Category: ANGER

  • The criterion of my spiritual health is this: what is the state of relations between me and those with whom I live? No other criterion is higher. Family life is the measuring stick of Christian progress for those who live in the world.

    ―Sister Magdalen, Children in the Church Today: An Orthodox Perspective

  • Stay inside your commitments and your family—they will teach you where life is found and what love means.

    —Ronald Rolheiser, Domestic Monastery

  • Capriciousness is the germ of the corruption of the heart, the rust of the heart, the moth of love, the seed of evil, and an abomination to the Lord.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion. There’s something seriously wrong with you. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? “He is to blame, she is to blame. She’s got to change.” No! The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you.

    ― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

  • 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.

    God’s Path to Sanity
    Dee Pennock

  • 90. The man who lives devoutly does not allow evil to slip into his soul; and, no evil being present, his soul is safe from danger and harm. Such a man is dominated neither by demon nor by fate, for God delivers him from all evil and, protected like a god, he lives unharmed. If he is praised, he laughs within himself at those who praise him; if he is execrated, he does not defend himself against those who mock him, and he never gets angry at what they say.

    —St Anthony the Great
    On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life
    One Hundred and Seventy Texts

  • 69. We should not become angry with those who sin, even if what they do is criminal and deserves punishment. On the contrary, for the sake of justice we ought to correct and, if need be, punish them ourselves or get others to do so. But we should not become angry or excited; for anger acts only in accordance with passion, and not in accordance with good judgment and justice. Moreover, we should not approve those who show more mercy than is proper. The wicked must be punished for the sake of what is good and just, but not as a result of the personal passion of anger.

    —St Anthony the Great
    On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life
    One Hundred and Seventy Texts

  • 65. Nothing is more precious to man than intelligence. Its power is such as to enable us to adore God through intelligent speech and thanksgiving. By contrast, when we use futile or slanderous speech we condemn our soul. Now it is characteristic of an obtuse man to lay the blame for his sins on the conditions of his birth or on something else, while in fact his words and actions are evil through his own free choice.

    —St Anthony the Great
    On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life
    One Hundred and Seventy Texts

  • Just as the dolphin stirs and swims about when the visible sea is still and calm, so also, when the sea of the heart is tranquil and still from wrath and anger, mysteries and divine revelations are stirred in her at all times to delight her.

    —St. Isaac the Syrian

  • “Hurt people hurt people, but hurt people heal people, too.”

    —Fr. Paul Girguis