SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: BEST OF

  • Have you ever found yourself in the presence of someone who fills you with light and good? In that presence, have you perhaps simultaneously felt somehow exposed and ashamed? You don’t even have to exchange words with someone like that, to know that you are in the presence of holiness. People—or places—that are pure, transparent, holy can simultaneously inspire and expose us. They give us an inkling of what it might feel like to experience the presence of God. Can we endure that degree of love and beauty?

    —Peter Bouteneff, How to Be a Sinner

  • Because they understood vainglory to be a recurrent and serious problem, the early Fathers recommended several practical strategies against it—most of which did not involve sneaking off and slandering yourself before city officials. For example, you could try to avoid excessive attachment to glory by avoiding any attachments to human opinion at all. So one Desert Father offers this advice on how to make “death to the world” one’s spiritual vocation: A brother came to see Abba Macarius the Egyptian, and said to him, “Abba, give me a word.” So the old man said, “Go to the cemetery and abuse the dead.” The brother went there, abused them and threw stones at them; then he returned and told the old man about it. The latter said to him, “Didn’t they say anything to you?” He replied, “No.” The old man said, “Go back tomorrow and praise them.” So the brother went away and praised them, calling them “Apostles, saints, and righteous men.” He returned to the old man and said to him, “I have complimented them.” And the old man said to him, “Did they not answer you?” The brother said no. The old man said to him, “You know how you insulted them and they did not reply, and how you praised them and they did not speak; so you too if you wish to be saved must do the same and become a dead man. Like the dead, take no account of either the scorn of men or their praises.”

    —Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Vainglory: The Forgotten Vice

  • Millions of people who are in hell wish for a few moments of life that you have, in which to repent.

    They have lost the chance, and the door has been closed.  How about you, my brother? You have all of this life. Don’t you think about repentance, and grab the chance? As the apostle said, “redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:16)

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity

  • Likewise we ought to read simple and devout books as willingly as learned and profound ones. We ought not to be swayed by the authority of the writer, whether he be a great literary light or an insignificant person, but by the love of simple truth. We ought not to ask who is speaking, but mark what is said. Men pass away, but the truth of the Lord remains forever. God speaks to us in many ways without regard for persons.

    —Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

  • When do you know that your heart has become pure? When you consider all people to be good, and when no one seems impure or defiled to you, then you are truly pure of heart.

    —St. Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Treatises

  • “If you desire salvation, you must be like the dead. You must think nothing of the wrongs men do to you, nor of the praises they offer you. Be like the dead. Thus you may be saved.”

    —Saint Macarius the Great

  • One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons—marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.

    —C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

  • Offer to those who visit you what is necessary both for the body and for the spirit. If they are wiser than we are, let us show our philosophy by silence. And if they are brethren following the same way of life, let us open the door of speech to them in due measure. Yet it is better to regard all as superior to us.

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • If any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him. For you are worse than he thinks you to be.

    — Charles Spurgeon

  • Never allow yourself boldly to judge your neighbour; judge and condemn no one, especially for the particular bodily sin of which we are speaking. If someone has manifestly fallen into it, rather have compassion and pity for him. Do not be indignant with him or laugh at him, but let his example be a lesson in humility to you; realising that you too are extremely weak and as easily moved to sin as dust on the road, say to yourself: ‘He fell today, but tomorrow I shall fall.’

    —Lorenzo Scupoli, Unseen Warfare