“Despondency comes from anger and desire—anger at what we have, and desire for what we don’t have.”
—Evagrius of Ponticus
Category: ANGER
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Confusion, frustration, depression, spite. Confusion about what I am supposed to do, frustration at my conditions, depression at feeling frustrated and confused, and a general spitefulness towards the world and all people. Every day. Only going for walks and writing in this pedantic notebook help, a little.
—Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation: On Pessimism -
“A lot of the people we admire the most are the loneliest, weirdest, strangest, most miserable people ever.”
—Sarah Peck -
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 -
we want to keep ourselves from putting blame for our misfortune on anybody else, no matter how obviously it may appear to be the fault of another person. Misfortune is meant to give us a bigger purpose than looking for someone to blame. It is to draw our attention to God and our need for God to bring us to repentance.
—Dee Pennock, God’s Path to Sanity
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“It seems we don’t know how to love the ones we love until they disappear from our lives.”
—Joshua Fields Millburn, Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists -
You can’t resent other people because you let yourself down. But you can try.
—John Tottenham -
Sometimes we ask, “Why is he treating me in this manner? Why this injustice?” This question itself is wrong. It will produce within us some kind of anger and intolerance. Therefore, we, as children of God, must program ourselves to endure injustice because of conscience toward God.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Endure Injustice
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What does “enduring because of conscience toward God” mean? While you can talk back politely to the one speaking with you, or you can answer “eye for eye, and tooth for tooth,” or you can ignore them completely and not answer them, or any other kind of reaction, here however he is saying to you: “For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully” Then he continues, saying, “For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently?” That is to say, if I did something wrong, and then someone yelled at me, and I remain silent and endure it, here I deserve it because I had done something wrong. Then he goes on to say, “But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God,” meaning that, if I am walking uprightly, and then someone rebukes me or yells at me, and I take it patiently, this is commendable before God.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Endure Injustice
SO GOOD QUOTES 