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 IX Quotes

Book IX 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.

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