SO GOOD QUOTES

Author: SO GOOD QUOTES

  • One Sunday, Met. Anthony Bloom gave a sermon as follows: “Last night a woman with a child came to this church. She was in trousers and with no headscarf. Someone scolded her. She left. I do not know who did that, but I am commanding that person to pray for her and her child to the end of his days to God for their salvation. Because of you, she may not go to church ever again.” He turned around and entered the altar. That was the entire sermon.

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  • “It is impossible to look at the sky with one eye and at the earth with the other.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • God is perfect, He is faultless. And so, when Divine love becomes manifest in us in the fullness of Grace, we radiate this love — not only on the earth, but throughout the entire universe as well. So God is in us, and He is present everywhere. It is God’s all-encompassing love that manifests itself in us. When this happens, we see no difference between people: everyone is good, everyone is our brother, and we consider ourselves to be the worst of men — servants of every created thing.

    —Elder Thaddeus

  • “The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else’s imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!”

    —Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

  • “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

    —Thomas Aquinas

  • St. John Chrysostom somewhere exhibits one man who praises another for his good looks, stateliness, wealth, nice house, his excellent choice horses, etc.; and then directs the following speech to him: “Why haven’t you told me anything about the man himself? All that you have described is not him.”

    —St. Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation

  • “But all these should be at the proper times and in due measure. If they are used at the wrong times and to excess, they are useful for a short time. But what is only useful for a short time, is harmful in the long run.”

    —Evagrius Ponticus

  • No One Is Saved Alone

  • Your wishing should always be free from yourself; that is, you should have no wishes of your own, and if you have a wish it must be such that whether it comes to pass or not, or even if what comes to pass is opposed to it, you are not in the least grieved thereby, but remain serene in spirit, as though you wished absolutely nothing.

    Unseen Warfare
    Lorenzo Scupoli

  • “If you do good, you must do it only for God. For this reason you must pay no attention to the ingratitude of people. Expect a reward not here, but from the Lord in heaven. If you expect it here — it will be in vain and you will endure deprivation.”

    —St. Ambrose of Optina