Laudator Temporis Acti

Augustine, Sermons 241.3 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 1135; tr. Edmund Hill):

Just fancy, all these dumb and irrational animals those ever so great wise men made into gods for themselves! I was criticizing you when you were worshiping the image of a man; what am I to do with you, when you worship the image of a dog, the image of a snake, the image of a crocodile? Yes, they ended up with that sort of thing. The higher they were carried up to the heights in their search, the deeper they were plunged into the depths in their fall. What falls from a height, after all, sinks all the deeper.

Omnia quippe ista muta animalia et irrationabilia, illi quasi magni sapientes, deos sibi fecerunt. Reprehendebam, quando adorabas imaginem hominis: quid tibi faciam, quando adoras imaginem canis, imaginem colubri, imaginem crocodili? Pervenerunt usque ad ista. Quantum quaerentes in superna evecti sunt, tantum cadentes in profunda demersi sunt. Altius enim mergitur, quod de alto cadit.

On the last sentence, which has a proverbial ring, cf. Renzo Tosi, Dictionnaire des sentences latines et grecques, tr. Rebecca Lenoir (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2010), #160, pp. 157-158 (Quanto altius ascenderit homo, lapsus tanto altius cadet).