SO GOOD QUOTES

Author: SO GOOD QUOTES

  • “The simple person is transparent.  He doesn’t know how to be two different people.”

    Simplicity in relationship to my neighbor means that I am towards others as I am towards God. I don’t have two faces, or three faces, or four faces, but what you see is what you get. Exactly how I am in my room alone with God is exactly how I am in public. I don’t know how to be different.  I don’t know how to wear a mask. I don’t know how to pretend to be this for that person and this for that person and this for God. The simple person is transparent.  He doesn’t know how to be two different people.

    —Fr Kyrillos Ibrahim


    He who is precise is not only meticulous when he is among people but even more so when he is alone in his private room. Precision is relatively easy in the presence of people because by nature we do not like to be criticized by others and fear exposing our faults and weaknesses before them. That is why the true criterion of our precision is made manifest when we are alone, seen by no one. If we are precise when we are alone, then it is a true precision without hypocrisy.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Characteristics of the Spiritual Path

    Whoever gives importance to decency within his own room will no doubt act decently outside. He who, in his own private room, is too embarrassed to act indecently on account of the spirits of the angels and the saints, will no doubt proceed with decency in front of other people. Decency becomes one of his characteristics. On the other hand, whoever does not care to sit modestly in his private room will not mind sitting the same way in front of other people.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity

    We must reconcile our way of life within the Church and our way of life outside it, so that they proceed along the same line without any contradictions. 

    It is not good for a person to have two personalities: one for the House of God and another for the world. 

    The righteous person is always the same, he does not wear a different face for each different occasion.

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

    “Act, in whatever you do, as you would act if anyone at all were looking on; because solitude prompts us to all kinds of evil.”

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

    “For as I am outside, so I am within.”

    —Abba John Colobos

  • Respect the opinion of the person with whom you speak, no matter how much you disagree.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III

  • You are angry with your neighbour, your brother, and say of him: “He is such and such—a miser, malicious, proud,” or that he has done this and that, and so on. What is that to you? He sins against God, and not against you. God is his Judge, not you: unto God he shall answer for himself, not to you. Know yourself, how sinful you are yourself, what a beam you have in your own eye; how difficult it is for you to master and get the better of your own sins; how afflicted you yourself are by them; how they have ensnared you—how you wish for indulgence from others towards your own infirmities. And your brother is a man like you; therefore you must be indulgent to him as to a sinful man, similar in everything to yourself, as infirm as you; love him, then, as yourself, listening to the Lord saying: “These things I command you, that ye love one another”. [John 15.17]

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • “No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else.”

    —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  • If your mood and motivation are low, are telling you not to act, that’s all the more reason to act. Yes, feeling good can lead to action, but action can also lead to feeling good.

    —Brad Stulberg, Mood Follows Action

  • “We take others to task for small mistakes, and overlook greater ones in ourselves.”

    —Thomas à Kempis

  • The perfect person does not only try to avoid evil. Nor does he do good for fear of punishment, still less in order to qualify for the hope of a promised reward. The perfect person does good through love. His actions are not motivated by desire for personal benefit, so he does not have personal advantage as his aim. But as soon as he has realized the beauty of doing good, he does it with all his energies and in all that he does. He is not interested in fame, or a good reputation, or a human or divine reward. The rule of life for a perfect person is to be in the image and likeness of God.

    —St. Clement of Alexandria, A Perfect Person’s Rule of Life

  • “If you do not feel like praying, you have to force yourself. The Holy Fathers say that prayer with force is higher than prayer unforced. You do not want to, but force yourself. The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force (Matt. 11:12).”

    —St. Ambrose of Optina

  • “Prayer is a great blessing…both when we receive what we ask and when we do not receive it. For when He gives and when He does not give, He does it for your good. Thus when you receive what you ask, it is quite clear that you have received it; but when you do not receive it, you also receive, because you thus do not receive what is undoubtedly harmful for you; and not to receive what is harmful means to be granted what is useful. So whether you receive what you ask or not, give thanks to God in the belief that God would have always given us what we ask were it not often better for us not to receive it… Prayer is a great weapon, a rich treasure, a wealth that is never exhausted, an undisturbed refuge, a cause of tranquility, the root of a multitude of blessings and their source.”

    —St. John Chrysostom

  • “It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

    —Wendell Berry, “Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms”