My books testify to what I got done there in writing, which was not hopefully devoted to your service, though in this pause it was still as if I were panting from my exertions in the school of pride.

And so on the ninth day of her sickness, in the fifty-sixth year of her life and the thirty-third of mine, that religious and devote soul was set loose from the body.

I was then left destitute of a great comfort in her, and my soul was stricken; and that life was torn apart, as it were, which had been made but one out of hers and mine together.

Context for Book 9 Quotes

Book 9 is the final Book of the autobiographical part of the Confessions. It recounts some of the events directly following Augustine's conversion: his retirement from his secular post, his baptism with Alypius and Adeodatus, a shared vision with Monica at Ostia just before her death, and a section of praise for her.