Category: KNOWLEDGE & SELF-KNOWLEDGE

  • Intelligence without faith is not as admirable as faith without intelligence.

    —St. Augustine

  • Proverbs 2:10-11 NKJV

    When wisdom enters your heart, And knowledge is pleasant to your soul, Discretion will preserve you; Understanding will keep you,

    Proverbs 12:1 NIV

    Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,

        but whoever hates correction is stupid.

    Wisdom of Solomon 8:7 [Orthodox Study Bible]

    For wisdom teaches self-control, discernment, righteousness and courage,
    Concerning which things there is nothing more valuable in the life of man.

    Eccles 1:18

    For in much wisdom is much knowledge, and he that increases in knowledge increases sorrow

  • Therefore, I beg You, O great Creator, to pardon me if I speak to people about virtues more than I speak to them of You.

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

  • Reveal Yourself to me, because this is the only means to truly know You—not through people or books-but through knowledge which we have seen with our eyes and our hands have handled (1 Jn 1:1).

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

  • He responds to moral questions with nuanced discernment, holding contradictory perspectives without cognitive dissonance, appreciating partial truth in opposing views.

    CRANIOTOMY: Dissection of your Human Condition
    BONESAW

  • Our fault nowadays is that we read much and meditate little, and therefore do not plumb the depth of our readings.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Contemplations on the Life of St. Antony the Great

  • He read a little in the Bible and did not stop at the literal meaning of words, or their superficial implications, but rather should put the spiritual depth of the words. As Paul the Apostle has said, “Nevertheless, in church, I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue” (1. Cor. 16:19).

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Contemplations on the Life of St. Antony the Great

  • He sought the virtues in every person he encountered and learned from them, although he did not copy any one person.

    …

    St. Antony sought knowledge from every available source. That was his first quality as a student. He did not seek knowledge just from great teachers, but from everything and everybody, from every event, every person and even from sinners.

    He learned his first lesson from a dead man. Isn’t it amazing that he gets his first lesson in monasticism not from a living person but from a dead man, and that dead man was his father? When his father died he looked at his body and learned something from it. He looked at his dead father who owned 300 acres of the best farm land in upper Egypt and who had the wealth, power, and influence and said, “Where is your power, your greatness and your might? You have departed from this world not by your choice; I however, will leave it by my choice before I am forced out.” That was his first lesson about dying to the world. “Behold that great rich man filling the world with power and influence, now lies motionless with no control over his own body!”

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Contemplations on the Life of St. Antony the Great

  • Say “My Lord Jesus Christ give me understanding.” And when it is difficult to understand something, ask God with all your heart and He will without fail grant you understanding.

    —Pope Kyrillos VI
    Pope Kyrillos: The Patron and Beloved of the Children

  • The love of learning, undoubtedly, is a virtue connected with humility.

    Abba Arsenius, The Tutor of the Emperor’s Sons
    Bishop Macarius