SO GOOD QUOTES

What is this whole world, with all its continents, its past, present, and future? What does it amount to? Nothing! I resonate with a statement from one scholar who once said: “When I was a child I saw myself in comparison to the world as a small speck of sand on an endless beach of an endless ocean.” So what if someone lives in any given city within a specific country, which is part of a specific continent, which in turn is a small part of planet Earth, itself just one of innumerable planets? What would that mean? It is nothing. What does this person turn out to be? He says: “When I was a child, I saw myself as a small speck of sand on an endless beach of an endless ocean, but now I know that I am the endless ocean and the whole world is a small speck of sand on my beach.” 

One who sits to think of the world finds that it is frivolous. If you asked him, “What is the world?” he would say, “A small speck of sand on my beach.” And if you asked, “What is your endless beach?” he would reply, “This is the beach leading to eternity.” If you see yourself as the image and likeness of God, then what does this world amount to? With all its noise, struggles, desires, and status, what does the world amount to? Nothing. This is a person’s valuation of the world.

—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Monastic Treasures for All of Us