Category: BEST OF

  • When the blessed Arsenius was about to deliver his spirit the brethren saw him weeping, and they said unto him, “Are you also afraid, O father?” And he said unto them, “The dread of this hour has been with me in very truth from the time when I became a monk, and was afraid.” And so he died.

    Abba Arsenius – The Tutor of the Emperor’s Sons

  • The first sign of pride is to measure the other by your yardstick
    by Archpriest Sergei Filimonov.

    Why do we show dissatisfaction with others? Why are we annoyed with them or are angry? There are several reasons for this. First, we measure another person with our yardstick. When we are healthy, when our heart beats smoothly, normal pressure, when both eyes see and both knees bend, we can not understand another person who feels bad. Our character is equal, but maybe that person is a choleric person, or vice versa – he is calmer and more pragmatic than we are.

    “I”, which reigns in our heart, makes us look at other people through the prism of our own physical, mental and spiritual properties, and we involuntarily consider ourselves a stencil, a model for others. From this, a storm begins in my soul: I do, but he does not; I do not get tired, but he complains that he is tired; I sleep five hours, and you see, eight hours are not enough for him; I work tirelessly, but he shirks and early leaves to sleep. This is characteristic of a proud person; namely the proud says: “Why am I doing this, but he does not? Why do I keep it, but he does not? Why can I, but he can not cope? ”

    But the Lord created all people different. Each of us has our own life, our own way of life, our life situations. Well-fed does not understand, a healthy patient will never understand. A person who does not pass through troubles and temptations will not understand the grieving person. A happy father will not understand an orphaned child who has lost his father. The bride will not understand the divorced. A person who has parents alive will not understand the one who just buried his mother. One can theorize, but there is a practice of life. We often do not have life experience, and when we start to find it, we remember those who were condemned, with whom we were strict. We did not understand what this man was feeling. We tried to edify him, but he was not up to remarks. His hands sank with grief, his soul was mourning, he did not need moral teachings and high-flown words. All he needed was sympathy, compassion and consolation, but we did not understand it. And when the Lord conducts us through the same, we begin to feel what the other person felt.

    Here is one of the signs of pride – we measure other people by our yardstick. When we do this, it shows that there is no magnanimity in us. And all that is needed is to try not to condemn another person, not to be irritated, but to accept him as he is. But it is difficult.

  • “Live at home like a traveler.”

    —Henry David Thoreau

  • There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive after perfection. One day it came into his mind to make a staff. Having considered that in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter, he said to himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though I should do nothing else in my life. He proceeded instantly to the forest for wood, being resolved that it should not be made of unsuitable material; and as he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in their works and died, but he grew not older by a moment. His singleness of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth. As he made no compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance because he could not overcome him.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • Let’s be honest. Christian perspectives are also about social ethics; they’re about the same.

    —Archbishop Angaelos

  • If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer?

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • He told me, with the utmost simplicity and truth, quite superior, or rather inferior, to anything that is called humility, that he was “deficient in intellect.” These were his words. The Lord had made him so, yet he supposed the Lord cared as much for him as for another. “I have always been so,” said he, “from my childhood; I never had much mind; I was not like other children; I am weak in the head. It was the Lord’s will, I suppose.”

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • It would have suggested many things to a philosopher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to know nothing of things in general; yet I sometimes saw in him a man whom I had not seen before, and I did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • He was so simply and naturally humble—if he can be called humble who never aspires—that humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he conceive of it.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • This hunger must be natural, not artificial and provoked.

    —Rev. Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667), The House of Feasting