SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: DESPONDENCY

  • “Make firm my soul which has become corrupted by my laziness and apathy, O You who raises the lowly and rescues the afflicted. You know how apathetic and pitiful I am. You know how many wily and wicked thoughts fight against me. You see the enmity of the enemy and the many schemes which are employed against me. Be a help to me on account of your great mercy. Make me serious and watchful, animate me, and deliver me by Your grace.”

    —prayer from St. Ephraim the Syrian

  • “How will I find the right books to give me the answers I want, and even if I ever find them, when will I get time to read them?”

    —St. Augustine

  • Give me any instance then of a man as wise as you can fancy him possible to be, that has spent all his younger years in poring upon books, and trudging after learning, in the pursuit whereof he squanders away the pleasantest time of his life in watching, sweat, and fasting; and in his latter days he never tastes one mouthful of delight, but is always stingy, poor, dejected, melancholy, burthensome to himself, and unwelcome to others, pale, lean, thin-jawed, sickly, contracting by his sedentariness such hurtful distempers as bring him to an untimely death, like roses plucked before they shatter. Thus have you, the draught of a wise man’s happiness, more the object of a commiserating pity, than of an ambitioning envy.

    In Praise of Folly
    Erasmus

  • If your mood and motivation are low, are telling you not to act, that’s all the more reason to act. Yes, feeling good can lead to action, but action can also lead to feeling good.

    —Brad Stulberg

  • Thank You, Lord, for, had You seen a better situation for me than where I am, You would have taken me there. Or, if I deserved more than this, You would have given me. Certainly, You always give me above what I deserve. It is enough that I trust Your wisdom and love in planning my life; this deserves thanks.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Dialogue with the Divine

  • Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our [the devil] Enemy’s will [God], looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

    —C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

  • John Cassian, Institutes

    BOOK X. OF THE SPIRIT OF ACCIDIE.

    CHAPTER VII: Testimonies from the Apostle concerning the spirit of acciie.

    For no one can be restless or anxious about other people’s affairs, but one who is not satisfied to apply himself to the work of his own hands

    …

     “And that you should not covet another man’s goods.” He is sure to look with envious eyes on another’s gifts and boons, who does not care to secure sufficient for his daily food by the dutiful and peaceful labour of his hands.

    CHAPTER VIII: That he is sure to be restless who will not be content with the work of his own hands. “BECAUSE we were not restless among you.” When he wants to prove by the practice of work that he was not restless among them, he fully shows that those who will not work are always restless, owing to the fault of idleness.

    CHAPTER XII: Of his saying: “If any will not work, neither shall he eat.”

    With that power, I say, he declares, “If a man will not work, neither let him eat.” Not punishing them with a carnal sword, but with the power of the Holy Ghost forbidding them the goods of this life, that if by chance, thinking but little of the punishment of future death, they still should remain obstinate through love of ease, they may at last, forced by the requirements of nature and the fear of immediate death, be compelled to obey his salutary charge.

    CHAPTER XIV: How manual labour prevents many faults.

    The cause of all these ulcers, which spring from the root of idleness, he heals like some well-skilled physician by a single salutary charge to work; as he knows that all the other bad symptoms, which spring as it were from the same clump, will at once diappear when the cause of the chief malady has been removed.

    CHAPTER XVI: How we ought to admonish those who go wrong, not out of hatred, but out of love.

    For he commands them to note that man who scorns to obey his commands, and not to keep company with him; and yet he does not bid them do this from a wrong feeling of dislike, but from brotherly affection and out of consideration for their amendment. “Do not keep company,” he says, “with him that he may be ashamed;” so that, even if he is not made better by my mild charges, he may at last be brought to shame by being publicly separated from all of you, and so may some day begin to be restored to the way of salvation.

    CHAPTER XVIII: That the Apostle wrought what he thought would be sufficient for him and for others who were with him.

    I have showed you all things, how that so labouring you ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said: It is more blessed to give than to receive.” He left us a weighty example in his manner of life, as he testifies that he not only wrought what would supply his own bodily wants alone, but also what would be sufficient for the needs of those who were with him: those, I mean, who, being taken up with necessary duties, had no chance of procuring food for themselves with their own hands. And as he tells the Thessalonians that he had worked to give them an example that they might imitate him, so here too he implies something of the same sort when he says: “I have showed you all things, how that so labouring you ought to support the weak,” viz., whether in mind or body; i.e., that we should be diligent in supplying their needs, not from the store of our abundance, or money laid by, or from another’s generosity and substance, but rather by securing the necessary sum by our own labour and toil.

    CHAPTER XXI: Different passages from the writings of Solomon against accidie.

    AND Solomon, the wisest of men, clearly points to this fault of idleness in many passages, as he says: “He that followeth idleness shall be filled with poverty,” either visible or invisible, in which an idle person and one entangled with different faults is sure to be involved, and he will always be a stranger to the contemplation of God, and to spiritual riches, of which the blessed Apostle says: “For in all things ye were enriched in him, in all utterance and in all knowledge.” But concerning this poverty of the idler elsewhere he also writes thus: “Every sluggard shall be clothed in torn garments and rags.” 

    …

    For those, who are affected by this laziness, and do not like to support themselves by the labour of their own hands, as the Apostle continually did and charged us to do, are wont to make use of certain Scripture proofs by which they try to cloak their idleness, saying that it is written, “Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that which remains to life eternal;” and “My meat is to do the will of my Father.” But these proofs are (as it were) rags, from the solid piece of the gospel, which are adopted for this purpose, viz., to cover the disgrace of our idleness and shame rather than to keep us warm, and adorn us with that costly and splendid garment of virtue which that wise woman in the Proverbs, who was clothed with strength and beauty, is said to have made either for herself or for her husband; of which presently it is said: “Strength and beauty are her clothing, and she rejoices in the latter days.”

  • John Cassian, Institutes

    BOOK IX. OF THE SPIRIT OF DEJECTION.
    CHAPTER IV: Whence and in what way dejection arises. 

    “BUT Sometimes it is found to result from the fault of previous anger, or to spring from the desire of some gain which has not been realized, when a man has found that he has failed in his hope of securing those things which he had planned. But sometimes without any apparent reason for our being driven to fall into this misfortune, we are by the instigation of our crafty enemy suddenly depressed with so great a gloom that we cannot receive with ordinary civility the visits of those who are near and dear to us; and whatever subject of conversation is started by them, we regard it as ill-timed and out of place; and we can give them no civil answer, as the gall of bitterness is in possession of every corner of our heart.”

    CHAPTER V: That disturbances are caused in us not by the faults of other people, but by our own. 

    “WHENCE it is clearly proved that the pains of disturbances are not always caused in us by other people’s faults, but rather by our own, as we have stored up in ourselves the causes of offence, and the seeds of faults, which, as soon as a shower of temptation waters our soul, at once burst forth into shoots and fruits.”


    CHAPTER VII: That we ought not to give up intercourse with our brethren in order to seek after perfection, but should rather constantly cultivate the virtue of patience. 

    AND so God, the creator of all things, having regard above everything to the amendment of His own work, and because the roots and causes of our falls are found not in others, but in ourselves, commands that we should not give up intercourse with our brethren, nor avoid those who we think have been hurt by us, or by whom we have been offended, but bids us pacify them, knowing that perfection of heart is not secured by separating from men so much as by the virtue of patience. Which when it is securely held, as it can keep us at peace even with those who hate peace, so, if it has not been acquired, it makes us perpetually differ from those who are perfect and better than we are: for opportunities for disturbance, on account of which we are eager to get away from those with whom we are connected, will not be wanting so long as we are living among men; and therefore we shall not escape altogether, but only change the causes of dejection on account of which we separated from our former friends. 

    CHAPTER X: Of the only thing in which dejection is useful to us.
    AND so we must see that dejection is only useful to us in one case, when we yield to it either in penitence for sin, or through being inflamed with the desire of perfection, or the contemplation of future blessedness. And of this the blessed Apostle says: “The sorrow which is according to God worketh repentance steadfast unto salvation: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.”

    CHAPTER XIII: The means by which we can root out dejection from our hearts.
    WE should then be able to expel this most injurious passion from our hearts, so that by spiritual meditation we may keep our mind constantly occupied with hope of the future and contemplation of the promised blessedness. For in this way we shall be able to get the better of all those sorts of dejection, whether those which flow from previous anger or those which come to us from disappointment of gain, or from some loss, or those which spring from a wrong done to us, or those which arise from an unreasonable disturbance of mind, or those which bring on us a deadly despair, if, ever joyful with an insight into things eternal and future, and continuing immovable, we are not depressed by present accidents, or over-elated by prosperity, but look on each condition as uncertain and likely soon to pass away.

    Of the eight principal spirits or faults, dejection and acedia most effectively link the monastic world with today’s psychological suffering. The spirit or demon of dejection is described as one that attacks at random, and prevents the monk from having gladness of heart.[32] It makes the monk impatient and rough with the brethren and causes him to feel angry, crushing and overwhelming him with despair.[33] Cassian also locates the origin of dejection as being from “previous anger” or a previous “lack of gain that has not been realized.”[34] The monk isolates himself and no longer desires to engage in discourse with others, so that Cassian labels dejection the “gall of bitterness that is in possession of every corner of their heart.”[35] Interestingly, Cassian discusses how this demonic spirit is not necessarily a result of the actions of others, but actions of the self. Cassian elaborates that one in this state should not isolate himself, but rather continue to interact with his fellow monastic brethren. This in itself is a remedy against this spirit.[36] 

    …

    However, Cassian goes on to discuss that some dejection is acceptable and therapeutic. This is the sorrow that leads an individual to penitence for sin.[39] Finally, he ends the relevant chapter by noting that the way to terminate devilish dejection is spiritual meditation, and keeping the mind occupied with the hope of the future. In examining this chapter of Cassian’s work, clear symptoms emerge, as well as treatment modalities for what is considered depression in the modern world.

    …

    In Book X of the Institutes, Cassian begins to describe accidie, or acedia, known as the “midday demon,”[40] as Evagrius had also done, although in more detail in specific relation to the emotions.[41] While similar to the demon of dejection, acedia consists of the added features of apathy, sluggishness, sloth, and irritability. In naming acedia the “midday demon,” Cassian posits that these demonic attacks often occur around the sixth hour and seize the monk. Carelessness and anxiousness are the main components of acedia, as well as frequent complaining.[42] The monk looks anxiously and often sighs at his other brethren. There are also moments where he is idle and useless for spiritual work. Cassian notes that sometimes the midday demon can manifest in different forms: sometimes one may isolate more, and in other times one may become a busy-body and seek consolation from others — an action which Cassian describes as entanglement in secular business.[43] 

    …

    Cassian similarly recognized that often, anger and the lack of accomplishing a goal can lead to the demon of dejection. Anger and failure are, after all, often linked to stressful situations in an individual’s life.

    John Cassian, Diabolical Warfare, and Psychological Health
    Abraham Ghattas
    Doss Press

  • So when there’s prolonged frustration of its carnal demands, Self-Love gives a person a deep and habitual discontent and a kind of quiet hatred of life—hatred of its repeated disappointments, of certain persons in it, of what one sees as its hard circumstances and discouraging trials.

    —Dee Pennock, God’s Path to Sanity

  • Sometimes, without any apparent reason, we are suddenly depressed with so great a gloom that we cannot receive with ordinary civility the visits even of those near and dear to us… as when the gall of bitterness is in possession of every corner of our heart. —John Cassian

    God’s Path to Sanity
    Dee Pennock