Category: AVARICE & ALMSGIVING & MINIMALISM

  • For he who cannot restrain his desires, even if he should be surrounded by every kind of possessions, how can he ever be rich? Those, indeed, who are satisfied with their own property, enjoying what they have, and not casting a covetous eye on the substance of others, even if they be, as to means, of all men the most limited, ought to be regarded as the most affluent. For he who does not desire other people’s possessions, but is willing to be satisfied with his own, is the wealthiest of all.

    —St. John Chrysostom, On Wealth and Poverty

  • …even should he lie beside rivers and streams; For what is the use of this abundance of water while his thirst is unquenched?

    —St. John Chrysostom, On Wealth and Poverty

  • The one who is a stranger here will be a citizen up there; the one who is a stranger here will not be happy to live among present realities, will not be concerned for dwellings, money, food, anything else of that kind. Instead, just as people living in foreign parts do everything and busy themselves with a view to their return to their homeland, and daily strive to see the land that bore them, so too those in love with future realities are neither dejected by present griefs nor buoyed up by success, but ignore both like a traveler on the road.

    —St. John Chrysostom

  • How do you benefit if, for example, you begin to sleep on a hard mattress but instead indulge in warm baths?

    Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth
    Tito Colliander

  • “People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.”

    —Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

  • “There is your brother, naked, crying, and you stand there confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering.”

    — St. Ambrose of Milan

  • Now while the blood is hot you should make your way with vigor to better things. In this kind of life you will find much that is worth your study: the love and practice of the virtues, the forgetfulness of the passions, the knowledge of how to live and die, and a life of deep tranquility.

    Indeed the state of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but the most wretched are those who are toiling not even at their own preoccupations, but must regulate their sleep by another’s, and their walk by another’s pace, and obey order in those freest of all things, loving and hating. If such people want to know how short their lives are, let them reflect how small a portion is their own.

    So, when you see a man repeatedly wearing the robe of office, or one whose name is often spoken in the Forum, do not envy him: these things are won at the cost of life.

    —Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

  • Feeble old men pray for a few more years; they pretend they are younger than they are; they comfort themselves by this deception and fool themselves as eagerly as if they fooled Fate at the same time. But when at last some illness has reminded them of their mortality, how terrified do they die, as if they were not just passing out of life but being dragged out of it. They exclaim that they were fools because they have not really lived, and that if only they can recover from this illness they will live in leisure. Then they reflect how pointlessly they acquired things they never would enjoy, and how all their toil has been in vain. But for those whose life is far removed from all business it must be amply long. None of it is frittered away, none of it scattered here and there, none of it committed to fortune, none of it lost through carelessness, none of it wasted on largesse, none of it superfluous: the whole of it, so to speak, is well invested. So, however short, it is fully sufficient, and therefore whenever his last day comes, the wise man will not hesitate to meet death with a firm step.

    —Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

  • In case you think I am simply using the teaching of philosophers to make light of the trails of poverty, which no one feels to be a burden unless he thinks it that, first consider that by far the greater proportion of men are poor, but you will not see them looking at all more gloomy and anxious than the rich. In fact, I rather suspect that they are happier in proportion as their minds have less to harry them.

    —Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

  • 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