Category: BEST OF

  • In the present life, until one’s final breath, sadness always comes mixed with joy.

    —Elder Joseph the Hesychast

  • We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to the voice saying to us: “I have a gift for you and can’t wait for you to see it!” Imagine.

    Is it possible that our imagination can lead us to the truth of our lives? Yes, it can! The problem is that we allow our past, which becomes longer and longer each year, to say to us: “You know it all; you have seen it all, be realistic; the future will just be a repeat of the past. Try to survive it as best you can.” There are many cunning foxes jumping on our shoulders and whispering in our ears the great lie: “There is nothing new under the sun… don’t let yourself be fooled.”

    When we listen to these foxes, they eventually prove themselves right: our new year, our new day, our new hour become flat, boring, dull, and without anything new.

    So what are we to do? First, we must send the foxes back to where they belong: in their foxholes. And then we must open our minds and our hearts to the voice that resounds through the valleys and hills of our life saying: “Let me show you where I live among my people. My name is ‘God-with-you.’ I will wipe all the tears from your eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone” (Revelation 21:2–5).

    —Henri Nouwen

  • The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd: the longing for impossible things; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else.

    —Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

  • “If you’re going to be weird, be confident about it.”  

    —unknown

  • “Different is better than better.”  

    —Sally 

    “When you can’t win by being better, you can win by being different.”  

    —James Clear

    “Don’t seek to be the best. Seek to be the only.” 

    —Kevin Kelly

    “They’re not the best at what they do—they’re the only ones that do what they do.”

    —Bill Graham

  • “If you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means.”

    — Seneca, Letters from a Stoic


  • I do not avoid movies that have ugliness or wickedness portrayed in them, I avoid movies that stir up my ugly and wicked passions. This distinction is essential. And it may be that a movie or novel that one person finds insightful and beautiful, another will have to avoid because some aspects of it stir up particular passions he or she may struggle with. Each person is different. I myself have found that I cannot at all listen to secular music without it causing terrible problems in my inner life, but I can watch a movie that some might consider inappropriate and it provide fodder for prayerful thought and contemplation for many days.Praying In The Rain,

    More Thoughts on Movies, Holiness, and Brownies
    Fr. Michael Gillis

  • “When you believe in the value you provide so much that you are doing people a disservice by not offering them your services, you’re on track to creating colossal value.”

    —Benjamin P. Hardy

  • “You must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important—do what’s important first.”

    —Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

  • “Welcome words of truth and to never reject criticism uncritically.”

    —St. Mark the Ascetic

    “Are you listening to what I’m saying, or are you just being offended?”

    —Fr. Anthony Messeh

    “Do not excuse yourself or refuse to be corrected by all; listen to every reproof with a serene countenance; think that God utters it.”

    —St. John of the Cross

    If it hurts to hear it, look for the truth in it.

    —@naval

    But if any one’s conscience attacks him, he himself is responsible for it, not my words.

    Saint John Chrysostom, On the Vanity of Riches
    HOMILY TWO
    After Eutropios, having been found outside the church, was taken captive