Category: BEST OF

  • “If you’re willing to take the blame when you deserve it, people will give you the responsibility.”

    —Gretchen Rubin

  • “Lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth.”

    —Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  • I decided quite a long time ago that when I write, I will only write that which is meaningful to me personally. If it happens to be meaningful to someone else, this is encouraging and provides the reason for continuing to maintain this blog.

    —Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov, Putting My Mouth Where My Writing Is

  • Nevertheless, true fidelity towards a person may on occasion impose on us the duty to withdraw altogether from contact with him. In the case where he would constitute a threat to our fidelity to God, and when we on the other hand feel powerless to help him, our breaking off relations with him is still consistent with our true fidelity towards him: it is destined to promote his spiritual good as well as our own, and is therefore involved in our very love for him so far as love in a higher and ultimate sense implies, above all, responsibility.

    Transformation in Christ
    Dietrich von Hildebrand

  • Do not do anything without signing yourself with the sign of the Cross! When you depart on a journey, when you begin your work, when you go to study, when you are alone, and when you are with other people, seal yourself with the Holy Cross.” 

    —Elder Cleopa of Sihastria

  • You lash out at other people for enjoying indulgences that you will never let yourself enjoy.

    —Heather Havrilesky, Ask Polly: ‘I’ve Lost My Joy and I Want It Back!’

  • Some people ask if help is needed. And others just help. The former act as good people, and the latter are likened to Christ.

    —Monk Simeon of Mt. Athos

  • 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

  • “My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others.”

    —Thomas Merton

  • “Love and do as you will.”

    —St. Augustine