SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: DESPONDENCY

  • Woe to our times: we now depart from the narrow and sorrowful path leading to eternal life and we seek a happy and peaceful path. But the merciful Lord leads many people from this path, against their will, and places them on the sorrowful one. Through unwanted sorrows and illnesses we draw closer to the Lord, for they humble us by constraint, and humility, when we acquire it, can save us even without works, according to St. Isaac the Syrian.

    —St. Macarius of Optina

  • “Therein lies a crucial distinction between Christian hope and optimism. Whereas optimism tries to minimize the darkness, to see the glass half-full rather than half empty, hope folly acknowledges the darkness and the evil, but rests in Gods presence and His faithful promises. In fact—and this is certainly the witness of many saints—it is precisely in those times of darkness that we can become aware of God’s presence as a burst of Divine Light overwhelming us with a heavenly joy that surpasses any earthly peace or happiness we seek.”

    All That I Have Is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI on the Spiritual Life
    Fr. Kyrillos Ibrahim

  • “So in every test, let us say: ‘Thank you, my God, because this was needed for my salvation.’”

    —Elder Paisios of Mount Athos

  • “Those who have been humbled by their passions may take courage. For even if they fall into every pit and are trapped in all the snares and suffer all maladies, yet after their restoration to health they become physicians, beacons, lamps, and pilots for all, teaching us the habits of every disease and from their own personal experience able to prevent their neighbours from falling.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • If we have a burden beyond our bearing, we must turn to the Lord immediately — like this: ‘O Lord, I cannot even bear my own infirmities, yet now I must bear the burden of so-and-so. I cannot cope with all this responsibility. I cannot do this myself, and – because I feel I have no desire to cope either – all this weighs even more heavily on my conscience. I wish to help my fellow man, but I don’t have the means. My neighbors think that I don’t want to help, and that is an additional burden to me.

    —Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

  • I never believed Moravia really wanted to die (and he would express the wish in an offhand tone, as if saying “I could use a cigarette”); but I did believe he was bored, and boredom—like idleness, its sister vice—was something he disliked, even feared. Talk dispelled that fear, and for the rest of our afternoon there would be no mention of dying, not of his dying, at least.

    —William Weaver, introduction to Boredom by Alberto Moravia

  • “He who has died to all things remembers death, but whoever is still tied to the world does not cease plotting against himself.”

    —St. John Climacus

  • If you want to change and eliminate the problems which you have encountered because of your upbringing, enter into a loving relationship with God and others [in your life], and these problems will be resolved. When I learn how to love God, and train myself to love my brother, I will change and become conformed to the image of His Son.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality

  • If you are suffering from a trial, which you are going through because of [your] upbringing and education, and if you endure this suffering with your true self and you expose it to the light of the grace of Christ, then Scripture says to you, “That you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”(James 1:4) The following will take place: your true self will grow and become complete and lacking nothing, through this suffering.

    As for the grumbling soul, which is not joyful, but is always complaining about its upbringing in such a home, it will neither grow nor be healed.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality

  • People look at their homes as a place to complain about and to reject, and unfortunately, in the recent days, the culture that we live in encourages more of that. But My home is a place for me to be holy, to be saintly. And if I don’t realize this, I will be lost. I’ll be truly confused. I’m not living with my family so one day I could go to another family—that’s my goal. That’s terrible, as if almost I’m not able to embrace and enjoy the life I’m living. Same thing when I’m married, same thing with my spouse, my house—I have to look at this place—this is the place of my holiness, this is the place of my purity, the place of my charity, the place of my discipline, the place of my obedience. Where else can I pray and practice real virtue, unless I am with the people that I love the most.

    —Fr. Mina Dimitri