.3)
Ah, puberty… or, as Augustine calls it, "the broiling sea of my fornication" (II.2.1). Same difference. Now, the problem is that people generally like sex, and when people like something, they will find reasons to do it. So that's what Augustine means when he says that "human hearts are not ashamed to sanction" sex. Again, we're seeing a tension between earthly things (in this case, laws) and spiritual ones.
Quote #3
I went to Carthage, where I found myself in the midst of a hissing cauldron of lust. (III.1.1)
Sound kind of familiar? This line appears in T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land"—only the translation he uses reads "To Carthage then I came". Augustine finds himself in the big city, and if sex was an issue before, in his little hometown, boy is it everywhere now. Carthage comes to represent vice, especially of the lustful variety. Also, remember way back in Book I.13, when Augustine talks about how much he loves the character Dido because she killed herself for love? Well, she also happened to be from Carthage. Just putting that out there.
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.
Quote #7
For my will was perverse and lust had grown from it, and when I gave in to lust habit was born, and when I did not resist the habit it became a necessity. (VIII.5.1)
Augustine is making lust sound a lot like a drug addiction… or a Pringles commercial. Sex has become such a fixture in Augustine's life that it's threatening his lifelong quest for truth and wisdom.
Quote #8
So these two wills within me, one old, one new, one the servant of the flesh, the other of the spirit, were in conflict and between them they tore my soul apart. (VIII.5.1)
So that conflict Augustine has been alluding to since Book II? He just stated it. Now that he's acknowledged that these two wills are irreconcilable, he can't go on pretending that everything is peachy. His two wills are going to have to duke it out.
Quote #9
But I still postponed my renunciation of this world's joys, which would have left me free to look for that other happiness, the very search for which, let alone its discovery, I ought to have prized above the discovery of all human treasures and kingdoms or the ability to enjoy all the pleasures of the body at a mere nod of the head. (VIII.7.2)
See, now Augustine is getting his priorities straight. Or trying to. He knows that he should renounce this world's joys, but that's easier said than done.
Quote #10
By your grace it will no longer commit in sleep these shameful, unclean acts inspired by sensual images, which lead to the pollution of the body: it will not so much as consent to them. (X.30.2)
To live a chaste life is one thing. But how are you supposed to avoid having unchaste dreams? Answer: by the grace of God, of course. While this might not sound like a very satisfying (ahem) answer, Augustine is getting at the idea that human will is pretty weak. So weak, in fact, that even when we resolve to not give into lust, our brains keep on lusting while we're asleep. So if you can't trust your own brain, you have to trust in God.