Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied, and my concubine being
torn from my side as a hindrance to my marriage, my heart which clave
unto her was torn and wounded and bleeding. And she returned to Afric,
vowing unto Thee never to know any other man, leaving with me my son
by her. But unhappy I, who could not imitate a very woman, impatient
of delay, inasmuch as not till after two years was I to obtain her
I sought not being so much a lover of marriage as a slave to lust,
procured another, though no wife, that so by the servitude of an enduring
custom, the disease of my soul might be kept up and carried on in
its vigour, or even augmented, into the dominion of marriage. Nor
was that my wound cured, which had been made by the cutting away of
the former, but after inflammation and most acute pain, it mortified,
and my pains became less acute, but more desperate.
- St. Augustine, Confessions
descensus Averno facilis est