SO GOOD QUOTES

Author: SO GOOD QUOTES

  • “To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.”

    —Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

  • “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”

    ―Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

  • Besides, with love one can live even without happiness.

    Notes from the Underground
    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  • And most contemptible of all it is that now I am attempting to justify myself to you.

    Notes from the Underground
    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  • Repent before the time comes when your sorrow will not make a difference. You have the opportunity now as long as you live.

    Orthodox Afterlife
    John Habib

  • The question in every life: How to truthfully discern what is from God what is obedience to Him (Lord, what do You want from me?) and what is from “this world” (and from the one behind it)? Questions about one’s calling. My own life is that of a churchman. But every year I feel more and more burdened-from weakness. Or is my real calling something different? I truly suffer from constantly asking myself this question. I live a double life-one consuming the other. Does God want this? Is this the condition of my salvation? When I ask this question, I have no answer. And I am 55!

    What else is needed? Look—all of you who rush about in vain. Do not think that something else is needed. See the fight of light with darkness, the descent into death. It is at the same time the revelation of the power of evil and its destruction. That is where one would find the answer which everyone is seeking and often finding in pitiful idols. Lazarus and Palms: “Rejoice, and again I say rejoice…” at the very beginning of Holy Week and at the same time, the onslaught of darkness. (“I am deeply grieved, even to death…” and

    “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) and of light (“Now the Son of Man has been glorified and God has been glorified in Him…”) up to the bright silence of Holy Saturday. Where else should one search for the solution to problems? Where else can one see, feel the only ray of light which illumines and solves everything?

    What God reveals to people is unheard, impossible, and the tragedy consists of this deafness. And this revelation can no longer penetrate Western life without ripping it apart. What is revealed surpasses and therefore tears apart life-the gift of joy “which nobody will take away from you.” Genuine Christianity is bound to disturb the heart with this tearing-that is the force of eschatology. But one does not feel it in these smooth ceremonies where everything is neat, right, but without eschatological “other worldliness.” This is, maybe, the basic spiritual quality of any bourgeois state of mind. It is closed to the sense of tragedy to which the very existence of God condemns us.

    I don’t know. It’s so difficult to express it, but I clearly feel that here is a different perception of life, and the bourgeois state (religious, theological, spiritual, pious, cultured, etc.) is blind to something essential in Christianity.

    —Alexander Schmemann
    Journals

  • What God Wills or Permits 

    I have heard many people say about everything that comes about: “It was God’s will”, whether the outcome was good or bad. Yet God wants only the best. As for the ills that happen on Earth , they happen against God’s beneficent will. God permits these things to happen because He has generously granted man free will, but God will judge him for it… So that is why the tyrant is free to oppress, the murderer to kill and the thief to steal. All these matters are opposed to God’s good will and He will judge the wrong-doers for them. There is, therefore, a big difference between what God wills and what God permits.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life

  • Do good and forget about it. Don’t seek any reward or praise for it. Don’t expect that the one to whom you have done a good turn will repay you in the same way or give you the same treatment. One thing is sure which is that you have not done good with some expectation of a reward! When you do good just because you love to do good and because you cannot help doing good, then you can be sure that you have done good. Let goodness be a character trait in you. Let it be something spontaneous, which requires no effort just like breathing. If you forget it, God will remind you, here and in eternity. But if you recall it, even if it is only inside you, then you might well lose it…

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life

  • Whoever writes should put in his mind before writing what consequences, effects and reactions are likely to result from it. A piece of writing is something for which one is responsible before, one’s conscience, before God and before its readers. Blessed is the person who writes with his conscience before his pen. And blessed is he whose writing can call forth nobility and not sharp arrows of animosity. No one ought to write and publish without considering the possible reactions to his work, or just to achieve some personal gain.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life

  • It’s easier to ask for money from the poor than from the wealthy.

    —Anton Chekhov