SO GOOD QUOTES

Author: SO GOOD QUOTES

  • In order to deceive melancholy, you must keep moving. Once you stop, it wakens, if in fact it has ever dozed off.

    —Emil Cioran

  • You taught me to exist without gratitude.
    You ruined my manners toward God:
    “We’re here simply to wait for death;
    the pleasures of earth are overrated.”

    …

    Coarse, mean, you’ll put your feet
    on the coffee table, lean back,
    and turn me into someone who can’t
    take the trouble to speak; someone
    who can’t sleep, or who does nothing
    but sleep; can’t read, or call
    for an appointment for help.

    There is nothing I can do
    against your coming.
    When I awake, I am still with thee.

    HAVING IT OUT WITH MELANCHOLY
    by Jane Kenyon

  • …noonday devil and described with great precision this state in which the monk, after having known the spiritual consolations of starting out, begins to doubt his spiritual journey. It is the great doubt: Had he not after all been abused? What good has it served spending all this time in the desert? He no longer finds any pleasure in the liturgy or religious observances. God seems nothing more than a projection, a fantasy or a childish notion. Would it not be better, therefore, simply to abandon solitude altogether, to be of some use in the world, to do something? At times this noonday devil will incite this chaste and sober person to catch up on lost time especially in regard to sensuality and strong drink.

    In his theory of individuation, C.G. Jung describes very accurately this moment of crisis, when a person in mid-life finds his or her whole life put into question. It is a time when repressed material can suddenly manifest itself with violence. But it can also mark a crucial moment of passage towards a deeper integration. The values of having are substituted for those of Being. From now on the person’s life is no longer oriented towards the affirmation of the ego, but towards this ego taking second place and being integrated into that archetype of wholeness, which Jung called the Self.

    It is a particularly difficult time. All the former supports and certainties fall by the wayside, and nothing seems to be taking the place of this collapsing edifice. If the person seeks help or consolation, it only heightens the despair, the feeling of complete unknowing to which one seems condemned.

    For this affliction, the desert fathers counsel much prayer. One is capable of little else. Their suggestion of manual labour won’t be of great relief. Nevertheless, it is necessary to occupy the mind with simple tasks and to live in the present moment without looking either to the past or to the future. The pain of each day suffices. It becomes a question of holding firm at the heart of the anguish. It is a time for fidelity.

    Being Still: Reflections on an Ancient Mystical Tradition
    Jean-Yves Leloup

  • Despondency [athymia] is for souls a grievous torture chamber, unspeakably painful, more fierce and bitter than every ferocity and torment. It imitates the poisonous worm that attacks not only the body but also the soul, and not only the bones but also the mind. It is a continual executioner who not only tears in pieces one’s torso but also mutilates the strength of one’s soul.

    —St John Chrysostom, Letters to Saint Olympia

  • When, however, we begin to become aware of the thoughts’ power and their activity, we must not grow despon­dent. A prerequisite for spiritual healing is a right perception of our illness, and inasmuch as we are held captive by uncontrolled thoughts, we are spiritually ill.

    Bishop Irenei Steenberg
    The Beginnings of a Life of Prayer p.98

  • Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind, the Misanthrope flies from it: He resolves to become an Hermit, and buries himself in the Cavern of some gloomy Rock. While Hate inflames his bosom, possibly He may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which He bore with him to his solitude, think you that Content becomes his Companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, He feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the Universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and He pants to return to that world which He has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some Rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, He views without emotion the glory of the setting Sun. Slowly He returns to his Cell at Evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of Moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former.

    The Monk
    Matthew Lewis

  • A source of spiritual death, despair can also lead a man to suicide: inciting him to no longer expect anything from life, it implants ideas of suicide in his soul and prompts him to accomplish them. In explaining this matter, St. John Chrysostom maintained the possibility of a demonic influence, but stressed that it was not the only cause, as he wished to once again insist on the responsibility of the individual himself. ‘These baneful thoughts’ he wrote to Stagirius, do not only come from the demon; your own melancholy is also very much to blame. Yes, indeed, this dark sadness even more than the evil spirit provokes these thoughts, and perhaps they are the only cause. It is certain that some individuals, quite apart from any demonic obsession, suffer from this mania for suicide after excessive suffering.

    Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
    Jean-Claude Larchet

  • One can say that every state of sadness in the soul is in every circumstance a sign of demonic activity. ‘Everything that causes distress and sadness comes from the demons,’ reiterates this great elder [St. Barsanuphius].

    Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
    Jean-Claude Larchet

  • Sadness (lupe) appears to be a state of soul which, beside the simple meaning of the word, involves discouragement, debility, psychic heaviness and sorrow, dejection, distress, oppression, and depression most often accompanied by anxiety and even with anguish.

    This condition can have many causes, but it always involves a pathological reaction of the soul’s irascible (thumos) and/or despairing faculty (epithumia), and as such is essentially tied to concupiscence or anger. ‘Sadness,’ Evagrius tells us, ‘tends to come up at times because of the deprivation of one’s desires (steresis ton epithumion). On other occasions, it accompanies anger. But it can also be a result of the direct action of demons on the soul, or it may even arise for no apparent reason.

    First Cause—The Frustration of Desires

    Evagrius tells us ‘Sadness is formed from an unsatisfied carnal desire.’ St. John Cassian likewise notes that sadness ‘sometimes results when we see ourselves deceived with regard to some hope,’ and that one of its chief kinds follows from ‘a desire that has been thwarted.’ In that ‘every desire is tied to a passion,’ every passion is prone to produce sadness. According to Evagrius: ‘whoever loves the world will often be sad.’

    Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
    Jean-Claude Larchet

  • First of all we observe that they [the Fathers] ate and slept very little.

    Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
    Jean-Claude Larchet